Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!gdavis
From: gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Dialog Edit menu, display of shortcuts (was: Movable-Modal WDEF)
Message-ID: <1859@uakari.primate.wisc.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 90 22:46:24 GMT
References: <21518@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@primate.wisc.edu
Reply-To: gdavis@primate.wisc.edu
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From article <21518@netnews.upenn.edu>, by grobbins@scott.cis.upenn.edu (Grobbins):
> 
> Nisus makes many extensions to the Mac interface which carry on Apple's
> recommendations to the nth degree.  Virtually every editing action is
> undoable, in multiple stages.  Rear windows are all active when the
> command key is down -- just as in the finder you can drag rear windows
> by holding down command, in Nisus you can drag, resize, scroll, click
> buttons, and select text in rear windows, without activating them, by
> holding down command.  An option key modifier means "do to all" here
> and there in other applications; in Nisus, option-zoom zooms all
> windows (effectively tiling them), option-close closes all windows, and
> so on.
> 
These general meanings for the option and command keys are extended
even further. Forinstance, the option key in conjunction with
movement in text causes the movement to occur by word rather than
by character. In other words, carry out the movement on all 
characters of the word. The command key permits movement without
change in text, conceptually similar to it use as a way to work
in windows without activating them. For instance, command-return
moves the cursor to the beginning of the next paragraph.

All these uses of the modifier keys are orthogonal. Command-
shift-option-backspace, for instance, selects the word to the
left of the cursor. A somewhat convoluted example, but it
follows a simple rule. In contrast  to Nisus, many other word
processors seem to use rather arbitrary key commands for
things like move forward one word.

> shift-cmd-space is select to the right) arrow key selections were not 
> supported.
> 
Actually they are supported in Nisus as I mentioned above.

> Is being able to choose menus from modals a step forward or backwards?
> I think the latter, because modals should be obviously and completely
> separate, not "fuzzy" in modality.  The programmer used menu selections
> 
I don't find it fuzzy at all. There are always certain things which
can be done in modals and certain things which cannot in any program.
Nisus makes it clear what is available in modal dialogs by graying
out unavailable menu selections.

> 
> Again IMHO, Nisus has serious user interface problems remaining.
> (FullWrite is much better thought out.)  But it also has some great ideas, 

One of my first big disappointments with FullWrite, a program I really
wanted to like, was its interface, which I didn't find nearly as nice
as had been touted. Maybe it's a matter of personal preference, but
I immediately fell in loce with the Nisus interface, though I can
certainly agree that it's not perfect. The lack of a completely
WYSIWYG text display is one place where it's inferior to FullWrite, but it's
also probably one reason why it blows FullWrite away in performance.

Let me just give one more example of the nice generality and
orthogonality of Nisus. As in FullWrite its possible to search
and replace on character attributes, font size, style and
so forth (actually Nisus is quite a bit more powerful in this
regard). In Nisus, the indicate a character attribute in the
Find dialog, you simply select the text in the dialog and apply
the attribute from the standard text menus. In FullWrite, you
have to go through a separate set of menus. You can even use
the standard menu to set text attributes in the macro editor.

Well, let me give another example ( I do get carried away with
Nisus). Most windows work in pretty much the same way. That is,
you can edit text in the clipboard window and even draw graphics.
The file catalog is just a read only text window which you can
search and copy things from. You can paste a character graphic
in the find dialog and and search for it or for the graphic and
any character combination (It only goes by the bounding rect in
searching for graphics, but this ability still can be useful).


Gary Davis