Jamal,
I installed ed-sharp, latest version, today, and I ran into the
following issues within the first few minutes of use. I just wanted
to report them in hopes of making this better for other users.
#1: installer doesn't ask about shortcuts
The installer didn't let me choose, like most do, whether I want an
icon on my desktop. Can this be added?
It also concerned me about whether it was putting something in my
quick launch. I hope it's not, as I always uncheck this option from
every installer I come across, but it would be nice to have that
standard installer screen, if possible.
I simply deleted the icon, after I installed the program, but it
would be nice for it not to get created in the first place.
#2: control+alt+e keystroke doesn't work, and in fact isn't assigned.
So I was told that control+alt+E launches ed-sharp by the installer,
but when I pressed it after the install was done, nothing happened.
I tried it several times, and then I actually investigated the
"launch ed-sharp" icon in the start-menu, and found that the launch
keystroke field was empty; thus, that made sense why it didn't work.
After I manually added control+alt+e to that field, it of course
started working.
#3: the elevate command always updates
When in ed-sharp, I pressed f11 just to verify I was at the latest
version, but apparently I am not, or the elevate command is broken
because it said comparing to server, and then it offered me a
download of the exact version I just installed. In other words, it
never bothered telling me that the version on my computer and the
server are the same, and it also makes the user think that they
aren't, since it offers a download.
I would suggest maybe changing the button or message to reinstall or
something like that, if the versions are identical, so that the user
doesn't think they are at an older version?
#4: delay in file menus when using jaws
I installed the jaws scripts, as I had no reason not to, using the
last page of the installer, and they compiled correctly; however,
when in ed-sharp, the menu bar is a little laggy. What I mean by
this is that if I hit alt, and then arrow through file, edit,
delete, navigate, etc, etc ... It's a little slow. I'm guessing that
this is possibly because of the JFWAPI being used or something like
that; however, it's kind of irritating, especially if you have your
jaws set to decently fast; for example, I listen to eloquence at 80%
speed, as defined by the jaws verbosity box, and there's about an
extra 300 to 600 millisecond delay, as if jaws is being instructed
to speak, as opposed to doing it itself. My question would be, A.
can this be fixed/sped up? And B. if it's just a file menu, why is
the JFWAPI being used? That it of course assumes that it even is
being used, and the delay isn't caused by something else of course.
Note, this delay is especially noticeable when hitting keystrokes
like
alt+f or alt+e to bring up menus. Almost to the point where
you think you hit the keystroke wrong or something, and then you
realize that the menu is coming up, but just slowly.
#5: alt+tabbing to ed-sharp doesn't announce the title
When you alt+tab to almost any other application, jaws reads the
title of the window for you, letting you know two things. It let's
you know that the alt+tab successfully completed and that focus is
on that window, and by announcing the window title, it gives you
whatever information the application developer wishes to convey in
their title bar.
This doesn't happen with ed-sharp. When I alt+tab to it, I get
silence ... Jaws doesn't make a peep. This is a bit jarring.
#6: in the file menu, several characters map to different choices:
In the file menu, I can hit o to open, open in other format, or open
again.
Unfortunately, o just activates open, which is the correct behavior
according to the underlying technology being used for the file menu.
Could the other two options be assigned different menu accelerators?
Their menu shortcuts are of course unique, but their accelerators
are the same.
This is true in other places too, but even in the file menu, you can
see it with set favorite and save both being mapped to s.
Note: what I've seen adopted as official policy by some UI
developers is that you start with the first letter, then move your
way through the word for subsequent accelerators. Some folks go
further and state that vowels are excluded from this, although I
personally disagree with that approach and think all characters are
fair game; for example, o for open makes perfect sense, although p
for "open again" doesn't because p should map to print, so you have
an exclusion tree whereby the first letter of every menu item is put
into a set, which by definition is a unique list, and then this set
is used as an exclusion list as you step through the characters of
the duplicate menu item.
One side note, another popular approach, of which I do tend to be a
fan of, is to use the first letter of subsequent words, before going
back for second and third letters of the original word. E.G.
"save as" maps to 'a'.
The algorithm for this is rather straight forward, with one huge
caveat (discussed below), if you think about it, and goes like this.
I have the following six menu items.
New
Save
Save as
Open
Open recent
Exit
First I take the six characters and put them into a list, which is
technically called a bag:
bag(n, s, s, o, o, e)
And then I turn that bag into a set, like this:
set = unique(bag)
So I get:
set(n, s, o, e)
And then I have a set of characters I've used as accelerators, which
starts out empty:
accelerators()
Now, I add characters to that list, for each menu item, being
careful to disallow duplicates, which closure property I get for
free as a result of using a set instead of a bag, like so:
New gives us n
So we have:
accelerators(n)
Open gives us o
So we have
accelerators(n, o)
Open again gives us o, but wait, o already exists in accellerators,
so we go to the first character of the next word which gives us an
'a':
// see the cavviot section for why 'a' is a bad choice // the
correct choice here is 'g' because 'g' comes after 'a' in the word
"again"
accelerators(n, o, g)
Then we get s for save, and so on
accelerators(n, o, g, s)
Then "save as" gives us 'a'
accelerators(n, o, g, s, a)
And then, finally, exit gives us 'e'
// again, see the cavviot section for why 'e' is a bad choice //
going with x instead
accelerators(n, o, g, s, a, x)
And of course accellerators == unique(accellerators); thus proving
it's in fact a set, and not a bag.
*** Huge Haunking Caveat Section: ***
Now, the reason that this algorithm unfortunately can't be
programmed in, and has to really be done by hand, or at least whose
output needs to be revised by hand is that there are idioms users
have come to expect. As is the case with all things in computer
science, humans get in the way of elegant algorithms, almost always.
So, for example, we assigned 'a' to save again, but this really
isn't what we want. We really want to assign it 'g', because users
have come to expect that 'a' is always save as in a file menu, just
like how s is save, and how o is open.
Thus, if one is prone to think about things in an algorithmic point
of view, just imagine a 2-ply deep file menu priority tree where the
semantics of these common idioms are stored; such as, under the file
node: 'a' maps to "save as", 'o' maps to "open", and so on. Then use
the same algorithm as above, but use the idiom tree as a higher
priority exclusion list than the accellerators set, indexing into
the idiom tree with the menu item name, of course.
To be fair, the above is more of a heuristic than an algorithm, but
I do find that it works super well, and takes all the guess work out
of picking accelerators in menus.
#7: spell check issues
When I hit f7 for spell check, I get some rather odd behavior. It
initializes Microsoft word, GUI and all, in the background. I
understand why it does this, because, why reimplement/reinvent spell
check, when Microsoft word exists right there on the user's machine;
however, can you just use word as a com object without invoking the
UI, just like that code snippet I sent out a really long time ago
about how to use Visual Studio 2005 without invoking the UI! This
brings up a further question of whether the spell check
functionality is able to be used via com, without actually invoking
the main MSWord object at all. Is that possible?
Moving on. I perform a spell check, and then I'm never told that
spell check is over. I don't even really know I'm back in my
document in ed-sharp, probably because of the earlier bug where the
title isn't read out, but what's even more frustrating is that
spell-check didn't clean up after itself, and I have this empty
Microsoft word document in the background.
Also, sometimes, although I can't replicate this particular issue on
demand, so sorry about that, but sometimes, it focuses said empty
Microsoft word document, instead of ed-sharp, after the spell-check
is complete.
#8: undo doesn't announce selection
Would it be possible for undo to announce if it's undone action
results in selected text?
For example, write a sentence, and then highlight that sentence and
hit the delete key. Now hit control+z for undo. It would be nice if
ed-sharp told you that the sentence that was brought back from the
great bit bucket in the sky was highlighted, simply by saying the
word selected before reading the sentence, as it does now.
There are some other things as well, but the number 8 is a nice
binary number, so I wanted to stop there.
Thanks much, and happy hacking.
Take care,
Sina
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