To save or not to save upon quitting; discarding temporary mods

[superticker]

... [To create a temporary comment in a note] just design your configuration tree as normal and save it, then when composing a letter, select the node you want to edit, and edit it in the top box above.  Changes in this top box are just temporary and last for the duration of the current letter only.

-mouser (July 05, 2007, 11:30 AM)

Now I understand why there isn't an automatic save feature on The Form Letter Machine when quitting.  In order to give the user the choice of (1) saving or (2) not saving upon quitting the program, I would create two mutually exclusive Quit choices: (1) Save & Quit and (2) Quit w/o Saving.

With the single Quit choice, I'm constantly loosing my changes because I forgot to save them before quitting.

[mouser]

Ok i see the problem here, and the issue is a bit deeper and more complicated..

When you change a tree in any way from the tree-configuring screen, TFLM knows this, and when you try to quit it will prompt you to save your changes, abandon them, or cancel the quit.

When you change a tree node text item from the main screen (which is what i think you are doing given the text you quoted), it assumes this is something you just want to change temporarily.  i.e. it *assumes* that by changing it here and not in tree configuration screen that you do *not* want to save it, that's why it doesn't prompt you.

I can see why some users would prefer it this way and some would prefer to be able to make changes that will get saved here.

One way to solve the problem is add an option about whether changes made on main screen should be treated as changes to the tree that presumably should be saved (and thus user will be prompted if they try to change tree or exit without saving them).

This would match up well with adding an option to do the same thing with changes to variables, which I was also asked about the same thing.

[superticker]

... When you change a tree node text item from the main screen, it assumes this is something you just want to change temporarily.  i.e. it *assumes* that by changing it here and not in tree configuration screen that you do *not* want to save it, that's why it doesn't prompt you....

One way to solve the problem is add an option about whether changes made on main screen should be treated as changes to the tree that presumably should be saved (and thus user will be prompted if they try to change tree or exit without saving them).

-mouser (September 05, 2007, 05:07 PM)

I'm trying to decide if adding another configuration option is more or less confusing than simply providing two Quit choices: (1) Save and Quit, or (2) Quit w/o Saving.  Somehow I think the latter approach is more intuitive than adding another config option.

[mouser]

Let me add my way just because it's easier for now -- and then you let me know if that solves it enough,

There's been some talk of re-organizing the form letter machine user interface in a more dramatic way, which i think is probably needed, and i think we should revisit these issues then.

[superticker]

There's been some talk of re-organizing the form letter machine user interface in a more dramatic way, which i think is probably needed, and i think we should revisit these issues then.

-mouser (September 05, 2007, 10:56 PM)

Well, this fix isn't that critical.  Perhaps your time would be better spent on re-organizing the GUI instead.  So, to start a new thread, what's wrong with the current GUI and how is the new GUI design going to be better?