Re: A matter of principle [Re: HIGification of dialog boxes]

[Cyrille Chepelov <cyrille chepelov org>]

Le Fri, Jul 18, 2003, à 04:31:15PM +0100, Alan Horkan a écrit:

> I had a small screen for a very long time, this is a very personal pet
> hate of mine.  Being told by some insensative clod to buy new hardware,
> helps no one.

Hello? That's not what I said. My point was: the instant-apply thing where
you typically don't bother closing windows (instead of having nice modals
for which the WM must respect some semblance of Z order or face the
unlink(2) syscall) typically leads to an application where the natural state
of operation is zillions of open windows. And while dia does err a little
bit on that side, I'm not exactly with it. But I think that this
instant-apply thing is nonsense which leads in the wrong direction of too
many open windows. 
I consider 1024x768 and less as "postage-stamp"-sized. That is, unsuitable
for real 40hr/week development use, but otherwise perfectly good. 
I don't think there will ever be real users of dia on zaurus devices, but on
a laptop, hell yes (even though I think the real way forwards is 200-250dpi
screens even if they're only about A5 in physical size).

In fact, I'm pondering about a nice hack to have the toolbox take less space
on the screen and still remain usable -- I'm just not so sure of how
gtk-win32 would behave.
Basically, it would (in that mode) become a 1cm x 1cm toplevel square unless
the mouse is within itself. In that case, it'd "unfold" to its full size.
Drag the mouse away, it folds back into its cm².

What would the usability folks think about that?

        -- Cyrille

--