Re: Neccessity of panel names in add-to-panel? (was Re: Say goodbye to those ugly ass add-to-panel submenu blues)

[Dominic Howells <mail-list domhowells com>]

On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 17:19, Danilo Segan wrote:
> Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM> writes:
> > On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 22:37, Danilo Segan wrote:
> >
> > Right... presumably something like "Add to panel: <panel name>" would be
> > acceptable though?  (I'd like to add something to the HIG about this
> > sort of thing, there's a little there already but it's not as helpful as
> > it could be).
> 
> I guess it would be _acceptable_, though it doesn't seem very clear
> (one might wonder whether you're adding <panel name> to panel, or
> you're adding something to a panel <panel name> -- perhaps other
> context will help here?).
> 
> Still, I think it's not very nice, and should be avoided. OTOH, what
> is the merit of having panel names changeable by users?
> 
> If it's not really essential (as I suspect it is not, since most
> users will have at most one of the each panels -- eg. not more than
> one bottom panel, and not more than a single left panel), perhaps
> those strings could be hard coded, and used if that's the panel we're
> adding to?
> 
> Eg. instead of "Add to panel %s", we'd have "Add to bottom panel",
> "Add to top panel", "Add to left panel", "Add to right panel" and "Add
> to floating panel". This would suck a bit if user happens to have two
> top panels (which, incidentally, I do :), but I consider that really
> rare, and it's still not bad -- it just doesn't say to which top panel
> would it be added, but no lies told.
> 
> Of course, if a user doesn't have one of those panels, that option
> should not be available.
> 
> OTOH, if these panel names are used for accessibility, I guess it
> won't be possible to hard code them everywhere (though, it's still 
> unlikely that someone will have more than one top panel, but it may
> happen that one has more than one floating panel).
> 
> Yet, even if names are kept for panels, perhaps position is what
> should be used in "Add To Panel" dialog?
> 
> 
> >From the technical viewpoint, it's not hard to define what's a
> bottom, top, left, right, or floating panel (because we have a
> unified panel type since 2.3): if it's horizontal, it is top if it's
> attached to top screen edge, bottom if it's attached to bottom screen
> edge, and otherwise floating. Similarly for vertical panels.

I've got an idea: How about if we show a dialouge with a reduced-size
view of the panels and have the user click on one to which the item is
going to be added. You know the `workspace switcher' which shows little
outlines of visible windows? We could do the same for panels and just
have a language-less click interface which 1/ avoids translation issues
2/ makes it more obvious which panel is being talked about.

Dom.

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Dom Howells | e: dom domhowells com
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