[oXygen-user] Outline view again

[David Cramer]

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Hi Wendell,
Thanks for the suggestion. In fact, I've done that before to address
this complaint and will probably do it again as a stop-gap measure,
but as you point out, it doesn't quite meet the need. The user wants
to be able to scan the nav pane, click on an item, and have the
content pane sync up.

I also have experience customizing the competitor of oXygen you
mention. In that case, I had several css files for the structure view
and used a macro/menu button to let the user toggle between them. It's
one of the few areas where that tool has something on oXygen.

You suggestion to add the ability to split the Author-view of the
content window would be a nice thing to have for other reasons (e.g.
to compare to sections of a document). In fact, you can already split
the content pane in text view. However, I think that the current
Outline view is already very close to doing everything it needs to do.
In fact, it's more flexible than the competitor's structure view in
that oXygen lets the user filter the list. That's not something you
can do with SV.

Thanks,
David

On 01/19/2012 01:35 PM, Wendell Piez wrote:
> Dear David,
> 
> It's not the same as being able to configure the outline view
> (which is an intriguing idea), but one thing I have done is make a
> distinct CSS stylesheet just for a ToC rendition of the document.
> Of course this gives you all the flexibility of CSS including
> hiding things, and can be done right away. Switching between two or
> more CSS renditions is a feature oXygen has had for a while.
> 
> Additionally, in its CSS support, oXygen includes several
> extensions including a 'foldable' property that allows a user to
> expand and collapse arbitrary blocks of the document, while keeping
> certain element children visible. So you can collapse/expand
> sections while keeping their titles in view, for example.
> 
> Tailoring a user interface for the needs of users (each of whom is
> an individual with personal quirks and preferences) is certainly an
> art. At least one competitor to oXygen (which I haven't used in a
> while) allows the outline view to be styled with its own CSS. While
> this is good as far as it goes, it has a down side, in that it
> hides the straight unenhanced outline view, which is also nice to
> have. Maybe what we need is not more configuration of the outline
> view, but a way to view the same document with two (or more)
> different CSS stylesheets in different windows (along with,
> probably, the ability to harness their cursor positions together,
> or not).
> 
> Cheers, Wendell
> 
> On 1/19/2012 10:43 AM, David Cramer wrote:
>> Hi there, I think I've asked about the Outline view before and it
>> seems to be getting more useful, but feedback from writers is
>> that it's still exactly what they want.
>> 
>> When editing a document, it is useful to have a "table of
>> contents" view of the document next to the main authoring view
>> that provides a synoptic view of the document's organization. In
>> oXygen, the Outline view comes very close to providing this:
>> 
>> Given a DocBook document if I filter on "chapter, section" then
>> for the typical document, I see just the chapters and sections,
>> but the results are a flat list. If I  deselect "Flat
>> presentation mode of the filtered results" then I have the
>> indented tree view I expect BUT I also see elements, PIs, etc
>> that are preceding siblings of the sections. For example:
>> 
>> * chapter Overview of the Foo Server * section Understanding the
>> Foo Server Deployment * title Some section title * para Why am I
>> seeing this para? * para This is noise and clutter ipsum lorem *
>> section Foo Server Concepts
>> 
>> Is there a configuration change I could make to eliminate the 
>> preceding siblings of the section from the Outline view? If
>> there's not, could the behaviors of the outline view be adjusted
>> to allow for this use case?
> 

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