[Vimoutliner] VO Junior

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

I need my wife (Sylvia) and kids to use VO. Sylvia just used VO today (of her 
own request, after she saw me making a task list with it). She actually used 
it right to create subtasks under tasks.

But when she asked how to use it, I just put it in insert mode and told her to 
use the arrow keys. Only a person knowing Vim or a very motivated person can 
be taught VO.

So I'm going to make VO Junior. It will work with VO native files -- it will 
be file compatible with the current VO. It will run on Linux and BSD, and via 
Cygwin or MinGW on Windows. At least at first, it will probably be a CLI app 
for simplicty, unless I can find a robust, memory-respecting tool like a tk 
interface or whatever (or maybe a Java app???).

Hopefully it will have the same ,, commands as its big brother, but will not 
be a modal editor. The editor portion will be Nodepad like, using the arrow 
keys, pgup and pgdown, home and end, del and backspace. Selection will be 
implemented pretty much like it is in Nodepad. The result will be an app 
intuitive enough for the average computer user. Therefore my wife and kids 
can start computer outlining, which I consider to be a major step forward.

INTERNALS

The whole app will be built around a "get next character" loop, which will 
deliver characters, including things like up, down, left, right, pgup, etc as 
integers. What's done with those characters will probably be dictated by 
callback routines (I'll probably write it in C). Early on, I'll make some 
sort of substitute for the "get next character" so everything else can be 
tested.  Obviously I'll unit test everything and make sure with Valgrind that 
there are no memory leaks, buffer overruns, double frees or usage of 
uninitialized variables.

I'll need limited help from some of you:

* Get next character routine capable of reading arrow keys, pageup etc. I 
think I've already done that before, but might need some help.

* Help with understanding how to move around the screen

* Help with level coloration

* Help with tools such as C/tk (does it exist?)

* Encouragement

This will probably benefit a lot of us. Many of us have wives, children, 
brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents who could benefit from an 
outliner, but aren't going to learn Vim keystrokes. VO Junior will allow us 
to bring them into our world, and hopefully give them the motivation to learn 
the (much faster) Vim keystrokes so as to begin using the real thing.

I'd like all sorts of comments, suggestions, warnings, and everything else 
needed to decide how to proceed. I'll probably discuss it for a couple weeks 
before coding line 1.

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US