Aha: the Nav pane discourages people from using clones

[Edward K. Ream]

The Nav pane shows all clones of a node. Showing all the clones could be called a feature, but imo it's confusing.

I suspect that this confusion creates a divide between those who love clones and those that don't.

I'm not sure what could or should be done. All of your comments are welcome.

Edward

[Jacob Peck]

As a daily user of Leo for well over a decade, I do not (often) use clones.  I do understand that clones are a fundamental feature of Leo, but they are rarely useful for me outside of boilerplate code or documentation.  Honestly, in most cases where clones would perhaps serve the purposes I have, I usually just write a quick script instead.

On the other hand, I am a heavy user (abuser?) of the Nav pane.  Leo would be severely less useful for me without it.  I do not find any confusion about clones in the Nav pane when I am using them, but I admit I may not be representative of the cloneless Leonistas out there.

I suspect this thread will reveal two things:

1) Your (Edward) way of heavily using clones to organize your thoughts and code is perhaps less universal than you’d otherwise think, and,

2) A not-insignificant amount of people are somewhere in the middle, using clones ‘occasionally’.

The beauty and power of Leo is in that it offers many ways of customizing itself to its user’s whims.  Clones and the Nav pane are both great examples of this, and should be allowed to coexist.  It’s not invalid to use Leo without clones any more than it’s invalid to use Leo for PIM and not programming.  From my 2013 blogpost, “Leo is Love”.

—>Jake

On May 26, 2024, at 5:47 PM, Edward K. Ream <edre...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Thomas Passin]

I have hardly even noticed this.  I usually start from the top of the listing and work down.  If I were to hit a clone, I would probably notice it was the same and skip it.

It's true, I am one of those who has not taken to clones.  I haven't built up the knack of using them effectively.  With the Nav frame, I rarely need to make or use clones.  I combine the Nav panel with setting bookmarks - not using the bookmark plugin but just the basic Leo marking if a node.  I have a key shortcut to toggle a mark, one to skip to the next mark , and one to clear all marks.

I wouldn't say this "discourages" me, but it reduces the number of times it would be helpful.  So it simplifies my life.

[Thomas Passin]

Hear, hear!

[Edward K. Ream]

On Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 4:47:40 PM UTC-5 Edward K. Ream wrote:

The Nav pane shows all clones of a node. Showing all the clones could be called a feature, but imo it's confusing.

I suspect that this confusion creates a divide between those who love clones and those who don't.

Thanks for all your comments. They have made a difference. PR #3872 now supports the @bool prefer-nav-pane option. The default is True to match most of your preferences. The post-script describes this option in detail.

Edward

P.S. Here are the comments for @bool prefer-nav-pane in leoSettings.leo:

This setting tells how to show *multiple* search results (find-def, control-clicks).
Leo always shows a *single* search result by selecting the node and text.

True: Show multiple search results in the Nav pane provided the quicksearch plugin is active.
False: Always show multiple search results as the clone-find commands do.

EKR