Observing log, etc.
Bill J. Gray Jul 2, 2000
Hi folks,
Just a quick reply... I've wound up deluged in e-mail, and am
attempting to catch up:
One part of the "observing log" function is most apt to happen
reasonably soon. That would be the ability to add and edit your own
notes. Right now, to do that, you edit a .NOT file as discussed
in chapter 21 of the user manual, "Adding your own notes for objects".
This is awkward enough that I suspect most people don't use it. The
problem is not so much in the display of the notes, as it is in the
creation/editing of them. To handle this, I expect to have an
"edit notes" function that would work by extracting those notes from
the .NOT file and spawning up Notepad (or your text editor of choice).
You would edit them, click "OK", and Guide would put your edited
version back into the .NOT file.
A sort of "modification" of this would be to have a button in the
Guide Help window that would cause the 'help' text to be loaded into
Notepad (whereupon you can edit it and cut-and-paste it into other
apps... and I don't have to rewrite Notepad.)
Again, though, not much is apt to happen in this regard until I
get Guide 8 finished and shipped.
The comments that this is somewhat outside the realm of Guide's basic
functionality are somewhat true. I do have a limited lifespan, and
have to set some priorities for what goes into Guide, based on what
people ask for, what I expect I can do, and (sometimes) just because
I think it would be nifty to add a given function. The sort of "observing
log" I describe above appeals to me mostly because it's reasonably
simple to do, but would probably keep a lot of people happy. For the
remainder... well, yes, there are some good programs devoted solely
to the purpose of being "observer's logs".
-- Bill