Automatic renaming dialog when new story created

[svatas]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When creating a new story, it is created with generic name. Additional action for renaming it is required. In majority of cases setting the proper name is requested by users.

Describe the solution you'd like.

When creating a new story, the box to rename the story should pop open automatically.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

Dialog asking user to set a new name or just leave it as it is.

Additional context on this suggestion.

This is issue created upon description in https://github.com/klembot/twinejs/issues/1009, reported by user @HiEv. As it contains more bug in it, this standalone issue created for better management.

Presubmission checklist

• [ ] I am interested in working on code that would implement this feature request. (This is not required to submit a suggestion.)
• [X] I have done a search and believe that an issue does not already exist for this idea in the GitHub repository.
• [X] I have read and agree to abide by this project's Code of Conduct.

[klembot]

I'm against this idea personally, though I understand it's a change from the 2.3 behavior. My thinking is that we have never asked users to name their passages before they create them, and applications in general very rarely ask users to name their documents before they create them.

Popping open a dialog as soon as the user starts editing feels a bit hostile; it asks them to make a decision that they may not be ready to, and it doesn't impede Twine in any way to leave the story untitled.

[greyelf]

@klembot Are you stating that 2.4 allows the Author to go through the whole project development cycle...

1. Create project.
2. Edit Passages.
3. Test project.
4. Publish to File.

...without requiring them to actually name their project, and that they could possible do that for multiple projects at the same time, thus ending up with multiple projects with the same name.

If so then:

1. how does the Author distinguish one project from another in the Story List if they haven't named some of them.
2. what happens when the Author imports a "published" project that doesn't have an assigned name.
3. how do story formats that use the project name as a Local Storage identifier stop one project overwriting the data of another.

[klembot]

When you create a story in 2.4, it's called "Untitled Story". Creating a second untitled story names it "Untitled Story 2".

[HiEv]

My thinking is that we have never asked users to name their passages before they create them, and applications in general very rarely ask users to name their documents before they create them.

I assume by "passages" you mean "stories", since that's what we're talking about here.

Also, you're wrong. Twine v2.3.x literally starts with asking you to name the story when you create it. You click "+Story", type in the name, hit ENTER and it's ready to go. Easy-peasy, done.

Now, in Twine v2.4.x, you have to hit "+ New", then click "Story" from the top menu, then "Rename", then click in the text area, type the name, and finally click "OK".

You've gone from one click and a little typing to five clicks plus typing, not to mention the user has to know that the "Rename" option they need is under the "Story" menu, and not the "Rename" option that's initially presented to them. This is terrible UI design in terms of ergonomics and user friendliness.

Honestly, the system of having sub-menus as they are now needs to be scrapped. Either put everything on a single toolbar or just use normal dropdown menus, preferably the former.

Also, since you brought up renaming passages, I should point out that you've added a bunch of extra clicks there as well. Whereas before you could just open a passage and edit the text of the passage name right there, now you have to click "Rename", click in the text box, type the name, and then click OK. So it's gone from one click when the passage it open to renaming it, to three clicks before you can complete renaming it.

I honestly don't understand why you would take a system that works, and replace it with something that takes more steps to do the exact same thing.

Popping open a dialog as soon as the user starts editing feels a bit hostile

I honestly couldn't disagree more. It makes using Twine quite intuitive, especially to new users. No need to realize that they need to search through menus trying to figure out which "Rename" option is the one that they want if they don't want a default name, it's just click-type-done.

If you don't want to force them to choose a name at that point, just put a default name there and make it selected, so that typing will immediately overwrite it. But please, don't add a bunch of other unnecessary steps to do something that they're going to do 99% of the time.

P.S. Huge thanks to @svatas for going through my list of issues and breaking them out into individual items.

[klembot]

@HiEv, I find the tone in some of your comment unhelpful ("you're wrong", "this is terrible UI design", "the system of having sub-menus as they are now needs to be scrapped").

To address the content of what you've written related to this issue, I did mean to write that when you create passages, users have not been asked to name them. The point I was trying to make, though I could have made it better, is that the approach in 2.4 right now is to make creating both passages and stories work the same way. You're right that this is diffferent than how it works in 2.3.

Sometimes people don't know what they want to call their stories when they first sit down to write, just as they might not know what they want to call a passage when it's first created. It feels to me right now that there's less friction if we let them get right to the creation process instead of forcing them to pick a name in either case before writing. I also feel this is a common pattern in many applications, though it may not be the right one for Twine. Whether this is in fact more user-friendly is also an open question, and something I think I need more feedback on from other testers before making a decision.

There's a separate but related issue here, which is that you feel renaming stories and passages is difficult to do in the interface as it stands. I can talk a little bit more about the reasoning behind how passage renaming currently works, at least. It's tied up with the fact that passage editing is no longer modal, which means:

• We need a clear signal that the user is done changing the name of the passage. It used to be that this signal was closing the passage editor, but this doesn't work if the user's allowed to keep a passage open as they work elsewhere. Some kind of button or other clear action is needed.
• We need to prevent the user from changing the name to a passage that already exists. In 2.3, we block closing the modal, but that can't be done in a modeless context.

[klembot]

Based on this and other feedback, I'm bringing back the story name prompt in the PR linked above.