Improving dt's UI

[David Wolever]

On 26-Jun-08, at 9:29 AM, Ivan Glushkov wrote:
> Hi.
>>  ...I think a middle ground can be found which will make everyone  
>> happy (those
>> who like $EDITOR and those who like interactive prompts) without  
>> resorting
>> to two interfaces.
> Yes, you are right, i absolutely agree with you.
> But i still can't predict what version of interface users will prefer.
> What do you mean when saying "middle ground". Do you see the golden  
> mean?
Well, I certainly won't claim to know the golden mean (after all, if  
it were entirely up to me, I'd do away with all the interactive  
prompts), but a good compromise might be defaults at the interactive  
prompts, so most of the time the interaction would be:
$ dt new
GckFix the broken thing!^[:wq
^M
^M
^M
$

If you prefer to specify the bits in the ticket:
$ dt new
... set the version, target, etc ...
$

Most things interactively:
$ dt new
... add a description ... :wq
foobar^M
1.0^M
2.0^M
$

The big things I think would make life better are:
0) Having defaults at the prompts
1) Writing the message before choosing a target

But that's just my opinion.
If you'd like to get really scientific about things, I work with  
about 10 other guys (and one girl) that could be coerced into doing  
some usability tests.