Re: removing non-working things

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Matthias Clasen wrote:

> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:47:39 -0400
> From: Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>
> To: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: removing non-working things
>
> The gnome-ui-properties capplet contains a "Detachable toolbars"
> checkbox, which has three issues:
>
> a) It only affects BonoboToolbars, not for regular GtkToolbars

Erm are you sure?

A Gtk Toolbar has to put inside a container to make it detachable which
many developers dont or wont do.  (Forgive me for not being able to put
into more techincal terms, I know this from experimenting with various
mockups in Glade rather than coding it myself where I'd need to learn the
correct terminology.)

I'm still hoping Gtk will have a future toolbar which will be dockable and
detachable and everything but not hoping very much.  There are cases like
Eog where I'd like to be able to move/put the toolbar vertically when
going through a set of largely tall portraite images.  (Same goes for
gthumb, more so because it wastes a horrific amount of vertical space with
a second title bar.)

I went through a stage of asking various programs to do so and be more
consistent but programs such as Evince politely declined to do so, which
isn't unreasonable and quite understandable because detachable toolbars in
Gtk aren't much use (not to say some future toolbar setup couldn't make
them more useful).

> b) It does not even work correctly for bonobo toolbars (try
>    detaching and reattaching the evolution toolbar, for instance)

I agree reattaching toolbars can be quite finnickey
there was some trick like holding down Ctrl or something which made it
easier to reattach things (possibly related to the window manager move
window option).

It would be nice if non-working thing could be fixed.

> c) Even if it worked correctly everywhere, it is not a very
>    useful feature.

Unfortunately that is quite true, even worse I've seen users (of non GTK
applications with more complicated toolbars) manage to lose toolbars or
accidentally hide things and be left wondering where they went.  (The
users didn't understand the little overflow arrows indicating hidden
items.)  Toolbars should not be detachable by default.

Do the Gtk developers even have plans to overhaul the Toolbars into
something more advanced later?  Is it low on the list of priorities or is
it on the list at all?

Toolbars are admittedly not much use at the moment but they are not beyond
hope and could probably still be improved.

> So I'd like to propose that we drop this checkbox.

When I went through my phase of trying to get developers to implement it
consistently I met a lot of polite resistance.  I came to the conclusion
that it might be best to set all toolbars to Locked/Not detachable by
default to at least make things consistent.

Applications which wanted to allow users to rearrange the toolbars could
unlock them/make them detachable if and only if the user chose something
like "customize toolbars" or "unlock toolbars" which might also included
other functionality such as drag and drop of toolbar items.

> If there is a need to fill the void, we could add a "Show icons in
> buttons" checkbox instead, since this is a feature that works reliably
> everywhere...

Does it?  Maybe it is no longer a problem anymore but a long time ago when
developers were experimenting with "show icons on buttons" things didn't
work out well for buttons with only an icon and no text label.

Applications which had used a row of buttons without text instead of a
proper toolbar ended up with blank useless buttons. It seems some
developers do not want flat toolbars and instead want their toolbar to
look more 3 Dimensional and button-like, which would be a theme issue not
a widget issue. (Winzip used to have an option to change the toolbar
button style.)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/