Re: Dropping the "Interface" tab from appearance capplet

[Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>]

Le mercredi 29 juillet 2009 à 14:11 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 18:31 +0200, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> > Le mardi 28 juillet 2009 à 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> > > Hi,
> [...]
> > But relying on gconf-editor for those configuration options is clearly a
> > UI regression.
> 
> Not really, when these options should not have been exposed in the first
> place.

Well, they have been for about 10 years and I'm expecting people to rely
on them. Until we have a "TweakUI" capplet in gnomecc (since it seems to
be what most people suggest, even if I'm not a fan), I would suggest we
keep it.

> > > However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> > > for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> > > "Text beside icons". My reasoning is:
> > > 
> > > 1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
> > > more room for actual content
> > 
> > And it will eat a LOT of horizontal space instead : applications are
> > often not confortable with 1024 width, it will be even worse.
> 
> Not true, because only a few buttons will have labels. Most of the
> toolbar buttons in this mode do not get labels.
> 
> 
> > 
> > > 2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
> > > better fitts-law for these buttons.
> > 
> > Longer text doesn't mean more important text (or I'm missing something).
> > And it doesn't always work in non-english languages.
> 
> My point was that only the important buttons get text and icons,
> therefore the important buttons are larger than less important buttons.

Ok, I missed the GtkToolItem "is-important" API, in your proposal.

http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/GtkToolItem.html#gtk-tool-item-set-is-important

However, we have absolutely no idea if "is-important" is set correctly
in applications available in GTK+ ecosystem (I'm not restricting myself
on GNOME release on purpose).

And there is still a potential i18n issue, as I explained previously
(even if it is lower than I thought)

> > > 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> > > and text"
> > 
> > I beg to differ on this.
> > 
> > Icon only is clearly not an option by default, since it is mostly for
> > "expert" or "powerusers". So, the only "by default" options are "icons
> > and text" and "text beside icons"
> 
> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by looking at
> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I don't
> remember where right now).

My experience with newbies is quite opposite : they have difficulties
with tooltips, as an help conveyor.

-- 
Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandriva com>
Mandriva