[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Re: PR comments on 'Save as

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, Sam

Who are we to judge whether a user's name is good or bad? Suppose the 
user just decides to name his project a, b, c and so on. That is the 
user's decision and so be it.

Regardless of the wording, the alert does not save a document until the 
user gives it a name. If the user does not care about the document 
enough to give it a name, there is probably a reason. For example, if I 
were to launch Paint to show selecting a color for a brush, I would have 
no reason to save the scribble.

To repeat, we need to consider this from the viewpoint of the user. The 
user click on the Stop button to quit the activity. The alert should 
result in terminating the activity whether the document is saved or not.

I believe the alert should offer two options: save and quit. Overwrite, 
delete, discard and so forth refer to the deveoper's perspective of what 
action is taken.

Again, the jobject is overwritten by Sugar - a defect. This feature 
creates a 'clone' of the original jobject and so is able to save it or 
not at quit time.

This logic is used in the 'fiddler' implementation. It takes a moment to 
move the cursor to the entry, type an entry, and click save. Users will 
understand the value of this by using the Journal.

The children I have observed using Sugar would for sure spend longer 
closing and switching between activities without any benefit from this 
modal alert."

The alert only appears when the activity is closed not when switching 
between activities. The modal alert gives the user a chance to give his 
project a title - I consider that very beneficial. The alternative is 
for the user to open the activity palette and change the name there. The 
other alternative is for the user to switch to the Journal and change 
'Write.activity' to 'Bolivar report'.

Currently it is needed for all activities, because we are using the 
'document' saving as a catch-all. I have seen activities whose 
'write_file' writes a dummy file to satisfy the 'best practice' that all 
activities must have a write_file. Activities such as Memorize or Read, 
and Browse should save state information in the metadata which would 
allow them to be resumed. These activities do not save a meaningful 
document. Memorize is clear, it saves state. Read is clear, it does not 
alter the source e-book and only saves bookmark information - state. 
Browse saves the urls for open tabs - again state information.

Tony

On 07/12/2016 12:59 AM, Sam Parkinson wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Martin Dengler 
> <martin at martindengler.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 05:18:00PM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Martin, It seems to be nostalgia week. The goal is to have the
>>     user supply a name. Whether the text says untitled,
>>     Write.activity, execrable, or is left blank. The user will not be
>>     able to save until a title is supplied. There would be literally
>>     no 'untitled' or 'Write.activity' documents in the Journal. 
>>
>> This design decision of not forcing the user to name an activity has 
>> literally been consciously made since the first deployment of Sugar: 
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2008-October/009151.html 
>> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/3225 
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2008-October/009157.html 
>> ("Sugar default naming scheme") 
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2008-October/009152.html 
>> The has many nuances, so I don't want to be the penut gallery too 
>> much, but it seems to me that forcing kids to name activity instances 
>> upon closing[1] would seriously change (for the worse, IMO) the Sugar 
>> user experience. Is it only going to be some activities, like Write, 
>> that require (or default to) this? Are you sure you want to 
>> undo/change these very old design decisions?
>
> I agree with you.  I believe that there is a lot of value in reminding 
> the user to set a name - showing the alert as the current patch does. 
>  But I don't think that we should force the user to set a name - they 
> will only set a bad name, and they will feel like Sugar is working 
> against them.
>
> I think that the current implementation of the "Choose a name" alert 
> is fine.  It serves as a gentle reminder.
>
> Here are some of my questions about the design:
>
> I would also propose that the "cancel" button in the "choose a name" 
> alert change to being a "delete" button.  (This was my original 
> understadngin of the project).  Having a delete button there helps 
> reduce journal clutter by making it easy to delete the object if it is 
> un-needed.  For example, if I made a write activity to take a note, 
> and then decide that I don't want to keep it, I can just click 
> "delete" instead of setting a title.
>
> What is the purpose of the "overwrite" alert?  I thought that the 
> overwhelmingly most common use case would just be saving (or 
> "overwriting").  Does overwrite seem a little scary?  It did to me.
>
> Also, does the jobject get overwrite by the autosave functions in 
> Sugar, regardless of the user's choice in the overwrite alert?
>
> Thanks,
> Sam
>
>> Martin 1. My interpretation of the hypothetical proposals in "Sugar 
>> Journal save option" on 
>> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2016 and the video on 
>> the "Save As" patch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvBH7zzFBo .
>>
>>     Tony On 07/11/2016 04:56 PM, Martin Dengler wrote:
>>
>>         On 11 Jul 2016, at 15:44, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com
>>         <mailto:dave at lab6.com> <mailto:dave at lab6.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             On 11 July 2016 at 10:40, Tony Anderson
>>             <tony_anderson at usa.net <mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net>
>>             <mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net>> wrote: I prefer
>>             'Untitled' as it supports the intent of the alert - to
>>             request the user to supply a title. I also prefer
>>             Untitled, although I'm curious to hear why "xxx Activity"
>>             would be better. 
>>
>>         Actually, 500 "Untitled"s are so much worse than 5 sets of
>>         100 "Foo.activity", because (in my limited experience) kids
>>         who can read know that "Speak activity" is different than
>>         "Write activity". There are literally over a hundred emails
>>         about this design decision years back - it was not done
>>         lightly. I didn't even participate and I was exhausted by the
>>         debate. Martin
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