377169 - Composer needs a toolbar for semantic tags

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Brian Lalonde]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1

Repeatedly marking up text as "Code" or "Variable" is incredibly inconvenient. These are buried in a submenu (Format : Text Style : Variable). This discourages use of semantic tags, which is generally a Bad Thing.

A new toolbar should be created that includes Emphasis, Strong Emphasis, Citation, Abbreviation, Acronym, Code, Sample Output, Variable, and definition list Term and Definition. There are also a number of semantic tags that do not have so much as a menu item, which should also be included on the new toolbar: Block Quote (blockquote), Inline Quote (q), Keyboard Entry (kbd), Defining Instance (dfn), Inserted Text (ins), and Deleted Text (del). These should all have hotkeys, too.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a set of instructions in an ordered list.
2. Mark up text in each step as Code and/or Variable, as required by your local documentation requirements.
3. Grow ever more frustrated as you have to navigate to a second-level menu each time, moving the mouse perfectly horizontally... oops. Oops. *sigh*
4. Think about how easy this would be if there were hotkeys and a toolbar. This increases your frustration.
5. Develop a nervous tic.
6. Wildly overreact to a minor comment someone makes to you.
Actual Results:  
Hurt feelings, legal action, or the invasion of a Mideast country on dubious grounds.

Expected Results:  
A quickly produced documentation file.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

assignee=nobody, so >status=new