[bt-devel] Eliminate KFontChooser from Configuration Dialog

[Gary Holmlund]

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:
> Gary Holmlund wrote:
>   
>> I worked on the layout of all the configuration dialog pages taking
>> space out and reducing the size of the text rendering areas on the
>> language and display pages. It is basically all that can be done
>> without restructuring. The size is now about 600x400. I think it
>> looks pretty good but the rendered text for the font chooser might
>> be a little small. Please send your thoughts about it.
>>   
>>     
>
> To be honest, the visual experience is now worse. This is not to say 
> that it was good to start with or that your changes are bad; it just 
> proves that the dialog really needs restructuring.
>
> The rule of thumb with extra space is that we shouldn't add any to or 
> remove any from the default space set by the style. Space is needed to 
> give pleasant visual appearance and clarity and enhanced user 
> experience. Only if adding or removing space is aesthetically pleasing 
> it should be done. Now the dialog is so dense it looks bad and is hard 
> to read.
>   
I did take a lot of space out of the dialog because I thought the
small height was a requirement. As you had put it, "even 800x480
minus the desktop panel". I was not very happy with the result and
had thought we might need to discuss a redesign of the layout

> I don't know if you have experience with user interfaces. I'm not a 
> professional myself but I have studied it a bit in the University and 
> just for fun. I can recommend the links in 
> http://devel.bibletime.info/wiki/Programming_Guidelines#User-visible_text. 
> They point to the text specific areas of those documents but for example 
> the larger Mac documentation includes some nice guidelines for designing 
> layouts. (When you are there, read also the Title Case/Sentence case 
> guidelines from the wiki page - you wrote the font chooser headers with 
> Title Case.)
>   
Interesting. I did not know that the Vista guidelines had changed
so much from the XP guidelines. Title case would have been correct
for the font chooser headings under Xp. I will plan to use the BT
guidelines.

> But back to the real thing. I tried to write a new structure but it's 
> very hard. Here's one proposition:
>
> Text view
>     - Display templates (tab)
>     - Text filters (tab)
>     - Fonts (tab)
> Default works
> General
>     - Bible book names (group)
>     - Startup logo (group)
>
> But I don't think it's perfect. "General" is never a good name. This 
> structure doesn't necessarily reflect the way a user would think about it.
>
>   
This seems reasonable or perhaps the General group should be
split as follows:

Text view
    - Display templates (tab)
    - Text filters (tab)
    - Fonts (tab)
Default works
Bible books
Startup

I think a redesign like this could be done in the next two weeks if I use Qt 
Designer. It is much easier to design these nested layouts visually and the 
amount of hand written code is much smaller. It also makes it easy to get 
re-sizable dialogs. Is there any reason not to use Designer?

Gary Holmlund