Suggest a change on "Importance" grammar tab

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The current "Importance" tab shows a list of Grammar elements that are either selected as "important" with a checkbox, or unselected with a checkbox to show they are "unimportant".

It is a small thing, but I think this interface fails to convey the functionality of the grammar elements. I think it would be more logical to use a side by side selection list boxes, where selected list elements are transferred from the Important colunm to the Unimportant column.

(Excuse the play on words) After all the the "unimportant" grammar elements are just as important to the difference output as the "important" ones are. It is just a matter of how you want them interpreted.

[Michael Bulgrien]

If an enhancement was to be made to grammar rules, my vote would be to have three option buttons next to each grammar rule in addition to a checkbox:

[ ] - ( ) Important ( ) Unimportant ( ) Ignored

The checkbox would activate the grammar rule.
The option buttons (grayed out unless the checkbox was checked) would determine whether or not changes to text matching the grammar rule are to be considered as important or unimportant changes, or ignored altogether.

This would allow the user to maintain a larger number of grammar rules for each file type and decide on the fly which ones to use in a compare (without having to delete a rule to disable it).

[MarkB]

I agree the interface could be a little more clear. I was thinking radio buttons instead of side-by-side boxes. Important, Unimportant, and Ignored sound good. Michael, why would you need a check box as well? In your suggestion, wouldn't an unchecked box be the same as selecting Ignored?

The Edit Grammar button on this screen also annoys me a little. Since each element can *appear* to be selected, when I click the button I'm expecting to only be editing the selected item. It throws me off. I don't have a great solution, but maybe changing the button to say "Edit Grammar Elements..." and/or placing the button outside the frame would help.

[Michael Bulgrien]

No, an unchecked grammar type would mean that the grammar rule is not applied at all. Text that would normally match that grammar type would fall under the "everything else" category.

Ignored would mean that a change in that grammar type would be ignored (would not show up as a difference at all). It would be similar to the current BC3 replacements feature, just more flexible. With replacements, you have to have an exact match for a change to be ignored. Putting ignore on a grammar rule would allow you to ignore anything that fits that grammar type on both sides without having to worry about whether you can come up with a regular expression that will correctly modify all instances of a grammar on one side to exactly match the other.

[Aaron]

Thanks. I've added these notes to the Wishlist entry, Michael.