Re: HIG and Escape

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Lars Clausen wrote:
> 
>> Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 21:01:01 -0600
>> From: Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu>
>> Reply-To: dia-list@gnome.org
>> To: dia-list@gnome.org
>> Subject: Re: HIG and Escape
>>
>> On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
>> > Lars, I see the Preferences dialog is much improved but not Gladified.
>> > I'll take another shot at it.  Are we bound to a tab dialog, or did we
>> > decide on a mozilla-like tree-on-the-side treatment, or does anything
>> > go?
> 
> I suspect that in time the Preferences will become more complicated and
> that a treeview will be necessary, may as well plan ahead.
> 
> [ ] Unfortunately i am way behind with Dia since i hosed my machine.

Oops!

> [ ] Hopefully any refactoring could replace the yes no buttons with
> [x] check boxes.

I think the whole design needs serious looking at.

> I need to look over my notes but there were a few preferencs i really
> wanted to remove as i felt they were unnecessary (unfortunately infinite
> undo does not seem practical).

I've wondered just how much memory undo steps take.  It could be
interesting to turn the limit off and see what happens.  Emacs, for
instance, has infinite undo, and I have it running for months sometimes
without the undo stack overrunning the system.

>> We're not bound to a particular style, but we want to keep the coding
>> part simple, too.  Look in app/preferences.c you'll see an array of
>> prefs.  They're currently kinda hackishly divided into groups by having
>> extra dummy entries.  A better style may be to have a string in each
>> entry that defines the position.  Or a recursive structure.  It'd also
>> be nice to have the props on a page grouped using GtkFrames.  In other
>> words, the design is open, but it should be easy to work with.
>>
>> There was a mail a ways back showing how the entire thing could be fit
>> in a single window.  That was kinda neat.
> 
> I dont remember that, although i do vaguely recally someone sending i
> .glade file i never got around to looking at.  A link would be
> appreciated, but hopefully i will have time to go searching myself later.

Found the glade file, it's in
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dia-list/2002-May/msg00001.html.  However, I
can't read it with neither glade nor glade-2.  James Lowden made the
original, maybe he can post a png?

> I would be very worried that fitting everything in one screen would break
> for small monitors and not easily allow new items to be added in future.

It actually didn't take any more space than the current prefs.  It was most
impressive. 

>> As for Glade-ifying, doesn't that require that we depend on libglade?
> 
> I believe it would be worth it, simplicity, maintainability and the
> performance difference is by all accounts neglidgable.  Abiword is doing
> something along these lines (as usual im sketchy on the details), i think
> the dependancey is on libgal.

I'm not worried about the performace, I'm worried about the extra
dependency.  Each extra dependency is a hassle for users.  Why does it have
this dependency?

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HĂ„rdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?