[MKDoc-dev] Proposed event/calendar functionality

[Bruno Postle]

On Thu 14-Oct-2004 at 18:52 +1000, Charlie Garrison wrote:
>
> If I'm understanding your statement I like a Javascript solution 
> (so it would be an enhancement rather than replacement for current 
> method).

I like the idea of javascript to 'collapse' parts of the form and 
hidden divs that appear when something is selected, we should 
probably do these things anyway - but it doesn't encourage 
hesitant users to select things in the first place.

The current interface looks something like this:

    Number[1] Type[file] [Add]

This should maybe become more like a real sentence:

    [Add] [1]number [file]component

..but even so, when you click on the pull-down menu, you get a big 
scary list of possible components:

    file
    headlines
    html
    image
    link
    photo
    poll
    price
    rss
    text

They are sorted alphabetically which means that the most important 
options (text, link & image) are not at the beginning.  The list can 
only get longer, since we are likely to add 'time range', 'upcoming 
events' and other stuff to the mix.

One idea that I keep coming back-to would be to merge some 
components together; 'file', 'image' and 'photo' are basically the 
same thing - Some magic on the server-side could determine that an 
image is too big to embed and is therefore a photo, or could figure 
out that a zip file isn't an image and should be presented as a 
'file' attachment.

..and so on, 'text' and 'html' are similar, 'rss', 'headlines' and 
'upcoming events' are similar too.  This would leave a slightly more 
comprehensible list:

    text
    link
    file
    summary
    poll
    price
    time

Basically any ideas for improving this aspect of MKDoc are welcome.

-- 
Bruno