This concerns mostly the edit pane and the tree pane. As said before, many Mac programs are graphically more or less beautiful, whereas many Windows programs are graphically more or less ugly, and thus we need some enhancements for MI.
a )
The "Show Ruler" button on the right might be preserved, but then, as a toggle in the options; for most people he has an unwanted prominence where they never or almost never use them; when you really need the command "Show Ruler", you can access it by a menu, or by a keyboard shortcut, or even, when there is a toggle "Show Ruler Signet" in the options, people could display that signet, but normally, neither the ruler, nor the ruler signet have any right on the screen.
b )
The scrollbar of the tree is not displayed in grey when it's not necessary: very good! Unfortunately, the scrollbar of the text IS displayed, in grey, even when it's not necessary: very ugly!
I hope that your editor command is able to HIDE the scrollbar alltogether, not just grey it out... But it is things like these that make Windows applications rather ugly, whereas Mac developers go for graphical consistency in the very first place, even when function-wise they don't offer very much, sometimes...
c )
The headings above the tree, "Documents", "Tags", or any other, are in a lesser size than the item heading above the text. I understand the idea behind, since the items in the tree are in a lesser size, for most people (including myself) than the default font in the text pane. But there is a big problem with this: In order to adjust the "thickness" of the background accordingly, this background is thinner above the tree, thicker above the text pane. And this means, do what you want, as long as this persists, the screen will NEVER be beautiful, it will ever look "awkward", even when people coudn't tell, necessarily, why this is so.
Therefore, adjust the two backgrounds in height, above the tree 1/3, above the text pane 2/3, in order to be identical after that, without changing the point size of the two headings (but as said before, perhaps making the text pane headings bold would be a good idea, or to have them their formatting (bold, underlined, italic, color) in the tree, but always in a standard size and font. (Having not an intermediate result before my eyes, I cannot say yet if text heading might be a little bit more big than tree heading.)
d )
Nobody understands why the up arrow of the tree pane is ABOVE the list in the tree - whereas the same in the text pane is not, of course, and whereas the two down arrows ain't, either. It's not logical, it's just ugly. (If the idea behind was to "hide" a little bit the ugliness of precisely that "Attributes" line, I understand, but it's that ugliness that must be eliminated in the very first place, and then, no need anymore for camouflage.)
e )
Whereas there is NO middle-grey (horizontal) line above the text pane title's background (= directly beneath the tabs if there are any), above the "attributes title line", there is, and graphically, that makes MI look like a program right out of the nineties. Eliminate it.
f )
There also is a vertical middle grey line to the RIGHT of that "attributes title line / field" (but not on the left, on my screen at least, but it's perhaps there indeed, no matter) - eliminate this vertical line(s)!
g )
The same applies to those vertical lines BETWEEN the "attributes" (be there a name like "Documents", "Tags" or a symbol, for tags, comments or other) - do away with them, people will know by themselves where an attribute ends and where another begins, it's just supremely ugly and "nineties".
h )
Under the tree, there are the tabs "Tree", "Filter", "Tags", "Calendar" - similar remarks apply. First, do those tabs as an option only, i.e. in the options, do one "Always show tree tabs", so that people who want minimum screen clutter (and who have keyboard shortcuts for all this) can get rid of those ugly tabs.
i )
Then, please just do the signets / symbols on those tabs, since doing symbols AND titles is only helpful in the first 30 minutes of usage... whereas we want people to use MI for the rest of their lives... And then, even in those very first 30 minutes would people simply click on those symbols... and heureka, for "Filter", "Tags" and "Calendar", the titles on top of those panes would clearly inform them what's the matter with that particular pane now, so those titles on the tabs benath the pane are completely useless in every respect.
j )
Speaking of those tabs, I understand that the thin black line above (and partially "around") them is for designating the tabs, but then, normally, you are working in the very first tab, "Tree", and then, on my screen at least (= where I don't see that's pane left delimiters (see above), that thin black line is only 1 mm short and thus really ugly. Whereas I would like to get RID of those tabs anyway, most users would retain them (for a first time at least when they won't have assigned handy keyboard shortcuts yet to all functions they use often), so it's important to have it less ugly even for those people who want to see those tabs.
k )
As before, when people use those (now mandatory) tabs, they will (consciously or unconsciously, no matter) COMPARE those with the topics tabs on top of the screen, and it catches the eye that those tabs have NOTHING in common, graphically! Ugly, ugly, ugly! But then, those "bottom tags" are the "more modern ones", and thus, it would be a good idea to adjust the "topics tags" in order for them to be more similar (but not more space-demanding by doing this!!!!) to the "pane tags", not the other way round - but for an intermediate result, it would first be fine to have the "topics tabs" retain their assigned colors even when rearranging / sorting them, which, as discussed elsewhere in this forum, the do NOT as for now.
l )
As said before, when you do (as I do) a grey Windows interface instead of a blue one, the background behind the topics tabs should be grey, not baby blue. (Let's begin with the same grey as is above and beneath it, no need to do a "thick background line" for those tabs, I suppose.
m )
As said before, it would be VERY NICE if the search field (or any other rather minimized toolbar) could be put to the right side of the the menu, without expelling the menu from its normal place by this. This way, we could have our menu, and on the side of it, all the toolbars / commands we would want to have there, and directly beneath would be the topics tabs: This would spare us ONE CM of screen real estate, which is A LOT when you consider - as I said before - that many people today have screens rather large but rather squeezed in the vertical direction, the utmost example of this being all those 800x600 (only) netbook screens; thus, 1 cm less for unnecessary things on screen will help a lot ...
Graphical Considerations
Fred, I agree with most of your remarks (I will get into more details once I begin working on them). There are a couple of things which are currently outside of our control (we use some third-party libraries), so they will have to wait for a major new release to be fixed (where new components will be used).