Re: [Usability] Opinions on menu layout for creating/modifying/deleting comments

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Jody Goldberg wrote:

> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:45:38 -0400
> From: Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>
> To: gnumeric-list gnome org, usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Opinions on menu layout for
>     creating/modifying/deleting comments
>
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99860
>
> What are people's opinions on handling this in Gnumeric.
>
> The MS excel way seems 1/2 cocked, but is at least familiar to
> users.  OO appears to use a cheap version of excel and just has
>     Insert -> Note
>
> for both edit and modify
>
> Having Edit -> Comment and Insert -> Comment seems like overkill,
> and the content of the Edit menu just doesn't seem to match well.

The Office 97 version of Excel only seems to have "Insert, Comment".  The
downside of this is that I cant easily figure out how to edit the comment
(actually wait a minute, i notice that it is in the Cell Context menu).

The notion of needing to insert a comment seems like an implementation
detail to me.  I would be inclined to use "Comment" as a verb rather than
a noun (avoid "Add a") and put it in the edit menu.

Inconsistancey with Excel is a downside,
but it makes sense to automatically
add a comment placeholder/object if it doesn't already exist
or
if it does edit the existing comment *
and
a completely empty comment should be considered deleted.

* it might be worth considering initially having all
text selected but i suppose this would depend on how likely users are to
replace the old comment or simply add to it.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/