On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 11:05:15 +0200, Allan Odgaard wrote:
On 7. Oct 2004, at 10:05, Johan Sörensen wrote:
The trouble is -- what if you only wanted to change the font for the current document? Perhaps I'd like to see the document I'm working on right now in a bigger font, or I'd like to treat tabs differently temporarily. Under the current system, it ain't temporary.
How would moving the stuff to a preferences window make it temporary?
What Johan wrote was quoted from me, so I'd like to take a stab at answering:
* The font settings you apply in the preferences window would stick. * The ones you apply using the regular menus wouldn't.
If I wanted to change a font forever, I'd adjust it in preferences. If I wanted to change it, temporarily, because of the needs of the current document, I'd change it in the menus.
This is even more pertinent outside of the realm of fonts. I might want to enable overwrite mode for the document I'm currently working on, just for the time that I'm working on it. But in general, I want to stay out of overwrite mode. Under the current system, even if I quit the program after I've made the changes to a specific document that I wanted to make in overwrite mode, I have to remember that the program has "helpfully" remembered that I made that change, and I have to switch back out of it.
I'm not suggesting that TM should remember the settings on a document-by-document basis; simply that adjustments you make using the menus shouldn't linger with you until you remember to change them again. Permanent changes are what a Preferences panel is for.
Another example (there are plenty): I'd like to be able to switch line numbering on, temporarily, and not have to turn it off again for other documents or when I quit the program.
If I change what I "syntax highlight as" in the menu, to be consistent with the current system, this should "stick" as well. If I want to syntax highlight as HTML *now*, surely I want to syntax highlight as HTML *forever*. No? Then perhaps I might want to be able to temporarily change other settings too.
Cheers, Andrew.