Posted by rob mcdonald to the tkoutline mailing list:

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Having some sort of visual cue of the attributes set for a node could be very important.

As for the alignment issues, I'm not tremendously concerned. (from a users point of view, if it is tough to code, I'm not sure what to tell ya) If I am using a system where it is appropriate to set multiple attributes and I want to see them somehow, then I am guaranteed to have an alignment problem. And I think that is ok.

I'm thinking of a system where there would be two modes of display for each node (and/or maybe controled globally). Show attribute icons and Hide icons. The node bullet and text are always apparent. In-between these there is always a symbol that indicates whether there are attributes set or not. (say blank for no attributes and a green dot for hidden attributes) Click on the green dot, and the list of attribute icons is displayed, and the green dot changes to another color (the list of course may be retracted). Ideally, you could hover over the icons to see what they are set to, double click on them to edit them, right click to add or delete, etc...

1/12/05 Rob McDonald

tkoutline supports the creation of unlimited, arbitrary attributes for any node. It is my understanding that the attributes consist simply of a tag/name and a value. In order to support a visual cue, this data structure would need to be augmented with an icon (whether it be an image file or a Unicode character, or both).

Once every attribute has an (optional) icon, the above business about how to display or supress the visual cue becomes relavent. The overall motivation is simple, you want the information to be easily accessable, but at the same time, you don't want it to get in the way. To meet this, the information should be clear, subtle, and should be able to be hidden. I'm not sure whether hiding this information should be a local or global control.