Maurizio wrote:Exactly. You have to know what tabbles you are looking for. That is true by construction. Allow me to explain. The main purpose of Tabbles is to allow you to find a file whose physical location you don't know, but whose associated concepts you _do_ know. This means you know what tabbles the file is in. Given that you know that, an alphabetic list (such as the "combinable tabbles" list) is the easiest and most natural thing we can give you (unless you are going to use the keyboard).
- something that's taken care of at the alt-c window.
Well, if you are willing to use the keyboard --- an assumption we cannot make.
Quite true that you do have to account for both keyboard and mouse users. Coming from a background of working in offices however, I've found that keyboard use is historically faster. (IOW, you should account for kbd users as well and not focus on mouse use alone)
With all due respect, Maurizio, with tabbles under the file the combinable tabbles column is unnescessary. You recall that I'm not working in a vacuum here; both my son and my father use the program as well (college assignements and medical records, respectively) and I've watched how they use the program. Also, besides my primary use I do my best to ask how it would be used to catagorize the procedure files at work.
A couple things I find consistant; Working with a large(ish) number of files it is unusual to zero in on the file you want straight out of the alt-c box (also applies if you start by opening a single tabble). To further narrow the search none of us go to the combinable tabbles column -
we look at the files. From there, a right click on a tag under the file will add it to the combine (or subtract it). If you remove tags under the files then, in a sense, you seperate the 'direct connection' (in the user's mind) between the file and the tag.
Maurizio wrote:That said, I do use it occasionally when I'm not getting any inspiration from the tabbles under the files...
Though it is heartwarming to think that you can get inspiration from using our product, I can't help thinking that the purpose of Tabbles is not to provide inspiration, but to allow the user to find files whose associated concepts they already know.
Secondary purposes may exists, such as browsing someone else's database (in which case you are not looking for something in particular, so tabbles under files may be useful) ; but these purposes require ad-hoc treatment, i.e. must be fullfilled in a way that does not impede the main purpose. In other words: for something to be enabled by default, it is necessary that it be useful for most people most of the time --- which can't be said of tabbles under files. Even if tabbles under files were useful 50% of the time, that still wouldn't justify displaying them by default --- because for the remaining 50% of the time they would be an annoyance (wasting lots of space and providing visual noise).
PS: removing tabbles under files would also allow me to avoid rebuilding the file window after tagging / untagging a file, something that you have asked for elsewhere in the message. This is attractive for me since it saves coding time, so it deserves mention.
Again, I'm not just looking at this from a severaly limited view. Considering the central function of this program is to associate tags/tabbles with files it feels counter-intuitive to remove that direct connection between the file and tag and, to be quite honest, until you've found your file I don't see how the tabbles under the file -isn't- useful.
Let me restate, however; it would be fine when dealing with smaller tabble sets or well-defined and limited file categories.
Of course, since it sounds like this is an optional view then I'll still be able to have tabbles under files as an option, I'm just not convinced this should be a default view.
- probably I shouldn't even laugh about it...)
) I have a couple hundred tabbles showing in the main window and haven't hidden a bunch to see if that would cut down lag. Let me know if there's any test or such I can run to nail down the issue.
