TOPIC: Adding a Text Formatting Feature into HIP Comments

Hi Guys,

One feature that's been requested quite a bit is the ability to change font colors, bold, italic, underline, etc of narratives within the program. I'm definitely not opposed to this idea but it presents a bit of a quandary that I'd like your feedback in.

One of the first thing many Home Inspector Pro users comment on is how easy the program is to use. A lot of this is because of the Black/Red panels. It makes it easy to sort comments as minor/major issues. Almost every inspector uses a separate color for these 2 areas. So, here's the problem.

An inspector uses the default settings (Red/Black) to add the comment:
SAFETY CONCERN: The smoke alarm(s) did not operate when tested. You need to be alerted in case of a fire. Recommend repair or replacement of the smoke alarm.

They move the comment to the Red side and bold the words SAFETY CONCERN:. I think we can all agree the comment should now look like:
SAFETY CONCERN: The smoke alarm(s) did not operate when tested. You need to be alerted in case of a fire. Recommend repair or replacement of the smoke alarm.

What if the comment is bolded on the left side before moving to red/black? Do we allow comments to be colored on the left? If so, what if the comment is colored red on the left side and then it gets moved to the black column? What if it's colored blue and moved to the red column? What if only one word is colored blue and then moved to red?

What if the the font set for the red side is actually a bold font. Then you bold a comment on the left and move it to the right? Is the comment now bold, or not?

There's a lot of function comments that you can see come out of questions like these. What do you guys think?

So the issue is really one of which formatting overrides the other?  Hmmm...

My first instinct is to say that there needs to be formatting in the left panel simply because that is the nature of what many of the requests have been, i.e. the desire to "pre-format" your comments with more flexibility using color, bold, etc.

One solution would be to have formatting in the left panel, and that formatting remains if you are inserting the comment into the black panel, but the "preset" formatting of the red panel will override all pre-formatting.  This would allow the inspector to control his formatting all he wants, but still gives guys who like the current setup the freedom to change nothing.

A more complicated option would be to offer override controls in the options panel. Letting the inspector choose whether the red/black override their pre-formatting would benefit those guys using different colors (blue, green, etc.) for the "black" panel comments.  I mean, who would want to have to pre-format every damage panel comment in blue and have to read that as they write their report.  Then again, if an inspector wouldn't want his comments written in blue in his damage panels, how must his clients feel when they have to read the reports that way?  No offense to you blue text guys intended. Just thinking out loud.

It seems like it wouldn't make much sense to NOT have the red panel override, otherwise the red panel is unnecessary.  Maybe there could just be four buttons for transferring the comments to the red/black, one that overrides and one that doesn't for each column.

Good Luck with that Dom! 

I think you see the dilemma now! Even with moving comments to red I've had guys say that they want things bold, italic or underlined.

Along the line of what you're thinking, we could say that with red formatting (Bold,Italic,Underline) moves across but color doesn't. Then with black it all moved across.

The idea of 4 buttons isn't a bad idea but they won't all fit on smaller screens when there's 2 panels on one screen.

What about on selection panels. You set the default color to green for example. Then you change the color of one word in the comment. Does that color stay and the rest change to green when you select the comment?

This is the kind of thing that would fundamentally change how HIP works and has to be done with the utmost care! It would be hard to change the logic behind these decisions once they are made as it would disrupt users templates.

Hey Dom-

I wasn't around for the original development of the program and all of the discussion among the guys, but I assume that the black/red convention was set up to put the comments in the red panel in the Summary.  That's where all the red panel stuff ends up anyhow, right?  I guess if it is going in the Summary which is in itself flags all of those comments as immediately important, how much difference does the red color make?  It redundantly seems to re-emphasize what I just emphasized by putting it in the red box in the first place.  Could part the solution be just to re-name the red box as SUMMARY and let the colors and formatting of the Summary items be up to the inspector? Just an idea.

Thinking About This a Little More--

Not everything in my Summary might have equal significance, and RED might only apply to those things of immediate importance  which absolutely need immediate attention, like a gas leak, for example. I want the gas company called as soon as possible to get it fixed. Things like a structural repair recommendation, while significant, isn't going to happen overnight and still makes the Summary but maybe in a different color or standard black so that the report doesn't get overwhelmed with colors.  From my standpoint it would be nice to have the option to provide different levels of emphasis in the Summary comments through various formatting options.

You can always leave the Black/Red default convention as it currently exists which would allow for doing nothing differently if that is your choice.  By not forcing a color on the black/red panels to differentiate them, does this help make the formatting decision easier to program and help remove some of the quandry?  Take my comments with a grain of salt--I'm still trying to wean myself off of dial phones, so programming isn't way up there in my skill sets.

The more comments the better Bob, so keep it coming. The thing you'll notice is that your suggestion is the opposite of Cameron who suggested leaving formatting along on red, but vary on black. That's why discussion is so important here. You guys are helping to shape the program.

Yes, "red", which can really be any color, are the summary items. The reason it's colored is so that it stands out in the main part of the report. Though you can make it the same color as the minor issues too.