Re: [Markus Kuhn cl cam ac uk: A suggestion for gucharmap, KCharMap and umap]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:58:42PM -0500, Noah Levitt wrote:
> 
> I agree with Markus that gucharmap should have the unicode
> annotation and cross reference information. 
> 
> Does anyone have ideas on how to present the information in
> a way that is usable and not overwhelming?
> 

Would it fit naturally into the same details pane that currently has
Unicode category, canonical decomposition, and all that?  Perhaps
under a second fold-down arrow? Or perhaps it should just be under the
existing one.

Some other stuff I noticed when trying out the app just now (I only
bother to comment because it's a really great app, so don't mind the
list of stuff):

 - crashes when you view Hebrew, probably pango at fault,
   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103634   
   filed

 - GtkOptionMenu is preferred over non-editable GtkCombo
   (some people may find GtkCombo more attractive, in 
   GTK+ 2.4 we plan to kill this rationale by making the 
   optionmenu-type widget themeable to be combo-looking/acting.
   but combos have bad usability e.g. 
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000063.html).
   Also, GtkOptionMenu API is more convenient than 
   GtkCombo. ;-)

 - the horizontal scrollbar in the character details (bottom right) 
   pane never seems to go away. Maybe a GtkTreeView bug, or 
   maybe just need to use GtkScrolledWindow with GTK_POLICY_AUTOMATIC?

 - in the character details, should fields that don't apply to the
   current char (e.g. "Cantonese pronunciation") still be shown?
   Hiding it may cause a bouncing effect I guess.

 - in Go to hex code point, a "Go" button might be better than "OK"

 - Expand/Collapse All seems like it could be reworded, if it's going 
   to be a check menu item. Not sure it should be a check item, since 
   it can have an inconsistent state. (Though we do have a 
   gtk_check_menu_item_set_inconsistent().)

 - If you can convince the GNOME docs guys to write you a manual, it
   might be neat if the various fields in the character description
   such as "Canonical decomposition" were links to docs describing
   that field... might be too cluttered, I don't know. But might be
   useful.

 - the fields in the character details pane seem to be editable
   but don't do anything if edited.

 - Characters around U+1137 seem kind of hosed in Sans but work in
   some other fonts, may be Pango's fault.

 - Putting a hex code in the Find field, at least in U+whatever
   or 0xabc format, seems like it should work.

 - When clicking Find, the only indication that something happened
   is in the status bar. It might be better if this text were 
   right next to the Find entry, perhaps? Someone else may have ideas
   here. I agree a dialog would be annoying.

 - Might be nice to remember the font that was set last time the app
   was opened. (Or all state really, even the "text to copy")

The app has come out really sweet, everything works - the tree on the
left tracks scrolling, you can drag-and-drop the characters or
double-click them, keyboard navigation, it's very nice.  Very fast
development too, it seems pretty much finished already.

You should clearly take the advice of Calum and Seth and other pros 
over any of my speculation above.

Good luck -
Havoc