Re: Two more patches

[Peter Harvey <peter a harvey gmail com>]

Hi all,

There is some debate about the topics entry patch. I'll outline exactly
what it does, and my HIG-based arguments for it.

EXAMPLE: If you want to use topics "Projects" and "Open Source" for a
bookmark and then close the dialog (press Add or Close), without this
patch you would type something like:
   p r o down return o p e down return return
but with this patch would type:
   p r o return o p e return return

You save a trip to the cursor keys, which is very good from a
convenience/efficiency perspective. This also feels perfectly
comfortable to me, and reading the HIG-spec:
        Normally, pressing Return in a dialog should activate the
        dialog's default button, unless the focused control uses Return
        for its own purposes. You should therefore set the
        activates-default property of most entry fields to TRUE.
        However, if your dialog contains several entry fields that are
        usually filled out in order, for example Name, Address and
        Telephone Number, consider setting the activates-default
        property on those entry fields to FALSE. Pressing Return should
        then move focus on to the next control instead. Doing this will
        help prevent the user from accidentally closing the window
        before they have entered all the information they wanted to.
  -- http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-entry.html#controls-text-return

I would argue that the topics widget acts very similar to a series of
text fields, with each separate 'field' demarcated by commas. So
pressing Return should validate the current 'field' if possible (by
completing the name) and then move to the next field. If there is
nothing at all in the current 'field' to validate (this happens when we
are at the end), then there is no new field to go to, and so we should
press the default button of the dialog. If it's impossible to validate
the current 'field' (no matching topic) we do nothing and leave the user
in that 'field' to correct it.

Anyway, that's my argument for the contents of that patch. An
alternative 'validation' that has been proposed is to 'create a new
topic unless there is one with the exact name input'. I'm against this
one as it would lead to accidental creation of new topics too often,
which is not a reversible operation with the dialog.

Regards,
Peter.