Re: [Usability] A bunch of UI issues

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

>  51027 patch to change scroll behavior from half page to full page
> 
>   (Actually, a full page minus a line)

Sounds good.

 
>  53223 need to make text in GtkFontSel's "preview" translatable
> 
>   Translation is probably good in the short term. XP has a sort
>   of neat feature where it figures out the scripts the font
>   supports and you can select canned previews for any of those
>   scripts. (But you can't edit the preview text, which I think
>   is bad.)

I think editing the preview text is nice, and the general translatable
thing seems worthwhile.

>  58389 'Active area' for GtkRange
> 
>   Implementation of cancellation by moving away from the scrollbar
>   a sufficient distance.

I have a habit, and I know a number of other people do to, of selecting
text as I read it. A corollary habit is that when I'm keeping my mouse
clicked on the scrollbar and dragging to read, I tend to position the
mouse in the middle of the text I'm reading. I don't really know if
other people do this too, but its usually far enough that the "Cancel"
would be triggered.

I'm not sure that snapping off is that useful anyway. Somebody suggested
leaving a ghosted slider where the slider used to be positioned.
Probably not feasible in the short term, but I think a better long term
solution to the issue of "cancelling" a scroll. "Esc" also seems fine,
if less obvious.

>  58392 Opaque resizing for paned widgets
> 
>   Since opaque window resize is pretty universal, it probably makes
>   sense to do it here. (And it looks a lot better than opaque
>   window resize since it is all in one process.) Only question
>   is whether we need a setting to turn it off for slow machines.
>   Probably we can skip that until we get complaints, and if
>   we get complaints, we can dig the code out of CVS.

Sounds good.

>  58605 Allow Delete as a keybinding
> 
>   (For changeable menus). I think the current plan is to be
>   very liberal with accelerator changing with the idea that
>   we'll allow global locking to deal with the confusion issue.

I think customizable keybindings is one of the more charming "advanced
user" features of GTK, and is particularly useful in a program like the
GIMP where you end up doing a repetitive activity for an hour or so. The
trick is keeping them from triggering for the unititiated.

I personally think we don't want to allow delete as a keybinding, and I
would be in favour of restricting customizable keybindings to
CTRL-ALT-letter or CTRL-SHIFT-letter, or some other longer combination,
to keep people from triggering it accidentally. That way we don't have
to turn this into a global preference and can just leave it on.

>  59600 Motif-like Ctrl+Clicks on scrollbars are very desirable
> 
>   Request to add control-click on the arrows to go to the end; 
>   right now 

*shrug* I don't really have an opinion. Seems fine.

>  59707 Need keynav for selectable labels.
> 
>   Question here is how to handle focusing a selectable label;
>   the code to implement keynav is there? Should they be in
>   the tab chain? 
> 
>   (Would require some special code in GtkMessageBox to avoid 
>   the label typically getting the focus when they come up,
>   and might be a bit confusing in general.)

No opinion, I'd defer to Calum here ;-)

>  60590 Keyboard shortcuts displayed in menus should be translated
> 
>   Translation of Control/Shift/etc in menus.

As Gregory noted, it'd be really nice if these could match the actual
keyboard the user had, maybe for GTK 12.4. On translation vs. no
translation I don't think I can form a competent opinion, but I suspect
its better to have them translated.

>  67649 Patch for UI issues with range widgets
>  
>   Main controversial request is to change things so right click
>   reverses the direction of action for all mouse bindings. 
>   I don't think this is a good idea, but maybe a reverse direction
>   modifier could be snuck in?

I don't really like right click reversing the direction. I guess we
could sneak a modifier in. It doesn't seem terribly useful or important.

>  68309 DEFAULT_SCROLLBAR_SPACING should be 0

Yes please!

>  68938 GtkDialog's separator should be removed

Sounds good. This seperator is generally extra visual noise. For the
rare cases where its actually desirable its still easy to turn on.
 
>  69569 OK/Cancel stock items shouldn't have menmonics?

I think no mnemonics is better. Actually, I think we agreed on this for
the HIG a long time ago, but my memory of that is faint and I don't see
it in the actual written document.

cheers,

-Seth