Re: [Texmacs-dev] New features for menus in TeXmacs 1.0.0.11

[David Allouche]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 08:56:43PM +0200, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> >
> > What are the intended semantics of the "o" toggle?
> 
> I explained this before.
> o corresponds to *structured* selection.
> Selecting one item and then reselecting the old one is *not* a noop.

Part of my proposal of menu reorganisation included modification of
the behaviour of the editor make that kind of operation mostly no-op.

So, if I understand well, "o" toggle is only informative of the
context at the cursor position. It is being used instead of standard
checkmarks because standard checkmark semantic is not to be expected.

 
> > So I am willing to make some changes, but when I have the time (not
> > now since I am spending all my work day typing emails) and after
> > having worked out some wishes I promised to implement (extra support
> > in the makefile and disabling of the font generation window).
> > 
> > I also have to take care of my placement report for the school.
> 
> We'll see. But remember that I am also very busy.
> At a certain point, I will freeze the user interface, ready or not.

I know exactly what I want to do. I understand it is better to go
there incrementally, but forcing incrementality and then freezing
change in an authoritarian manner is not what I call good teamwork.

> The more you help, the more time we will have to make it really good and
> the more that you will be able to influence the design.

More on that below.

 
> > > * Put * and v checkmarks whereever needed and use toggling
> > >   whenever appropriate.
> > 
> > I think it would be better to use "v" checkmarks everywhere.
> 
> I explained above why this is semantically incorrect for
> *structured* editors.

You said that you already explained what "o" checks meant. Which is
not very helpful on the subject of using "*" and "v" checks or only
"v" checks.


> > > Note: please perform these changes shortly after the 1.0.0.11 release.
> > 
> > I will try, but that may not occur at the best possible time for me.
> 
> Thanks a lot; I really want to get these things finished now.
> This has taken much too much of my time.

Those emails are also taking way too much time from me.

Teamwork means delegating.

Delegating means leaving the responsibility of some parts of the
projects to other people.

Leaving the responsibility to other people means not systematically
forcing them to give lengthy explanations for everything they do or
want to do.

The bottom line of good teamwork is that more work (roughly 50% more,
in general) work is done by two persons than by one, but on the other
hand you will not have everything done the way you want it to.

For good teamwork, it is important that workers know where there are
qualified and where they are not. I almost never discuss anything
related to the typesetting language, the typesetter, or the basic
semantics of the editor, which are arguably your invention. But I do
not think you are an authority on matters of system programming
(neither am I), C++ language and GUI design (where I think I have
clue).

The point is which kind of teamwork do you want? I try not to be
offensive. Really, I only want to go back to real work, that is fixing
the GUI, getting done with my placement report and making more good
code. But you are not making that easy.

Please let us not start another flamewar, I just wanted to share my
thoughts about teamwork.

-- 

                             -- David --