Conference tnpubs::nacleaf

There should be an automatic way to get back to the default window size after 
you resize a window.  Now you have to guess that you've gotten it back to the
original size.  Come to think of it, there should be two settings you can
automatically get to: the default size and the size the window had when you
issued the current resize command.

When you have several documents open and stacked on each other, you should be 
able to randomly select which document you want to come to the front.  The 
way it is now, you can't see the other documents or at least can't see their 
names.  So have have to keep pushing or popping documents until you find the 
one you want.

     I really wish Interleaf would do a checkpoint save while working
     in graphics.  It does if you walk away for awhile and leave an
     open document, but not if you keep working in a frame.  Waiting for
     the save pulldown menu to appear is longer than I like.  RAGS has this
     feature so why not Interleaf?

     Steve

The next time the manuals are done, there should be a way of distinguishing 
the open books on your desk from one another.  I keep 4 Interleaf manuals open 
all the time, but can never tell which is which without picking them up and 
searching for the cover.  The book's title should appear in one of the 
headers/footers on the spread.  

There should be a way to redisplay the contents of the entire desktop even 
though you have documents open on it.  To see the desktop now, you have to 
close the documents or resize all of them and then guess at their normal size.

Why not a switch the tells Interleaf to automatically put in a change bar when 
you make a change?  That would produce more change bars then you want, and you
would have to turn off the ones you don't want individually.  But there are 
plenty of times when turning off the ones you don't want would be less work 
then individually turning on the ones you do want.

Instead of our having to resize a window, there should be a command to 
automatically shrink it to icon size, with a special icon showing that it is
open, and another command that automatically returns it to the previous size.

   I wish there were on/off toggle buttons for Gravity and GridAlign instead
   of sliding through the popup menu.  When working with graphics I frequently
   turn these functions on and off and using the menu is quite slow.  A simple
   click of the mouse would be better.

   Steve 

I believe there is a control character from the keyboard that will toggle
the grid align and gravity.  When I went to the Illustrator workshop I heard
it mentioned.  I suggest looking in the documentation for control sequences
for the VAX platform...

Bette Jean

Whyn you are printing a whole book, there should be a way of telling Interleaf 
not to print the change bars.  Now, you have to go into each document 
individually to turn off printing of the bars.  The other night that took me an 
hour and a half.  One command should cover the entire book.

To create a new blank page, one should NOT have to create an empty component 
and then go to is property sheet to set Begin New Page to Yes.  What if you 
later want to move that component to the middle of some page, forgetting that 
it has that property?  

There should be a command for inserting a hard page break at any point you want 
in a document.

A DEC function key should be dedicated to toggling between Revision On and Off.
It takes too long to move the cursor from the text selected for a change bar up 
to the text property menu, click, and then move the cursor back to the text
area.

It should take only one keystroke, not a Control sequence, to insert or 
delete change bars.

When you have several documents open on the desktop, you should be able to 
close them all with one command and not have to close them one at a time.  
As it is now, you have to wait for each one to close in order to close the 
next one.  SAVE ALL should be a selection on the first save menu you see, not 
the last menu you see.

The property sheet for a document should show the entire directory path for the 
document.  I just requested CCD to restore a file, but had to go to VMS to get
the path for the file.  A slight incovenience, to be sure, but one that should 
not be necessary.

You should have to enter the data for an index entry only once.  You
should not have to copy the index hit to, or reenter the data at, every place 
in the document you want the entry to occur.

The software should assign a number to each entry and list the entries with 
their numbers alphabetically in a displayable document (an Index index).  When 
you want to  repeat an entry, you should not have to do anymore than insert its
number at that spot. 

When you create a new index entry, the software should automatically increment 
the numbers of the existing entries that come later in the alphabet.
The numbers would be incremented both in the text and in the displayable 
Index index.

Commonly, command line interfaces (CLIs) like VMS, give you the ability to 
recall previous commands, so that you don't have to key them in again and so 
that you can see what mistakes you made.  Interleaf's mouse-oriented inteface 
does not let you recall your previous commands to see what you did right or 
wrong.

It would be helpful if Interleaf let you display previous commands in a 
pseudo-CLI format, or any format that would enable you to find out what you 
did right or wrong in a previous command.

All the software would have to do would be to store your commands and 
display them at your request in some intelligible format.

In the final rush to get a document out, it would be helpful if there were an 
Escape function to let you manually override software-based text like autonumber
streams, fonts and font sizes, etc.  Often you have to spend precious time
digging through manuals, experimenting, or creating kludges, just when you have
the least time to spend. 

At crunch time, you should be able to enter the text you want manually.  To 
minimize the obvious risks involved, the software could put a token at that 
spot and, everytime you open, save or print the document, display a warning box 
telling you that manual overrides exist in the document.  Then you could 
search for the tokens to delete the overrides.  The warning box would appear
until you had deleted all the overrides.

When you are searching for a string, you should not have to reenter the string
each time you open a new document.  The software should remember the string 
you input previously and make that the default for your next search, no matter
what document that search takes place in.

There should be a way to dynamically set your own menu defaults.  I realize the 
some defaults change to the last item selected.  But that often (usually?) 
works only when your immediately following operation is from the same menu.  
If you do something else in between and then go back to the menu, you find 
the system default restored.  

    The spelling feature should store the selected string when you you
    click on "Next Error" so that it ignores that string through the rest
    of the document.