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Left Pane Remembers/ Saves state of collapsed / open hierarchies

A

adzling

Well-known member
NOTE! Portions of this post removed by staff due to flagrant violation of forum rules reported by other users...

please please please make the left most pane save the state you left it in vis a vis collapsed /open hierarchies.

Please have it remember the last state I left it in
 
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Because it is 2016 is the reason it is how it is. The left pane is really 8 viewable left panes which is really infinite left panes which are each dynamic, nestable, invertable and searchable. What you are seeing is actually technology from 2020 and you want it to act like technology from 2025.

Yes it's daft. But it's likely a far cry more complicated than we may understand. And more importantly, there are many other items on their agenda that are just as important to deliver (cf. calendars, printing, export, journals, content market, granular reveal, import, and on and on).
 
Would be nice if the panes could be customized more:
- dockable / floating
- free positioning
- completely hidden
(same with the right pane) :)

But it's not necessary to deliver this any time soon :)

@AEIOU: PS I dont get what youre saying with 2016 and 2025 :) Nestable view? Agreement on the rest :D
 
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There is a fuller explanation somewhere but:

The world almanac is just one view of the topics of the realm. You can set up a number of different such views, IIRC 8, at any time and change their contents on the fly. Therefore storing the state of the left pane from session to session is a bigger job than LWD has wanted to tackle to date.
 
Sorry, Acenoid. My response was to adzling whose post was a bit condescending. Rob has removed the offending material so now my snarky post is without context. You can safely ignore the references to timeframes from my post when reading it.
 
kbs666 said:
we are.

Each view has its own left pane.
Click to expand...

If by "view" you mean each defined "View" that filters the contents shown, that's not correct. If by "view" you mean that each TAB has its own "left pane", that is correct.

Two tabs using the same View (filtered set of topics) can have different collapsed/expanded elements in the "left pane" (Navigation pane).

The tabs are stored from session to session.

If you have 10 tabs open while running a game, and close RealmWorks. what tabs were open and what was in each tab, and which View was applied to each tab is stored.

So storing the collapsed/expanded state for each of potentially thousands of entries once per tab becomes the problem... startup time can be slow as it is, and this would make it much slower to load the Realm. Shutdown time can also be slow as it is, and this would also make that much slower.

Because that state is stored while RealmWorks is running, using a lot of tabs can make it slow to switch from one to another... that's the effect of "remembering" the expanded/collapsed state for each tab.

Part of the problem, I think, is that people are used to the "Explorer" style, where the left-hand pane is a common "master" for the content in the main window. In typical "Explorer" style setups, there is only one "Explorer" pane, and only one "Content" pane. So clicking on something (such as a file folder/directory) in the left pane causes the content in the right pane to change. In RealmWorks, the "Navigation pane" is not part of the tab, but its contents are determined by the tab... and then it changes the tab's main content pane as the user clicks on something in the navigation.

Changing the appearance of the Navigation pane ... making it more visually part of the tab, for example... might help with making that relationship clearer.. certainly, even something like making its controls at the top not align with the controls for the main view would make it visually clearer that it is subordinate to the tab rather than the other way around. But that would not help with storing the collapsed/expanded state. :(

It may be that because it LOOKS like the Explorer style that people are used to, it needs to BECOME that style...at which point, storing which View is used and the collapsed/expanded state may become more practical.
 
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I would be happy with just having the option to have everything collapsed (at all levels) by default. I would rather drill down and scroll down.
 
I also agree with MNBlockHead. I would much rather drill into collapsed topics than scroll through a bunch of expanded topics. An option to default to all expanded or all collapsed would go a long way to fixing this issue for me.
 
Hi everyone,

I know this isn't the complete solution everyone is looking for, but there are some features you can take advantage of that will be helpful.

A few patches ago, we added a hotkey to the "Collapse All" command in the navigation pane options menu (the tools button next to the magnifying glass icon for search/filter). You hold the Ctrl key and then hit the "-" key. This will fully collapse all the containing topics in the panel.

There is also a new command to show the current topic in the navigation pane. It is available from the content pane options menu (the large tools button to the upper right of the main topic pane). It also has a hotkey of Ctrl and the = key. This will automatically expand the topic tree to show whatever topic is currently in the content pane. Importantly, it only expands the topics necessary to show the topic in question, so the rest of the topics remain expanded/collapsed as you left them. If all topics started collapsed, this will perform the minimum number of expand operations needed to show the topic within the nav pane.

TL;DR
So to sum up, Ctrl - will auto collapse all topics. Ctrl = will automatically open as many levels of depth as needed to show the current topic.

Again, this isn't the complete solution, but these changes were simple and effective enough that we were able to deliver them quickly.
 
gloranphile said:
Holy crap Joe, this is great!

Is there a shortcut to collapse all Categories?
Click to expand...

There will be soon! I just added one, so you can look forward to using it in the next patch. In the meantime, you can still click the "Collapse All Groups" command in the category or group tools menus.

If you're finding all the category headings to be too cluttering, might I suggest that you switch to using the simple grouping headers instead (sometimes we call them "category families"). Instead of having ~45 different story category headings, you just get a simple list of headings like "Events, People, Groups, Places, Things". I personally find it much easier to use this option than the many category headings, although everyone has their own preferred way of doing things.

You can find it by going to the Manage tab in the ribbon, clicking Preferences, then choosing Navigation View in the left panel, then picking "By Simple Grouping" (the first option). Or more simply:

Manage > Preferences > Navigation View > By Simple Grouping

Hope this helps!

talsharien said:
All hail Joe, how could I have missed this :)
Click to expand...

It was probably buried in the patch notes, so it's not surprising that people didn't see it. I do appreciate finally being paid the reverence and homage I deserve, however. :D
 
Hey Liz! Hot keys and hidden gems for a spotlight video! :)

I hadn't noticed CTRL = either. Can't wait to try it out this weekend. Thank you, Joe!!!
 
Nice one Joe, thanks for this.

Remembering folder states is far preferable imho but this should help those who know the secret hand-shake to make it work.

It's nice to see some effort on the interface, as realms get more complex the interface and ways to manage the reams of data entered is only going to get more important.

I hope you are able to spend more time on it this year.

Joe said:
There will be soon! I just added one, so you can look forward to using it in the next patch. In the meantime, you can still click the "Collapse All Groups" command in the category or group tools menus.

If you're finding all the category headings to be too cluttering, might I suggest that you switch to using the simple grouping headers instead (sometimes we call them "category families"). Instead of having ~45 different story category headings, you just get a simple list of headings like "Events, People, Groups, Places, Things". I personally find it much easier to use this option than the many category headings, although everyone has their own preferred way of doing things.

You can find it by going to the Manage tab in the ribbon, clicking Preferences, then choosing Navigation View in the left panel, then picking "By Simple Grouping" (the first option). Or more simply:

Manage > Preferences > Navigation View > By Simple Grouping

Hope this helps!



It was probably buried in the patch notes, so it's not surprising that people didn't see it. I do appreciate finally being paid the reverence and homage I deserve, however. :D
Click to expand...
 
Just tried this out and it does work as advertised and it does help manage my ever expanding realm.

thanks for listening to your users ;-)

Joe said:
Hi everyone,

I know this isn't the complete solution everyone is looking for, but there are some features you can take advantage of that will be helpful.

A few patches ago, we added a hotkey to the "Collapse All" command in the navigation pane options menu (the tools button next to the magnifying glass icon for search/filter). You hold the Ctrl key and then hit the "-" key. This will fully collapse all the containing topics in the panel.

There is also a new command to show the current topic in the navigation pane. It is available from the content pane options menu (the large tools button to the upper right of the main topic pane). It also has a hotkey of Ctrl and the = key. This will automatically expand the topic tree to show whatever topic is currently in the content pane. Importantly, it only expands the topics necessary to show the topic in question, so the rest of the topics remain expanded/collapsed as you left them. If all topics started collapsed, this will perform the minimum number of expand operations needed to show the topic within the nav pane.

TL;DR
So to sum up, Ctrl - will auto collapse all topics. Ctrl = will automatically open as many levels of depth as needed to show the current topic.

Again, this isn't the complete solution, but these changes were simple and effective enough that we were able to deliver them quickly.
Click to expand...
 
Joe said:
There will be soon! I just added one, so you can look forward to using it in the next patch. In the meantime, you can still click the "Collapse All Groups" command in the category or group tools menus.
Click to expand...

This is GREAT news. But will it be a two step process? (1) Collapse all categories, (2) Collapse all groups? Or will there be a true collapse everything at once option?

Also, I've never been able to get CTRL = to work for me. Regardless of whether I have everything collapsed, everything expanded, or something in between, the Ctrl = hotkey does nothing for me.
 
MNBlockHead said:
Also, I've never been able to get CTRL = to work for me. Regardless of whether I have everything collapsed, everything expanded, or something in between, the Ctrl = hotkey does nothing for me.
Click to expand...

I cannot get the CTRL = to work either. The other commands do however work just fine.
 
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