[Hugs-users] WinHugs: Implementation and user interface

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi,

WinHugs is now looking pretty good I think, a few things outstanding,
but overall its quite good to use. Unfortunately the way its designed
means that its quite hard to do some enhancements that I would very
much like to make, which would be very cool. However, changing the way
its designed in this case will also change its user interface quite
substantially, so I thought i'd check with people first.

== The Proposed Change ==

Move from looking and acting like a console, to looking and acting
like IRC. In the current behaviour you type on the console, in IRC you
type in a window at the bottom, when you press enter your changes are
reflected on the content area.

For an example of the kind of design I mean see
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~miked/images/gyhe_sceengrab2.jpg
(although obviously mine would be prettier :) )

== The advantages for the user ==

You can type a multiline input (maybe), some really cool features
become possible (bracket matching, type information, syntax
hilighting, perhaps even auto-complete)

== The advantages for me ==

Currently the RTF window code is 20% of WinHugs, and its by far the
most brittle bit (occasionally the text flies around teh window, and I
have _no idea_ why). With this change, I can make it more like 3%, and
all really simple stuff. It will also be faster.

== The Question ==

Do users want to change their model of how to use WinHugs? I have used
Gyhe a bit, and its perfectly useable, just less console like. I think
I prefer the Console style by a small margin, but guess thats because
of habit rather than anything else. And the improvements I could make,
in my opinion, far outweight the change.

What do other people think? Once I change, there is probably no going back...

Thanks

Neil