GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 587499
Add ability to open all selected notes from Search UI
Last modified: 2011-04-23 23:59:59 UTC
This is merely a feature request by a friend of mine, who is a tomboy power-user. He would love to see a feature in tomboy, which makes it possible to open all notes (and/or only those of a specific notebook) with one click or other quick and simple shortcut/action. This would facilitate for him the process of getting an overview of the current state of affairs. I couldn't see a similar bug or find that feature in current tomboy. Also it feels like a feature request worth discussing, even though I do not consider myself a power user of this application. Other information:
All I'm willing to do here (I think) is to make it so if you select a bunch of notes in the search UI and hit Enter, it opens all the selected notes. Right now it only opens one of them, and if you right-click the "Open" menu item is disabled. I've changed the bug summary accordingly. We might also consider adding a right-click option to the notebooks in the Search UI, but anything more elaborate than that can be done by an add-in, in my opinion. I'm confirming this, marking as an enhancement, and adding the gnome-love keyword as it would be a good first patch for somebody looking to contribute. I removed the usability keyword because that's only necessary when you actually want the usability team to review the bug.
I'm just curious, but why not allow the right-click context menu to do the same? The change is fairly trivial. It makes sense to me that if a user has multiple notes selected, then right-clicking and clicking open would cause all of those notes to open. If we're exposing the delete functionality of multiple selections, why not expose the open functionality as well -- Particularly if we're exposing the keypress event? This isn't even a drastic change from previous functionality. We wouldn't be changing the way that right-click->open works. We'd be adding it. I understand that the HIG does not explicitly state that we _should_ be doing this, but I don't think it's wholly inappropriate for functionality that's present in the keyboard not be present in the mouse as well. Particularly something so useful.
Well, the only argument I can think of is this: If a user right-clicks to go to delete, then they may accidentally click open--which would be really annoying. I suppose that the likelihood of accidentally pressing Enter is much, much less so. This is the only valid argument I can see... and it's pretty valid. E.g. Ctrl-A -> Delete. I would be _greatly_ displeased if I accidentally clicked Open... and I might even wish that the capability wasn't there to begin with.
Created attachment 151096 [details] [review] patch allows multiple notes to be entered by pressing Enter or KP Enter. I've been considering exposing File->Open and Ctrl+O as well. I think Enter is sufficient, I am still waffling on this. It's inconsistent. There's nothing to suggest to the user in the GUI that pressing Enter will open multiple notes. On the contrary, the GUI suggests that the user isn't allowed to open multiple notes.
I agree, we should enable the menu items in this situation.
I just realized something. This patch depends on changes for bug #606007. I'd like to finish that one up and have its changes merged before I continue with this bug.
Created attachment 175586 [details] [review] Patch for GCI Attached is a patch for GCI. The 'open' menu item is now enabled for multiple notes. Hitting 'Enter' or selecting 'Open' from the contextual menu can both open multiple notes (for consistency in behavior).
ping - can the patch please get a review soon?
Review of attachment 175586 [details] [review]: Sorry, did not notice this was for GCI. This patch looks good, one minor comment. Please update and I'll push this weekend. ::: Tomboy/RecentChanges.cs @@ +979,3 @@ { List<Note> selected_notes = GetSelectedNotes (); + if (selected_notes == null || selected_notes.Count == 0) The count check here is not necessary, that is built into the foreach.
Review of attachment 151096 [details] [review]: Looks good. Thanks for the work!
I'm going to re-verify this and push it after bug 606007 is resolved.
Created attachment 186178 [details] [review] Allow the user to open multiple notes via keypress or menu bug 587499
Review of attachment 186178 [details] [review]: Looks good.
commit 5c7941bccd17a0c1014bc9d06aca833f96543834 Author: Greg Poirier <gpoirier@src.gnome.org> Date: Sun Apr 17 22:06:20 2011 -0500 Allow the user to open multiple notes via keypress or menu bug 587499