[bt-devel] Text window header added

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Wed, 25 Nov 2009, Gary Holmlund wrote:
> I have been thinking about the text window header. I can't say that I
> like it that well.
>
> 1. It looks quite different from any other toolbar item. It just feels
> non-standard to me.

Actually it's was not meant to be a toolbar item, it just was the only
easy way to implement it which I found. The original plan was to
implement it as a scrollarea header, but qwebview doesn't expose the
view widget. The next possibility was to embed it in the HTML page, but
maybe it would be an overkill. The looks depends on the UI style, so it
looks different in Oxygen, Plasma, Windows etc. If there's some specific
problem with the looks, it may be possible to change it.

>
> 2. It does take up significant vertical space, especially for people
> that like horizontal tiling. I don't feel we need a visible module name
> above each column. The book window titlebar has the module names for the
> columns.

One reason I have planned this for a long time is that I'm not happy
with the window titlebars. It's difficult to make connection between
certain text column and a window header column. I continually find
myself travelling between the titlebar and text area trying to find out
which text this or that column actually is. This happens especially if
there are many modules of one language.

I also have experienced problems with horizontal space because I rather
use vertical tiling. When the window is narrow, the toolbar buttons are
partly hidden, which is very bad for usability. The header doesn't have
that problem at all and takes space of maybe 1.5 or 2 text lines which
isn't much in vertical mode.

> I guess I would favor a single toolbar button that popups up a small
> window that helps configure the columns and then is closed.

That could be enough for me, too, but if someone uses parallel views and
changes them a lot, the current approaches are better. Actually this
could be implemented as an on/off button which would just switch the
header on/off, though it would need one extra click to close it again
(unless the header would be implemented floating, as a popup).


I think we can now see that this all boils down to different workflows.
Is it enough if there's a global setting in the "View->Text windows"
menu?

Thanks for the valuable feedback.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)