Random notes about Gnumeric on Windows.

[Adrian Custer <acuster gmail com>]

Hey all,

Just discovered that the windows builds have been progressing along with
the rest of the releases. FANTASTIC!

Since I'm stuck using the windows side of my machine (modem trouble) I
figured I'd test the app a bit. Running 1.5.2 against Excel using two
versions of the same file generated by Gnumeric (.gnumeric and .xls).

Graphing rocks. Our column and row buttons rock.




I'll change this into a bug or lots of buglets when I have better
conectivity.



Pie in the sky:
  Are we ever going to be able to reduce the size of our GUI elements?
We look like a baby toy next to the "serious" tiny print excel. We are
wasting gobs and gobs of screen estate.


Pie in outer space:
  Any reason we couldn't have the windows version behave like excel
with multiple files, that is with lots of files within a bigger
container (named MDI?)? Wouldn't our model-view-controler separation
handle the situation? Not that we would want to do this, but *could*
gnumeric do it?







Okay, more seriously.

?GTK?
  The arrows on the buttons for the drop down list (i.e. font) are on a
button so large the arrows don't seem attached to their respective
boxes. Also by being in the middle of the button, an arrow between could
be attached to either

?GTK?
  The arrows at the end of the toolbar, when the toolbar is larger than
the app window width, don't indicate enough what they are about. Perhaps
the background of the button could look like a torn toolbar. In Excel,
the button sits on a background of a different colour which really
indicates its 'meta' behaviour.

?GTK?
  Tooltips have the same dark grey as the app for a background, makes
reading the tooltip hard and doesn't separate the tooltip as a
highlighted element as well as changing the background colour would.

?GTK?
  The scrollbar arrows don't look like arrows.

?GTK? ?Gnumeric's use of GTK?
  Neither the file open nor file save dialogs have help buttons.

?GTK?
  Blocking errors don't stay on top.
    1) Open a big gnumeric
    2) Edit->Sheets->Manage sheets...
    3) click on help
    => an error dialog pops up.
    4) clic on the sheet
    => hides the error but blocks further input.
  Perhaps clicking on the worksheet should dismiss the dialog. Blocking
dialogs are terrible, especially if, like here, they only give us
information and this info can easily be called up again by clicking
again on the 'help' button.

Gnumeric GUI---Preferences:
  opens to "Copy Paste" (why the second?) and the very unixy "Prefer
CLIPBOARD over PRIMARY..." Is this relevant to windows?

Gnumeric GUI---Preferences:
  "Windows" is confusing on "Windows(TM)" Excel uses "Window Options"
(in Tool menu ->Options->View tab (bottom).

Gnumeric GUI---Preferences, Explanations:
  Neither "Font" nor "Header Font" have any explanation. (I notice from
the help docs that the explanation in the *nix side are setting the font
"name" but that's not right, we are selecting the fonts not their names.)
  None of the explantions include details about each of the actual
options: e.g. "Default Window Vertical Size" is never explained as the
fraction of the total desktop. BTW, what does live srolling do?

Gnumeric GUI---Preferences:
  The dialog can be tweaked by raising or lowering the horizontal
divider to completely hide either the interface elements or the
explanation. We should block with some indication there is more left or
even get rid of the divider. Is it really helpful to have this divider?
Especially since it scruntches the text of options when it is raised
(select files, raise the divider slowly => text on top right becomes
illegibe as the checkbox options are scruntched. And this has a bug that
 , when you, after raising it, lower the horizontal divider, the
drawing becomes mangled and handling of the text underneath incorrect.

Gnumeric File-> Send To:
  Error dialog: missing handler for mailto URLs.

Gnumeric Views:
  "Windows" list persists after dismissing a view
    1) new gnumeric
    => View menu -> Windows has a single item
    2) View->New View-> "OK"    *****HIG ERROR, should be create***
    => new view opens, "windows" list has two items
    3) Close the new view
    => "windows" list still has two items.

Gnumeric Menu Entry:
  View->Fullscreen should not have the ellipsis since no dialog opens up.


Gnumeric HELP: Works!
  I owe a beverage to whoever hooked it up to run from the "Help" menu. 
Thanks.

Gnumeric HELP:
  Is there a way to reduce the font size by default, say when we call 
windows help?

Gnumeric HELP:
  Expand the 'Configuring Gnumeric' 'preferences' section to explain
live scrolling and other non explained elements.

Gnumeric Help---Missing links
  * File -> Properties... :'sect-workbooks-docsummary' not found.
  * Edit->Goto cell... : 'sect-worksheets-viewing'
  * Edit->Sheet->Manage sheets... :'sect-worksheets-managing'
  * View->New View... : 'sect-worksheets-viewing'
  * View->Zoom... :"sect-worksheets-viewing"
     ***HIG ERROR, should be "zoom"
  * Format->workbook... :'sect-workbooks'
  * Tools->Plugins... :'sect-configuring-plugins'
  * Tools->Auto save... :'sect-files-autosave'
  * Tools-> Stat. Analysis: Not going to the right section.
  * Data->Text to columns : Doesn't do anything.
     ***HIG dialog for "cancel" button yes/no not cancel/return***
  * Data-> consolidate
  * Data-> group and outline-> (un)group: 'sect-worksheets-viewing'


Enough for now,

--adrian