Re: [gtk-list] Re: [PATCH] Not yet applied?

["Shawn T. Amundson" <amundson gimp org>]

On Wed, 8 Apr 1998, Patrice Fortier wrote:

> > //My personal opinion is that right justifying for OK/cancel looks good,
> > //but the fileops buttons should be spread instead of left
> > //justified. (Shawn wanted the left-justified squished together fileops
> > //buttons to look like a toolbar)
> > 
> > Well, I don't agree. :) (I sent in the patch because I thought it was a 
> > mistake, not something intentional.) What to do about such things?
> 
> me too...
> Wait for post 1.0 so we can at last make gtk look good :)
> 

The only examples I could find of using spread and not packing left
is Motif apps.  I am sure there are others, but they are not common.
I prefer to use Mac when it comes right down to it because they actually 
thought about some of this stuff in depth, and it shows.

The reason for packing right is that the buttons show up in a consistant
location in all dialogs and are consistantly placed and spaced to one
point instead of multiple points along the bottom of the dialog.  It is
also less visually distracting, which leaves more user attention to the
rest of the dialog.  The disadvantage is of course that OK and Cancel
are closely placed together and the user could click on the wrong button
accidentally, but I do not find this a sufficient reason for the spacing 
since the spacing is not consistant and would confuse the user anyway.

As for the fileops, I think those should be icons only with bubble
help.  However, I lack drawing skills so I couldn't make it happen. ;-)
I do not think they should be spread because I don't think that makes
sense at all - they should probably have the useless handlebox just to 
give even more the impression of a toolbar.  (I don't mean to dis the
handlebox, but I just haven't found it useful for any app toolbar so I 
have to think it is 100% for show and look.)

I don't think this is likely to convince anyone, but at least do 
understand it is fully intentional.

--
Shawn T. Amundson               
amundson@gimp.org               http://www.gimp.org/~amundson

"The assumption that the universe looks the same in every
 direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking