[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Write to Journal Anytime

[Anish Mangal]

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 19:56, Simon Schampijer <simon at schampijer.de> wrote:
> On 03/01/12 20:04, Walter Bender wrote:
>>
>> Gary, Christian, et al.,
>>
>> We are hopefully going to land some variant of the "Write to Journal
>> Anytime" patch in Sugar 0.96 [1]. I'd like to discuss the details before
>> jumping back into the code. The current plan of record is essentially to
>> make a modal display of the Journal expanded entry (detail view) available
>> on demand from a button on the activity toolbar (grabbing space freed up
>> by
>> the elimination of the Keep button). This is essentially what I mocked up
>> about two years ago.
>>
>> While we may have had Design Team consensus on this plan in January 2011,
>> I
>> remain skeptical. The problems I see with this approach are: (1) the user
>> cannot see their current work while the model window is displayed -- since
>> presumably the goal is to write about what you are working on, this seems
>> problematic; (2) most of the fields in the detail view are irrelevant to
>> the task of taking notes; (3) some of the fields, e.g., title, already
>> have
>> mechanisms for change; (4) many of the fields are not human-editable,
>> e.g.,
>> preview image, collabarators....
>>
>> For these reasons and my general dislike of modal interfaces, I suggest a
>> simple alternative: a text entry in the toolbar that lets you add notes to
>> the description field directly from the toolbar. Simon (?) mocked this up
>> a
>> few years back and I think it meets the needs of the run-time access to
>> note taking.
>
>
> I had the following proposal: in the activity toolbar you can evoke the
> description field [1]. The toolbar could expand on key press to make it
> available more quick.
>
> General Note: I think in any case if we go down that road it should be part
> of the base activity toolbar and available in every activity.
>
> Regards,
>   Simon
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Description.png
>
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Are we also thinking of providing the capability to add tags to
journal entries using this mechanism?

Also, [1] looks like a bit of a hack (Having a text entry field in the
palette of a popped-up toolbar icon). I cannot think of another place
in sugar where this approach is extensively used (which I presume is
going to be the case here)?

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Description.png

--
Anish