WinHugs/Future

These are thoughts on the future of WinHugs. Feel free to directly comment on this page. If no one comments, I'll just assume everyone is happy for me to do whatever :) --Neil Mitchell 16:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

WinHugs is now looking pretty good I think, a few things outstanding, but overall its quite good to use. Unfortunately the way its designed means that its quite hard to do some enhancements that I would very much like to make, which would be very cool. However, changing the way its designed in this case will also change its user interface quite substantially, so I thought i'd check with people first.

The Proposed Change

Move from looking and acting like a console, to looking and acting like IRC. In the current behaviour you type on the console, in IRC you type in a window at the bottom, when you press enter your changes are reflected on the content area.

For an example of the kind of design I mean see (although obviously mine would be prettier :) )

The advantages for the user

You can type a multiline input (maybe), some really cool features become possible (bracket matching, type information, syntax hilighting, perhaps even auto-complete)

The advantages for me

Currently the RTF window code is 20% of WinHugs, and its by far the most brittle bit (occasionally the text flies around teh window, and I have _no idea_ why). With this change, I can make it more like 3%, and all really simple stuff. It will also be faster.

The Question

Do users want to change their model of how to use WinHugs? I have used Gyhe a bit, and its perfectly useable, just less console like. I think I prefer the Console style by a small margin, but guess thats because of habit rather than anything else. And the improvements I could make, in my opinion, far outweight the change.

What do other people think? Once I change, there is probably no going back...