first report on 3.1 ----

I am seeing a greatly improved table display on docs with 
correct syntax but forcing text/ column width incompatibilities...
Good work done here .....  however there are still quirks that may
be windows platform issues.........  jr

Some areas that are still causing problems within Amaya 3.1
(April 19, 2000) from my viewpoint [Windows 95 and display limited
to 640x480 @ 256 color] are as follows (arranged editor issues first):

Display Stability
1] Amaya can go into black screen / continuous scroll when the
   combination of arrow keys (right arrow / down arrow) is used on
   longer files with cursor on an image.  An example is loading 
   www.w3.org, leaving focus unset and doinf sequence right/left/up/down
   arrows.... scrolling eventually stops after a great deal of time.....

Geometry Manager
2] Checking for video size and positioning windows inside the frame
   requires more work.  Windows that open to right side (such as
   View Source) are off the right edge when small screen (eg 640x480)
   are used.  Other examples are 'alternate' view and 'structure'.
3] When a window is resized or moved and the geometry manager is 
   asked to save it, a restart of Amaya loses the 'new' size/position
   ie. the save has not been done.

Color Selection
4] The preference -- colors dialog box needs a lot of work.
   When selecting from color picker, selection puts picker
   in minimized mode rather than closing it.
5] Many color-picker selected colors do not look like the ones
   displayed in the picker swatches.
6] Trying to set like #FFFFFF or rgb(227,227,227) do not work.
7] Not all of the 16 primary VGA 'named' colors work correctly.
   One fast test is to set the background color preference to
   'grey' which shows gray with lots of dots or to 'gray' which
   shows pink with dots [this on a 256 color video setting].
   Whether accommodation of the full listing of the 140 'named'
   colors is needed is debatable at this point however.
8] Documentation of configuration should include formats 
   allowed for manual settings such as the format for RGB
   coding and the list of permitted 'named' colors. Emphasis
   should be on using amaya.css for this purpose.

AN ALTERNATIVE FOR COLOR: As the stylesheet method works well,
and to promote their use, make user set up Amaya.css to taste.
and remove the color picker entirely as extraneous and busted!
This would let user set up all link colors as well.

Table Display
9]  Errors in table math that are editor detectable, should be
    flagged to user.
10] Tables become confused if stacked more than two levels down.
    An example is 'http://www.bahnhof.se/~chimbis/tocb/links' where
    text is printed outside their associated box.
11] The above example also indicates an inconsistence. The document
    can be viewed on line but if a copy is taken off line, it requires
    an extension of HTML (or htm) to be viewed. If the name used is
    links. without an extension only the source is displayed.

Screen Scroll Control
12] The scroll bars can't be pulled to the very bottom or right edge.
    No information is lost but this is untidy.

Menu Abiguity
13] Close and Exit should be extended to  Close Window   and
    Exit Amaya.  When i am several windows into new file creation I
    have erred thinking that Exit would exit this level rather than
    Exiting everything ----  A small menu wording change would add
    greatly to intelligibility.


Some enhancements that are desirable for a future release of Amaya are:

Internationalization
1] Offer parallel files in supported languages for all help files.
2] Allow language dialog selection to also chose help file language.

Geometry Manager
3] Automatically save user positioning/sizing state on exit.
   A bonus would be a Reset Window state to the original menu item
   in the Special - Preferences menu.
4] Documentation of location of geometry settings file would help
   in cases of user having to fix poorly positioned windows.

Keyboard Shortcuts
5] Either a menu function or an external utility should be provided
   to find the keystroke action number or logical name for
   nonstandard keyboards. 
6] The complete keyboard naming convention should be documented
   as well as the priorities for conflict resolution.
7] Keyboard associations are needed for the middle set
   of the keypad [i.e. arrows, home, page up, etc.]
   Appropriate settings should be set up and then documented 
   in the help pages.  Some settings may be:
   page up/down - move one screenful in appropriate direction
   alt-page up/down - move to beginning/end of screen display
   arrow key    - move one character/line in correct direction
   ctrl-arrow   - move one word 
   alt-arrow    - move one screenful in appropriate direction
   home         - move to beginning of line
   end          - move to end of line
   alt-home     - move to beginning of file
   alt-end      - move to end of file

Browser Issues
8] Complete implementation of the HTML 4.0 specification.
   This includes floating image elements!
9] Complete implementation of the CSS1 style functions.

Graphical User Interface
10] Retain a history of recent URLS in a scrollable URL address box.

11] A treed bookmarks structure should be built into the toolbar or menu
    system.  One should be able to edit all properties of this bookmark.
    This will add greatly to the BROWSER side of Amaya.

12] If a file is taking a long time to download or to render,
    there should be a flasher or gauge to reinforce the fact that
    activity is taking place and that nothing has 'hung-up' or crashed.

13] If there is a lot of hyperlinks as in a jump table
    then cursing over one of the hotspot areas should either:
    a] change the shape of the cursor  or
    b] display the link href in the status bar
    or preferably both....
    One can't assume that the hotspots will be of a different color
    than surrounding text or underlined.

Browser Capabilities
14] Framesets are currently not supported.  Since many web sites
    offer them as appropriate solutions for menuing, Amaya should
    offer basic browser capabilities to view as many sites as possible.
 
15] Gif transparency should be supported as sites often use it
    to provide margins and watermarks.  Is there some way of checking
    Amaya .gif rendering for this.

16] Animated gif's are not supported even though they are a common
    format on the internet.  Although other formats may be technically
    superior, democracy should rule in favor of supporting this format.

Color Selection 
17] Add all 140 'named' colors to the names accepted by the browser.

Documentation
18] More work is needed in the help files to ease the new users into
    Amaya.  Documentation is detailed well for the advanced users but
    is awkward for people who are new to Amaya.


Nations without borders don't need Gates
john russell  VE3LL@RAC.CA
homepage: http://web.cgocable.net/~jrussel

Received on Wednesday, 19 April 2000 13:58:10 UTC