Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]

[James K.Lowden <jklowden speakeasy org>]

On 30 Apr 2002 22:27:16 -0500 "Lars Clausen" <lrclause cs uiuc edu> wrote:

> >  http://www.SchemaMania.org/dia/noodle/
> >
> > As you can see, I was able to reduce the size of the dialog by 3x 
>
> I really like the look of that.  The prefs dialog at the moment is an
> eyesore (though very easy to extend), and it's difficult to tell what
> only goes for new diagrams.  Could you take a look at the current
> preferences.c and see how much work it would be to use your layout? 
> Also, how much work will it be to keep it up-to-date when more stuff is
> added (apparently, Glade assumes Gnome and there is some work involved
> in making the code non-Gnome)?

Lars, 

I had a look at the code.  They're different paradigms, but I think it'll
be not too bad.  That's the height of hubris, you understand, because I've
never used Glade and never written a GTK app.  (I did read Havoc's book,
though.)

Basically, the problem is one of mapping Dia's internal preferences
structure onto the Glade-generated widget code.  prefs_create_dialog
becomes very different, because the widgets already exist.  With
cleverness, I'll be able to load their addresses into the DiaPrefsData
structures, and prefs_get_value_from_widget won't change at all.  

> I don't think the labels should be right-justified.  Makes them look
> ragged. 

Agreed. 

> > 1. The Grid size is square; you can't set X and Y to different scales.
> >  

1) I don't like.

Well, between you and Rob, I bow to your greater experience.  If people
already use anything other than a 1:1 grid aspect, it must be of some use.
 They do, right?  

> What happened to "Recent documents list size" and "Use menu bar", or did
> you work off an earlier version than that?  I guess you did, since the
> whole "Diagram Tree" tab isn't there.  

I haven't been tracking Dia snapshots; I'm have 0.88.1 on NetBSD.  Don't
worry; I'll modernize! ;)  I'm hoping to build the next release of Dia on
my favorite OS, but I have Debian around here somewhere on one of the
dual-boot boxes if need be.  

The point of the Glade exercise was to demonstrate what I thought a decent
dialog would look like.  Many dialogs in most software are too fussy: they
take eight clicks and two guesses to find what you want.  Tabs and their
vertical brethren a la Netscape can be a blessing or a curse, everything
depends on organization and layout.  Then I decided to volunteer.  You
never know, eh? 

> For that I'd say the window manager
> should take care of the size, and the dialog could show at startup if it
> was shown when Dia was shut down (like Gimp does with several dialogs).
> Don't know about the hidden objects -- it's not obvious what that does.

I'm sorry, Lars, I don't follow you.  I don't know what size the wm should
take care of for "that", or which dialog you mean.  

Regards, 
  --jkl