Suggestion: Organize information in the handout check list.

Robert and Thomas, I agree with everything you are saying! I espedially like your organizational suggestion Robert. It would be a HUGE improvement and make the feature far more useful. One compromise I would be willing to make for the sake of new users would be to the "no items checked". I think a first time user especially would like to have a handout already done as a guide to what to do. I think it should be ONE PAGE only of checked items instead of 4. This seems like a fair compromise between experienced users who might have to uncheck only 3 or 4 items and the new user that might need the help getting started.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Thank you Darren,

I have read every single post anyone has written about handouts and I know about the suggestions you made.  There are still too many items that remain inherently broken from a user's perspective.  If (as Bob's earlier scenario suggests) I'm in a hurry to create a handout the current setup guarantees I will waste far more time than necessary fighting against the auto-populating and forced pagination schemes present in handouts.

Darren Paul Wright said:

Thomas, you can start with a blank page with options to add. To avoid having anything checked, you can start a handout from
scratch via file > handout.

Yes of course, I knew that.  And yet It's still in the blank handouts that I fight these same horrible problems.  So here's my handout and it's blank.  YAY.

But I know it won't be blank and clean for long because I know I'm about to fight like mad against the the autopopulation.

Now then, looking at the screen I see an inviting box that says "Reference/Keywords" Now then, consider that your stated goal is to make this software EASY to use.  If I see an entry field, I'm going to enter something there first. 

Doh!  I didn't want to do that because up comes a list of items and behold, a bunch of them are checked! 
Wait!  I didn't want those.  I'll just uncheck them.  ARRGH it keeps
adding back another item that I didn't want there either.  I'll just
uncheck them all... I CAN'T because you keep adding another Item I
didn't want!  I'm fighting against the autopopulation bug again.  (You may not think it's a bug I think it's a huge bug).

Darren Paul Wright said:

Click "Add Items", do a search, and drag any
items you want into the list on the left. DON'T use the textbox in the
toolbar, as it will automatically fill the handout with all of these items
that you don't want.

That's my point, the textbox is going to be the first thing anyone sees, and for some who get so frustrated by the autopopulation it will be the last thing they see.  And your potentially great tool and the effort you put into it will come to naught because of this one really bad implementation.

A user who sees an inviting box to type in a reference is going to do that first and get stung.  Typing a reference or keyword should behave exactly the same as the "add item>>" does:  Make things available but don't add them automatically.  That is what keeps getting me so torqued. 

So I try out the "Add Item>>" thingy.  It works, I can add only what I want... kind of.

So I change my settings to "sheet, letter, single side" and add a few items, whoops now I've added too many (but I really want them all) and only the first six items are ticked.  The seventh item is below the line and unchecked so I attempt to click it to add it perhaps to a second page of the handout, woops!  I can't I add item # 7 because another item randomly drops out.  Now I have a problem, I can't add all the items I want, I have to fight to get everything I want into the handout.  I can't change it to double sided because I don't have a duplex printer.  Now what do I do?  If I change it to booklet I'm now forced into four pages!  And they are forcibly autofilled with extraneous stuff I haven't yet deleted!  [8o|]

Assuming  I finally figure out what to do about my pictures and people charts (I still haven't), I realize I want to add the Biblical text. The only way to do
that is to type the reference into the reference/keywords box and there
we go again, upwards of dozens of items I don't want which are now
slowing down the report process, forcing me to delete them at
excruciatingly slow speeds or unchecking stuff I don't want, and
rechecking items that get kicked off the page until I ultimately give
up, close the report and walk away. 

Darren Paul Wright said:

as I mentioned in another thread, if you want to remove something permanently you can right-click>delete.

So now I have too many items, some were generated by the reference search.  I'll just delete the ones I don't want automatically added so I can get the good stuff on top. 

Good thing I picked a short passage this time, because if you do a chapter and have a large selection of items, deleting one can take almost a full minute(!)  If I have thirty useless items I'm supposed to waste 1/2 an hour to delete them all just so my pages don't overflow?

Darren Paul Wright said:

While organizing these items as suggested would look nice, we would lose the logical flow. The order of items in
the list on the left defines the order that they appear in the handout.
If you start categorizing these items, how would we know where to put
them in the handout?

I see your point, but it's not really that hard just make "handout items" the top category:

1.  Items on the handout

2.  Biblical people

3.  Biblical things

4.  Puzzles

5. etc.

Provide a simple instruction to drag what you want to the top and voila.

 

Even if you don't want to organize the data you can solve every one of my complaints (and I guarantee future users complaints) with three simple moves and two bug fixes:

1. Do not autocheck anything - ever.  (I mean never).  Just provide a cheery popup that says, "please select what you want for the handout" and put one of those nice, "Never bother me again" checkboxes in the bottom corner like every other program does.
   
2. Simply start with one blank page and expand to add pages as you go.  Don't limit me and don't force me.
   
3. Do not force me to fill the page(s) Or force me to meet some kind of arbitrary minimum or maximum number of pages I should be able to make a 7.5 page handout if I want.  (cap me at 4 if you must but it's a completely arbitrary cap).  I suspect most handouts will be one page anyway.
   
4.  Fix the duplex printing bug, I can't print anything from the handout because it attempts to print only duplex no matter what, and I do not have a duplex attachment installed on my printer. Absolutely no other program out of hundreds that I have ever used has failed to understand that 2 pages= 2 pieces of paper.  This one doesn't get it.  Somehow it's printing in duplex mode to a non duplex printer. (Konica Minolta Magicolor 5430 DL color laser, network printer.)
5. Keep optimizing these routines, right now deleting, adding, clicking, unclicking, dragging and dropping all bog down the report - it's way to slow to use. 

 

Finally, I know it's beta and that's why I'm complaining so it doesn't go gold and still have these problems.  Handouts will be unused by the majority if these problems remain.

I know my complaining is bordering on a rant but that's because I am trying to make handouts something that everyone will want to use, rather than hate to use.  I know my complaints have been passionate and probably sound a bit harsh but it's for the same purpose you have: to make L4 the best it can be.

Thank you.

 

 

Stephen Filyer said:

I've been mostly letting Brother Black carry the arguments on this, but I face the same frustrations. It has been painfully time consuming and "hit-and-miss" trying to get something printable from this process as it now stands.

This feature has the potential to be very helpful. But if it is an attempt to succeed "Lesson Builder" I'm afraid that it is not there yet.

Some of my frustration may lie in the fact that mine is a four year old single core computer. If so we may need a disclaimer ie. This feature is for newer, faster computers only?

Steve

Mine is a dual core and I have the same frustrations. Also, it would be nice to have a greater variety of items to choose from. We have a wordsearch, why not a crossword section? we have pictures, can we have a coloring page for the youngsters? Alls I am saying really is that this tool needs some work. I have tried to put something together a few times for a youth lesson hndout but could not get what I needed to come together. I suggest that we start with a blank screen, check what we want in, leave the rest blank. When new things are available, we can add them, instead of trying to rid ourselves of irrelevant material by incesantly unchecking items.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I really am grateful for this addition to the program. Beacause I do appreciate it and want it to work well, my suggestions may carry some frustration and could sound harsh. It is meant to be constructive criticism. Beta and all that you know.