Re: scrollbar display options

[Drazen Kacar <dave arsdigita com>]

Paul Davis wrote:
> >I was told that a good design means aligning something with something
> >else, so that the whole thing doesn't look like a bunch of widgets
> >randomly dropped on the screen.
> 
> This part I agree with. But your example is a poor one.

Well, I never claimed it was a good example. Besides, bad examples serve a
purpose, if they are only examples. This application was never released,
so there's no harm done. :-)

> The positional indicators would be quite unnecessary if the scrollbar
> had the functionality that a click anyway in its length moved to that
> position. Some scrollbars (perhaps even GTK+'s) work this way.

The widget is a slider (not a scrollbar) and a click moves the slider
to the left or to the right, but only for a predefined number of units,
not to the position at which you clicked.

However, that is not supposed to be the main purpose of the indicators. At
first I had the application without them, but then I noticed that it's
hard to see how much I'm off from the center or the edges. So (for me,
at least) the indicators are mostly indicators, not controls. Making them
clickable was just an added bonus, because slider widget didn't have that
functionality, I think. In the original audiocontrol utility they are not
clickable.

Note that this is audio balance control and I think it's not very important
to show the exact number. Volume control has a number beside it, because
it's more important.

> As a general principle of design-with-themes-in-mind, don't ever try
> to aggregate distinct widgets into a "whole" simply by placement. If
> you want a scrollbar with tick marks under it, you need a new widget
> type. Likewise, if you want a widget thats like the spinbutton, but
> puts the arrows in different places, don't try to use a GtkEntry plus
> two GtkArrows - this may come out wrong with certain themes. You need
> a new widget that ensures the placement because of its internal design.

OK, that looks like a sensible advice, but can I do it with GTK? There are
theme engines (all with NeXT-ish look, I think) which are implemented by
changing GTK functions with their own. As far as I understand the
situation, this is not supported, but it currently "works", up to a point,
at least. In case I create a widget which is a combination of scrollbar
and something else and the user wants to have a theme with NeXT-like
scrollbars, would the scrollbar in my widget have NeXT look?

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