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

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Wed, 1 May 2002, James K. Lowden wrote:
> 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.  

Could you mark the widgets somehow so that the connection between values in
the prefs structure and widgets isn't hardcoded?  That would make it easier
to change once the dialog gets too big.

> > > 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?

I have used that a couple times.

> > 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.  

A new release should be out shortly, I suggest you build off of that.

> 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?

I can see us pretty soon being in need of a vertical layout, but we must
make sure to make it easy to figure out.  Separate parts for the tree
dialog, sheets dialog, and new diagrams doesn't seem too bad.  Should start
up with the 'misc' category.

> > 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.

Sorry, I was being unclear.  I was talking about the size parameter for the
tree dialog.  Hmm... I guess Windows doesn't have window manager that will
remember sizes and positions.  Grumpf.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?