[bt-devel] Text window header added

[Gary Holmlund]

'Kang Sun' wrote:
> * 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).
>   
I would like to avoid using the toolbar directly to identify the works. 
In the future, I would like to see the ability to move the toolbar off 
the book windows and onto the main windows. As you select different book 
windows the main window toolbar changes to reflect the correct widgets 
for the active book window. This is how many MDI programs work.

I believe the the way Eeli has it now is reasonable as long as I have a 
preference to turn it off, or it automatically turns on/off as you turn 
on/off extra columns.

Gary