Encouraged by MarkusB’s post yesterday about the number of mouse clicks required in gramps, I’ve taken a look at a personal pain point - the notes gramplet. Three things annoyed me:
the gramplet display does not update when you edit an existing note
it would be nice to display the EditNote dialog from the gramplet
it would be nice to be able to add and remove a note directly from the gramplet
I’ve got the changes working but I’d appreciate views on the behaviour of adding a new note. I wanted it to both create the new note and attach it to the active object.
In a simple scenario, click ‘+’ in the gramplet, type your note, click OK, the note is created and attached to the active object. All good.
If you change the active object before clicking OK on the EditNote dialog, the new note is attached to the newly active object, not the object that was active when the user first displayed the EditNote dialog. I’m not sure that this in intuitive to the user. Any comments?
Is this the Notes gramplet in the Notes category? So you would Undock it to use in this manner?
Or more like the To Do gramplet, where you have live editing of the Text in the gramplet? Or the like the experimental version mentioned in the wiki section for the To Do gramplet.
Brian, they say a picture is worth 1,000 words so…, the full screen image below highlights the Notes gramplet I’m referring to
The number and arrows highlight the sequence of operations
click the ‘+’ icon to display the standard EditNote dialog
write your note
click OK
the new note is attached to the active object. In my screen shot this is a person but it could be any object type (family, address, citation, source etc.)
Hopefully it’s clearer how I envisaged this working but I’d welcome any ideas you or others have as well.
I’m still not sure what the best user experience is if you change the active person between opening the note dialog and clicking OK.
This workflow seems a bit complex. Maybe we can discuss and find some ways to simplify?
You don’t really even need a Gramplet if you’re going to bring up the new Note object editor. The Add menu is in every category so you can always add any Primary object from any category. There’s a keybinding for adding each of them too.
The References tab of the object editor seem under featured and present a good opportunity to interface adding and removing references to objects.
There’s already a linking button in the Note Editor and it snaps to the active record in the active category. This is similar to what you describe… but from the other direction. So if the References tab had add, remove, share/select object buttons; then all the functionality you suggest (and a bit more) become available in a familiar way.
Add + could add the Note to the Active Record in the Active Category For feedback, a tooltip (updated as the active category or object changes) could show the active record when the button was indicated. And the button could be dimmed when there is no active record or it is already in the list.
Remove - could remove the Note from the selected References row
The Share button could open the Object Selector dialog in the current category
Enabling support for drag’n’drop to/from the References list would have obvious benefits
The only truly new behavior would that an Add or Share in the References tab would have to commit the Note (creating an ID and handle for the new Note) without closing that Note Editor.
I’m not adding a new gramplet - this gramplet already exists. I’m extending the functionality.
I agree that adding a new, unattached, note is currently quick and simple, in the ways you describe. What this enhancement does is also attach the new note to the active object, saving the following steps:
bring up the editor for the active object
select the notes tab
click the “Add existing note” button
find the new note
click OK
click OK
In addition my enhancement lets you remove the current note, or invoke the standard note editor to edit it.
This is subtly different in that it creates a link within the text of a note.
I think that is an interesting idea as well. Why can’t we have both?
As you say the only quirk is the need to save a new note in order for it to have a handle
I was thinking of the code that adapts to the active record to pre‐fill the defaults in the New Link.
That should be adaptable to determining where a new (added) reference should be created. So there might be a way to only have one function to maintain.
It took me awhile to wrap my head around what you were looking for.
You want the Notes tab in a view, to act the same way the Notes tab acts in an edit window.
A short-term fix which is really a workflow process aid.
You open your main edit window. Then want to add a citation. When you open the edit/add window for the citation, position the window so that the Cancel/OK buttons overlap the main edit window’s Cancel/OK. And if you add a note to the citation its Cancel/OK overlap the citation window.
Overlap any Cancel/OK over the previous active window. This helps preventing the closing of edit windows out of order.
