[oXygen-user] Difference between incomplete and incorrect

[David Cramer]

On 04/26/2013 02:15 PM, Mark Baker wrote:
...
> My question is, is there a way, and do folks think it is desirable, to
> present a different cue for incomplete structures than for erroneous
> ones. At minimum, use a different color, such as yellow, for incomplete.
> Ideally, find some way to indicate that the author is on the right track
> and needs to continue.
>
> Thoughts?

Hi Mark,

That's an interesting idea and what follows doesn't address it at all.
Instead, this is my approach to the problem:

In cases where there's more than one possible next element often one of
the elements is the most commonly used. For example, if you enter an
itemizedlist, it could take a title or info as a child, followed by a
listitem, but usually you just want a listitem. The listitem in turn
could take many block elements as a child, but 99% of the time you want
a para.

If you're writing in author view, then you can add Actions that enter a
typical collection of markup instead of just the element and then REMOVE
the element from the content completion list.

For example, you could have an itemizedlist action that inserts
<itemizedlist
xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"><listitem><para/></listitem></itemizedlist>
at the caret position and then bind that to the Content Completion menu
as well as any contextual menus or toolbars. If you remove the
itemizedlist element from the content completion stuff, then when you
press enter and type itemizedlist, you'll always get your action and not
the bare element.

Now it's up to the user to know that she can modify that template and
add a title to the itemizedlist or use something other than a para
inside the listitem, but for usability, I think this approach wins.

It would be really cool if that stuff were configured out of the box for
supported schemas at least for the most important elements. It's not the
kind of thing that each user in your org should configure for
themselves. Instead all the config should be done and distributed to
them in a framework.

Regards,
David