[bt-devel] Text window header added

['Kang Sun']

* Eeli Kaikkonen <eekaikko at mail.student.oulu.fi> wrote on [2009/11/26 03:53]:
> 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.
 
It seems like there are two roles for the header, view and control.  As 
a way to identify the work, it can be very small.  As a way to control 
what goes in that column/subdisplay, I don't think it is necessary.  I 
think MacSword 2 does it quite well, but the Mac widgets (AppKit/Cocoa) 
are slightly different than the Qt widgets.

One option could be to extend toolbar down slightly and write the names 
of the works at the appropriate places using a fairly small typeface 
size (or whatever the Qt theme specifies).