Re: [Demexp-dev] Web Client Draft [status]

[David MENTRE]

Hello Lyu,

Lyu Abe <address@hidden> writes:

> I made further advances for the layout and organization of the web
> client (my version). In order to pass arguments from one page to another
> (i.e. when you click on a question, it redirects you to a "Consulting
> Question Details and Answers" page), I made a very bad thing: I used
> global variables... just because I did not find another working method
> for now.

That does not matter for a first prototype. Of course, this issue should
be solve at one point.

> My problem is to execute a python function, and pass some arguments
> (e.g. the question list, the tag list, etc. already loaded in the
> calling function), instead of loading it again from the server. I know
> there must be some more elegant ways to do that (using sessions or
> something), but for now, I have no idea how to do that.

A web framework will probably provide tools to solve this issue (the
notion of session and some persistent state associated to a session).

> Anyway, now you can display individual questions and associated
> responses in different pages or tabs (by clicking on the "number of
> responses" link in orange in image #1... this will certainly change in
> the future). The page/tab title is like "QXXXX" (the question number).
> The list of answers appear in a clear, wide spaced layout. The winning
> answer(s) have a light green background. Compared to what I proposed
> earlier, I chose to lighten the background (previously deep green) so
> that it does not "steal" the user's focus, and allow the reading of
> other answers.

However I would very much prefer some indication that this is the
winning response. "(winning)" written in small size next to the response
or something like that. I don't like the idea of having implicit
assumption ("green background" means "winning response").

> I would also suggest that displaying the winning answer should be an
> option in the user's profile. Because some people (like me for example)
> would not want to know what is the winning answer before actually vote
> (to avoid influence).

Yes, very good suggestion. I like it! :-)

> And feel relieved, I started to use DIVs for placing the different
> elements in the pages :P

:-)

> I have also one request concerning the formatting of question
> descriptions and answers: would it be possible to insert "nonbreakable
> space" before ponctuation symbols ("!", "?", ":") in order to avoid
> orphan characters on a new line? (see image #3).

Well, I'm not sure that I should do that on the server:

 * I need to change my code; ;-)

 * Applying such rules is language dependent so we need to have some
   notions of the language of a question on the server;

 * "nonbreakable space" and the like should be inserted in a way
   independent of the rendering technology (HTML, GTK interface,
   ...). Maybe some Unicode UTF-8 characters are reserved for that, I
   don't know.

That's said, I agree that the server should do some canonisation in a
generic way. We need to refine the line to draw between the client and
the server processings.

In the meantime, you might add some regexp to do the proper
pre-processing for French... or do nothing. ;-)

> You can have an overview of the client here:
>
> image #1:
> http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/4517/demexpinterfacev002p01ch6.png
>
> image #2:
> http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6906/demexpinterfacev002p02fs4.png
>
> image #3:
> http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/4346/demexpinterfacev002p03ky6.png

I like your light design. 

The gray background might be a bit dull or might be an issue for people
having sight issue. To be checked.

Yours,
d.
-- 
GPG/PGP key: A3AD7A2A David MENTRE <address@hidden>
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