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KevinH · 05-19-2017, 03:09 AM

You seem to be missing the following points:

1. there is a descriptive line of text at the bottom of each dialog window that describes every property or metadata value. It will tell you exactly what a Role is for example, what File-as is etc, etc. So eventually the new editor can be used to actually educate the user about metadata and its forms.

2. For epubs you create youself, the only 3 fields you see are title, language, and author just as before. So novice users should not get confused even with a dc: standard prefix. You only see other/additional fields if you actually add them yourself.

3. For epub3 you can have multiple titles of different types, multiple authors, multiple contributors, and you need to add properties to specify title type, contributor type etc.. So what belongs in a group at the top? How many titles do we allow at the top? How many authors? Why on earth should epub3 need a completely different interface than epub2? What about the even different set used by the upcoming epub 3.1?

4. If you do not know any Marc Relator codes, they are all easily generated and *described* in the dialog as you add them. Ditto for Languages. So if you are a novice and run into a Role property you do not understand, you can easily add and remove all metadata properties to get down to whatever set you actually do understand and want.

5. Many advanced users understand all this and they can then skip all of the dialogs and directly add the codes they use most frequently and know by heart making entry much faster for them without hurting flexibility or novice users who use/need the dialogs.

The bottom line is you will only see the properties and relator codes if you actually add them yourself.

So for a new book by a novice user, they will only see the 3 basic items. And by actually using the interface they will learn alot about metadata construction, but only if they want to.

For advanced users who do not need the hand-holding they can quickly achieve what they want without risk of messing up the content.opf.

Hope that explains the reasons behind the design choices made.

05-19-2017, 03:09 AM	#26
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 8,809 Karma: 6000000 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	You seem to be missing the following points: 1. there is a descriptive line of text at the bottom of each dialog window that describes every property or metadata value. It will tell you exactly what a Role is for example, what File-as is etc, etc. So eventually the new editor can be used to actually educate the user about metadata and its forms. 2. For epubs you create youself, the only 3 fields you see are title, language, and author just as before. So novice users should not get confused even with a dc: standard prefix. You only see other/additional fields if you actually add them yourself. 3. For epub3 you can have multiple titles of different types, multiple authors, multiple contributors, and you need to add properties to specify title type, contributor type etc.. So what belongs in a group at the top? How many titles do we allow at the top? How many authors? Why on earth should epub3 need a completely different interface than epub2? What about the even different set used by the upcoming epub 3.1? 4. If you do not know any Marc Relator codes, they are all easily generated and described in the dialog as you add them. Ditto for Languages. So if you are a novice and run into a Role property you do not understand, you can easily add and remove all metadata properties to get down to whatever set you actually do understand and want. 5. Many advanced users understand all this and they can then skip all of the dialogs and directly add the codes they use most frequently and know by heart making entry much faster for them without hurting flexibility or novice users who use/need the dialogs. The bottom line is you will only see the properties and relator codes if you actually add them yourself. So for a new book by a novice user, they will only see the 3 basic items. And by actually using the interface they will learn alot about metadata construction, but only if they want to. For advanced users who do not need the hand-holding they can quickly achieve what they want without risk of messing up the content.opf. Hope that explains the reasons behind the design choices made.