Re: New user interface for 5.29.x

[Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com>]

Hi Joanie,

> 1. Undo seems to be completely gone -- as opposed to the shortcut no
> longer working (bgo 591486). I really miss undo and would like to see it
> come back.

This was a bit of an experiment to see if people would complain that
it has gone.  I personally never find myself using it.  I will add it
back but I'm wondering if it can be made redundant if the display
shows all the previous calculations.

> 3. The shortcuts for switching modes seem to be gone. I used those quite
> often. It's faster than going to the View menu.

Another experiment...  I got rid of them as I wanted to use Ctrl+F for
the new factorization button and the shortcuts reduce the clarity of
the menu.  Note that they can be easily accessed from the keyboard
with alt-v + F for financial.  Is this discoverable/acceptable enough?
 As you can do any function in any mode is there a need to change
modes much?  (I expect users will just pick one mode they are
comfortable with and when they know the keyboard shortcuts they can
hide all the buttons and maximise the area for showing calculations).

> 4. My ability to convert between decimal and hex in my head disappeared
> well over a decade ago. :-) Up to now, it was super-easy to use
> gcalctool to do these conversions. Now that the "display format" is a
> preference in a dialog rather than a group of radio buttons in the
> calculator, making these conversions takes longer. Unless you're hiding
> conversion shortcuts from me. :-)

Indeed they are hidden, the way it works now is:
- The preferences dialog shows the base the result of calculations are shown in
- To enter a number in a particular base put the base as a subscript
suffix (hold down alt) on the number.
e.g. '1' 'e' 'f' 'alt-1' 'alt-6' '=' displays "30" if in decimal mode
or "36₈" in octal mode.
In this way you can mix bases in equations.  There are buttons for
bases 2, 8 and 16 in programming mode.

> 5. I very rarely use the registers, so I'm not bothered by their
> apparent disappearance, but I can see others being bothered by it. Where
> did they go?

The registers are still there on the right-hand-side of the advanced
layout (the R buttons).  I plan to make them more useful via keyboard
by having a generic "name=equation" parser.  They will also be able to
store equations, not just numbers.