NeoLemmix > Editor Bugs / Suggestions

[DISC][EDITOR] Styles.ini overhaul / replacement

<< < (2/4) > >>

Dullstar:
Another thing that would be lost would be the ability to alter the order to pin your favorite styles to the top. I'd suggest allowing styles.ini to be used to modify the order, but also add the new thing and use it when styles.ini is not present/doesn't cover all styles, in which case styles.ini's styles should be listed first, followed by all other styles in the proposed ordering. Essentially, this allows the user to use styles.ini to pin favorites and change a style's display name. The benefit of re-using styles.ini for this instead of a new file is that it allows people to copy over their current custom ordering settings. If needed, update the styles.ini specification to be a bit more user-friendly: if the Name parameter in styles.ini is currently syntactically required, drop this requirement (take it from the newly proposed file if not present). If Order is syntactically required, I'd suggest allowing leaving the value out to automatically assign the number (generally, default to going in the order they appear in the file, allowing the Order parameter to override this).

TL;DR Use the new thing when styles.ini isn't present/is incomplete; for user order customization, I suggest making styles.ini more user friendly to edit (assuming it's not already done) in a way that's backwards compatible with existing styles.ini files; styles referenced by styles.ini are placed before styles that are only referenced the new way.

Perhaps this doesn't need to be a new file, though. Might it be possible to stuff this into theme, or something?

Apjjm:
Regarding the pinned styles - You could potentially add PinnedStyle1 ... PinnedStyleN settings to NLEditorSettings.ini which can optionally be set. These will always appear at the top in numerical order (and by default could be the orig_ styles?) then all styles would otherwise be grouped by author unless they were 'pinned'?

Proxima:
Thinking about this some more, I've come to the conclusion that replacing the system really is essential. We are heading for the final version of NL, when there will be no more updates to the engine, but content will continue to be created. Suppose someone makes a new style -- they can add it to their own copy of styles.ini, but it won't be on anyone else's copy, unless we decide that downloading a new style should include the updated styles.ini. And that's not a good enough solution, because then anyone who's customised their styles.ini -- for instance placing a favourite style at the top -- would have to redo the customisation with every new style installed.

Locating the ordering data in the styles themselves is a decent solution except that, as mentioned, it removes some customisability, which several people are currently using. Apjjm's suggestion is a good compromise (and would also allow alphabetical ordering, by pinning all styles, although then you'd have to manually update settings every time a new style was released -- that said, these are not very frequent, and only one person so far prefers alphabetical order).

Another idea I had, which is pretty much equivalent, would be to allow the "ORDER xx" line to have a positive or negative integer, and negative integers would be the equivalent of pinned styles -- they would be sorted first regardless of style author. I guess that has the advantage of not needing a new document, but the disadvantage that if you want to change your pinned styles, the information about them is all over the place. So Apjjm's suggestion is probably better, and I just mention this idea for completeness.

namida:

--- Quote ---Another idea I had, which is pretty much equivalent, would be to allow the "ORDER xx" line to have a positive or negative integer, and negative integers would be the equivalent of pinned styles -- they would be sorted first regardless of style author. I guess that has the advantage of not needing a new document, but the disadvantage that if you want to change your pinned styles, the information about them is all over the place.
--- End quote ---

Giving negatives special treatment would be confusing - though I agree they should be allowed (but simply on the basis that "-1 is before 0 in the order; -2 is before -1; etc; no special handling"). For reference: They are already allowed in styles.ini (as are decimals).

The ability to pin styles is a great idea.

GigaLem:
Here's a suggestion I want to throw my hat into the ring. I want there to be an in-editor Style Sorter, allow us to move and name styles and then NLEditor does the rest, let us choose what order their in, have presets for style order (like Alphabetically, Author Alphabetically, Generalized type, or a saved custom preset) Something that will allow users to have the freedom of how they want to sort their styles with a bit more accessibility (IE not have to change the numbers of a bunch of other styles in the Style.ini just to get the order you want, because that's rather slow not nearly as accessible IMHO)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page