RE: [gtk-list] Re: Panes behavior (a bug?)

[Jonathan Belson <jon dookie demon co uk>]

On 02-Mar-98 Owen Taylor wrote:
>
>Jonathan Belson <jon@dookie.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> On 02-Mar-98 Kenneth Albanowski wrote:
>> >This reminds me of something else: is there any particular reason the pane
>> >can't be resized by clicking anywhere on the separator bar? I realize the
>
>There is no real real UI reason why it couldn't do that. (Except for,
>as Patrice said, emulating Motif) From an implementors point of view
>it makes things somewhat more complicated, especially in terms of
>displaying a different cursor when the user can click to drag. I'll
>put it  as a tentative item on the TODO list.

On the Amiga, both MUI and ClassAct allowed you to resize a panel at any place
along the border but neither changed the cursor when over the 'drag zone'.  It
would be a good idea, though.
 
>> Just to stick my oar in, shouldn't the panes also resize themselves when you
>> resize the window?  To me it would make more sense if they kept the
>> same ratio...
>
>I'm not sure if I agree. When the needs to make a change, it is 
>typically because one or the other pane is too small. If the top/left
>pane is to small, the natural thing to do is to move the separator.
>If the bottom/right pane, is too small, I think it may be more natural
>to make the window bigger.

Can't say I agree here 8^)  For example, imagine an ftp tool with two directory
listings...you would expect them to remain the same size if you resized the
window to eg. see a long filename in its entirety.

If I was using a multi-panelled application I would start by arranging the panel
sizes to suit my purposes, and it would be offputting to have to re-adjust them
every time I changed the window size...

>But in some cases, depending on the contents of the two panes,
>it might make sense to use the ratio behavior, or even put all
>the newly created space into Pane 1.
>
>So, what I've been thinking of doing is adding an "expand" variable
>for each pane, like the Box widgets. 
>
>(For backwards compatibility, this would be set in a separate call,
>and/or by creating new 
>
> gtk_paned_pack1 (paned, widget, expand);
>
>to replace:
>
> gtk_paned_add1 (paned, widget))
>
>There is some question of whether the excess should be given to
>both widgets equally (which is what Boxes do) or in proportion
>to the existing ratio. 

Again, I think it would be more intuitive to keep the window the way
the user arranged it.  Adding the expand argument would be a reasonable
solution though.

>Finally, maybe making this application-settable isn't that great of an
>idea. The worst problem is when the user expects something different
>than what happens. Since I use Acroread and Netscape quite a bit, I
>tend to expect the Motif behavior, so my inclination is to keep that

Motif did bug me a bit when I switched to using X, especially the file
requesters which are guaranteed to make the file list too narrow 8^/

>the default in any case. (Other people may disagree ...  what do
>Win95, the Macintosh, etc do? (if they have paned windows))

I can't think of any paned apps on the Mac, I'm reasonably sure Win95 uses
ratios (the GTK behaviour struck me as unusual as soon as I saw it).

What do you other folks think?

C-YA
Jon

http://www.dookie.demon.co.uk