Re: Gnumeric 1.1.90 comments

[Patrick <pabos glypsube org>]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 12:25, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 06:56:08PM -0700, Patrick wrote: 
> > (2) The icons and toolbars seem bulky. Particularly the X checkmark
> > equal, all of the toolbars (extra space above/beneath icons?), the
> > background colour selector and the text colour selector.
>
> These are gnome standard sizes.

While thinking about how to change these I thought of something else
instead - I've never used those icons and I'm not even entirely sure
what they would do. Presumably X cancels your changes, checkmark accepts
them and equals displays the formula result? Now I've checked and the
first two are right but it appears that equals enters the equal sign for
you, but only if you haven't entered anything yet. Yeah :)

They have the following drawbacks:
 - They're common operations (cancel = ESC, checkmark = enter, = = =) so
you wouldn't want to be clicking on them frequently anyway -- if you're
going to use a spreadsheet for any real purpose you wouldn't use them
for anything, so why teach bad habits?
 - They take up valuable space.
 - They're big and bulky looking.

I've been noticing some things in Excel XP since I started looking at
Gnumeric and today I noticed that the X, checkmark, = are gone and only
a small f(x) (fn or fx?) is next to the editing bar which brings up the
function editor dialog box if clicked.

Something to consider.

Bugzilla:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122185

> > (5) It seems like the tear off menus on the zoom / font / font size
> > controls would be too error-prone (ie. people who don't know about it
> > will do it accidently?) It might be cleaner to tear-off if clicked on
> > and dragged some distance away?
>
> This is standard gtk.  I'd rather not have Gnumeric changing toolkit
> behaviour unless there is a really good reason.

I don't mind changing standards where they are suboptimal. :) Tear-off
menus seem like a good idea to me it just seems that they are currently
aesthetically lacking and poorly positioned. As the first option in a
menu they're prone to accidental usage and make you travel further to
get anywhere on the menu. If you were really going to tear them off for
extended use it shouldn't hurt to have to travel to the bottom of the
menu to tear it off.

I don't know enough about GTK+ yet to know if this is a theme problem,
something inherent in the menu ordering or something that will go away
with the new menu system which presumably Gnumeric will adopt at some
point in time.

I'll leave this alone for right now and maybe bring it up someplace more
appropriate if I remember.