@geek, on Dec 24 2008, 02:23 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0.3 update available:

Would it be possible to integrate ConText and ResStore capability into MC? Like a "spreadsheet view" that will display all of one kind of resource at a time in a spreadsheet window?

Perhaps sometime I’ll write something like this for the Utilities menu – it would essentially be a replication of ConText/ResStore, rather than anything that could be integrated with the rest of MissionComputer, since the paradigms are so different.

@geek, on Dec 24 2008, 02:23 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0.3 update available:

One, while it's great that -Q will close all windows, it's not so great that it will close all open windows before asking me if I'm really sure I want to quit.

Closing all the open windows is the easiest way to make sure they all save their contents before the file itself is written, but if it's that much of a problem and you find yourself pressing Command-Q instead of Command-W, I'll see if I can find a workaround.

@geek, on Dec 24 2008, 02:23 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0.3 update available:

Second, whenever I click on a field in the ship editor (may be the same with all editors, haven't checked), the insertion point appears to the far left by default.

I can't reproduce anything like this. I click in one of the text fields, and the cursor shows up exactly where I clicked, just like in every other text field in the system: if I click at the far left, it comes up at the far left, but if I click at the right or in the middle, it comes up there, and double-clicking selects the entire contents. Can you give me any more details of what's happening to you?

@geek, on Dec 24 2008, 02:23 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0.3 update available:

I have a really cool interface feature suggestion: The Quick Edit feature. It would be a third window section in the main interface to the right, and it could function as a drawer with an open/close button in the lower right corner of the resource viewer (so it doesn't irritate, it stays closed if it's closed to begin with, stays open if it's open).

It does sound interesting. It would also require not only a major revision of the document window, but creating a second editor from the ground up for every supported resource type.

It could use the RDLs, perhaps.

Actually, my idea for the quick edit feature would be like a database form function. You wouldn't have to make new editors hopefully, the Quick Edit preview would just have fields that correspond to the fields in the actual editor (type in the quick edit, and you're actually typing in the editor itself, as everything you type here is replicated in the resource as if it was typed in the editor). It could be as simple as a list or grid layout of all the fields from the editor in Tab order (that is, the same order you would go through all the fields by pressing the Tab key). Of course, maybe not all features even need to be seen in the Quick Edit window, just common or essential ones. There would be a button to press to automatically open the resource in the editor for deeper editing.

As for the insertion point peeve, it's oddly enough behaving better now. It still randomly appears in the left the first few times I click on number fields, but it seems to respond better to an actual trackpad click as opposed to a tap-to-click. Odd. I do note that I paused in writing this to go back to MC, and the first field I clicked had the point in the far left, though I clicked on the empty space to the right of all the numbers in the field. Only the first field did this, and the rest were okay. Color me confused.

And for the -Q thing, it would be great if the "Are you sure you really want to Quit" dialog would appear right away, no matter how many windows are open. That way if I accidentally hit the W instead of the Q (it can happen, and I'm sure I'm not the only one), I can just hit the Cancel button in the dialog and continue, rather than watching all my windows disappear in irritation.

Geek. Am I right in thinking that what you are attempting to explain here is an editor that works a bit like Apple's Mail UI? I've often thought that an EV Plug editor would work better in this format. (so long as you can double click resources to show them individually as well, just like you can do to messages in Mail). There are limitations to this design, mockup as food for thought. I would definitely prefer clicking on either the ID or Name to change them in the window rather than having to get info.

That's actually pretty cool, Spoony. That would work great. I was actually thinking of something a little more like the current GUI, where the Quick Edit window would be a drawer on the right, but hey, that's better. I can just see a "Plugin Library" like an iTunes library in a column to the left of your mockup, and maybe a way to automatically setup a scenario for EVN in the library... drool

Mission Computer Pro! I'd pay for that! Bit then again, I'd prefer to get it free by being a faithful beta tester...

@geek, on Dec 24 2008, 04:02 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0.3 update available:

That's actually pretty cool, Spoony. That would work great. I was actually thinking of something a little more like the current GUI, where the Quick Edit window would be a drawer on the right, but hey, that's better. I can just see a "Plugin Library" like an iTunes library in a column to the left of your mockup, and maybe a way to automatically setup a scenario for EVN in the library... drool

Mission Computer Pro! I'd pay for that! Bit then again, I'd prefer to get it free by being a faithful beta tester...

The problems with my design that quickly come to mind are twofold. What if you have a large number of dĂŤscs... or any other resource type for that matter? That double-horizontal split is definitely not ideal for long vertical lists. A three-across vertical split would probably prove much more effective in this situation (resource types -> Resources -> Resource, which I think is more akin to your original idea, Geek). Secondly (and this is the problem with your idea too)... when you start adapting resources to be part of the main window (or a side pane) you quickly run into the problem of the large complicated resources (shĂŻp, wĂŤap, and mĂŻsn chiefly). Trying to contain those in a flexible-size sectioned window is challenging. No doubt one of the reasons David Arthur chose the design he did. I would love to see a more contained approach that made use of less windows and was more intuitive... but it would mean a UI redesign and getting clever with resource layouts. Adding a drawer would get very claustrophobic when accessing complicated resources.

We'll see what David Arthur has to say on the matter.

This post has been edited by Spoony : 24 December 2008 - 07:28 PM

But what if on your idea, the resources were listed in multiple columns to fill up the horizontal space? Graphical pickers could look a little like the List View or the Grid View in iTunes 8...

This post has been edited by Geek : 24 December 2008 - 07:39 PM

Spoony: My original concept for MissionComputer 4.0 was actually a lot like your mock-up. It didn’t look quite as much like the current version of Mail (Mac OS 10.5 hadn't yet been released at that point), but I wanted to get everything into one window, preserving the traditional paradigm of one document to a window.

The problem, besides the usability issues you’ve already noticed (and a few others that are less immediately apparent), was that constantly loading and unloading editors within one window proved to be much less stable. That’s the main reason why, after a few days of trying to make it work, I started over and implemented a ResEdit-style interface with one window per editor, despite all the various complexities it entailed. I’m still dealing with some of the less significant of these, such as Geek's issue with all the windows closing.

I suppose it would be nice to be able to change name and ID without opening the Get Info window, though I've always found such things to be awkward in iTunes and the like. At any rate, it would require some smoke and mirrors to achieve it in MissionComputer.

Geek: I think I know how to make the editor windows behave how you want them to – it’s one of those residual things from the switch to allowing multiple editors at once, which I never got around to changing because no one complained about it. I suspect the insertion-point issue is as much a trackpad problem as a MissionComputer problem, and I can’t really do anything about it, since I don’t even have a laptop with which to test it.

The layout you describe for ‘Quick Edit’ would involve about 95% of the same work that a stand-alone editor does, plus some additional patch code to handle the connexion between it and that stand-alone editor, so everything I said earlier applies. Also, I’ve never been particularly impressed by drawers; they always seemed to be much more successful in the ‘Hey, that’s neat!’ department than in actually producing effective interfaces. You’ll notice that Apple have been re-designing the few places that they were used (notably Mail) in recent versions of the Mac OS.

Swedish_road_sign_Command_key.jpg (11.36K)
Number of downloads: 18
And finally, I’d like to note that no Macintosh has ever had an ‘Apple’ or ‘’ key – it’s been called Command since 1984, and its symbol is the cloverleaf character derived from the road signs that point to tourist attractions in Sweden. The open version of the Apple logo that appears on the same key on many keyboards comes from a period when the Macintosh shared its keyboards with the Apple )( series, which did have an Apple key. The keyboard department, it seems, realised only recently that the Apple )( had joined the choir invisible.

The 'Upgrade Escort' check box reverts back to it's original setting when you made the ship.

ex. If you make a ship, the default is that it updates to 129. If you forget to un-check this and go back to change the box. The box will remain checked and Mission Computer won't recognize that any changes to the file were done.

Fixed, thanks – there was no SetChanged call in the check box itself, so it didn’t record changes unless you modified the text field (or something else) as well.