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List:       kopete-devel
Subject:    Re: [kopete-devel] Re: kdenetwork/kopete/protocols/oscar/icq/ui
From:       Stefan Gehn <sgehn () gmx ! net>
Date:       2004-07-11 22:33:09
Message-ID: 200407120033.09356.sgehn () gmx ! net
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On Sonntag Juli 11 2004 23:45, Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
> On Sunday 11 July 2004 13:52, Stefan Gehn wrote:
> > > The widget types needed for viewing and editing are totally different.
> > > In
> >
> > no, they are not.
>
> Yes.  For instance, you need a bunch of editboxes for street address, city,
> state, zip, country in edit mode.  In view mode, you can show all of the
> above in a single, nicely formatted qlabel.

qlabel does not allow copynpaste, readonly (not disabled) allows that and is 
surely helpful for address fields and the like.

>
> > > some cases, you have the dual thing in the .ui, and pick one based on
> > > context as a workaround.
> >
> > that's no workaround, that's cutting down codesize.
>
> Maybe by a small amount, but it decreases efficiency, because then the
> widget must not be drawn, but have a whole bunch of modifications performed
> on it in the process.

That happens before showing the dialog and it's quite fast. If you don't know 
it, KDE once had no designer so all dialogs were created manually at runtime 
(actually they are still because all uic does is create code). It's not as 
slow as you think it might be.

> > having them in view mode doesn't hurt either, duplicating the amount of
> > work to keep both dialogs in a similar look weigths way more for me.
>
> They don't need to look similar.  They don't look similar on any other

But they contain the same information, the only difference is if it's your 
info or info from somebody else.

> thus the accels won't do anything, and there is little worse than having 20
> accels on a page which don't work.

I can't think of a reason why users would ever complain about that. They don't 
waste space either.

> And you didn't address the 
> tooltip/whatsThis argument.

nothing speaks against having this inside code instead of inside the ui.

> > two times the work if you redo something.
>
> How often are you going to redo the whole dialog?  How often do the

Your changes were about the fourth redo, that speaks for itself.

>  I've been the only one doing any
> UI work, and don't mind maintaining two versions.

So this ui came from /dev/null and was just there?

> bunch of workarounds versus an additional XML file would make hardly any
> size difference.

What XML file? designer files are not natively used in case you mean that. 
They are compiled by the user interface compiler (uic) and then happen to be 
C++ classes. QT designer is just there to ease changing the gui without doing 
all the layouting yourself (for example try coding a dialog using at least 
two nested gridlayouts and make that one look good, if that's not a challenge 
then I don't know either).

> Not only that, but if you really do redo something, you don't have half the
> work, because you've got to go edit a pile of C++ in addition to the UI.

I have all the layouting, spacing and stretching inside the .ui and just edit 
some things, that's way easier than doing everything by hand or editing 
two .uis and read/fill them with data.

> It's much more userfriendly to have an interface tailored to each purpose,
> and just because I reformat the edit dialog one day (assuming no fields are
> changed), does not mean I would have to reformat the view dialog.

see above, they contain the same information, just for different users, that's 
why they should look the same, even if one of them is not editable.

> > So why do you commit this stuff right away anyway?
>
> Because the edit account dialog was good finished work, and is part of work
> I am doing on ALL of the protocols, not just yours.   We have very little
> time before freeze, and I am getting as much as I can done before then,
> because everything else will have to wait for Kopete 0.10.x.

But cramming in changes without discussing things first is no valid point to 
commit right away (I also missed KDE freezes a couple of times, it's just how 
life goes). For fixing bugs keeping users from using the whole app this might 
be true but in this case I don't think so.

> > Don't you think discussing changes with the developers would be a good
> > idea?
>
> You yourself told me earlier today on IRC that you were not going to
> develop Kopete anymore, that fixing the recent ICQ bug was the last thing
> you were going to touch.

Me not going to work on new things does not mean that oscar is unmaintained. 
There's still Matt, Will and Marcello (sorry in case I got that name wrong) 
working on oscar. I'm sure you could have mailed one of them some links to 
previews.

> So what say do you have in the matter, and what 
> exactly were you doing reverting changes that you didn't make to a codebase
> you don't maintain?

Just because I don't want to continue doing new stuff does not allow others to 
commit undiscussed changes (and I'm not talking about fixing strings or 
something, I'm talking about huge changes like this one). If the Kopete team 
agreed with this one then I wouldn't have reverted it (yes, I asked the 
others prior to taking this step).

> That's a matter of opinion.  I disagree.  The whole thing looks better than
> the old one (which I also wrote), and the original thing I replaced months
> ago.

We all agreed with you on the first one back then, that's why it's in Kopete. 
Why do you have to make it worse now? I don't have a clue why things like 
this have to change every other week. If it would have been bad then we 
wouldn't have shipped it.

>
> > The italics was already wrong, it was some weird idea from somebody else.
>
> Somebody else was me, and no.  It draws attention, which is what's needed.

The rest of the dialog is less important? Why does this text need more 
attention?

> > But bold _and_ italics at the same time?? Did you ever get told about
> > typesetting? You _never_ever_ mix these styles, it's a big "no go".
>
> Can't say I've ever heard that one.  Sounds like a personal pet peeve to
> me.

Nope, ask somebody doing DTP, using more than one style at the same time is 
not a good idea.

> Seriously, is this E-mail thread anything but a personal attack? 

Are you paranoid?

> > That's why the server settings are on a tab of their own. They don't need
> > to be touched in general as long as you are not using a corporate
> > icq-server (yes, something like that exists/existed).
>
> No, they're in a tab with other, much more common options, where things
> like "Connect automatically at startup" go.  I would say that >90% of users
> use that option, versus less than a tenth of a percent, overriding the
> server and port.  Yes, it's possible, and other servers exist.  But the
> majority of people are not ever going to use those options.

So they leave them alone and that's it. I don't have to think about paths for 
executable either when they are in a prefs-dialog, still these settings are 
not hidden (because it's simply unneeded because people not needing it will 
ignore it).

> Plus it's easier to revert to 
> defaults, you just uncheck the box, instead of having to click a big ugly
> defaults button.

it's actually the same, one click.


> > (i.e. creating something and seeing it go to the dustbin because it was
> > wrong is quite discouraging so try to avoid that) and read more docs
> > about UI design.
>
> If you think I'm so bad at UI, then why have I been paid strictly for my UI
> skills several times in the past?

No idea. People get paid for writing Visual.Basic too, that doesn't make them 
good developers.

> Why have I received so much praise for 
> the UI work I've already done and am doing now?  Why do I hear comments
> like "the ICQ dialogs are bloody awful" if you're such an expert at it?

No idea but if these people don't write bugreports, mail a developer or 
anything else then they probably don't care enough about it.

And somehow I don't believe in this "other users" story anyway (I have never 
heard that on IRC nor did anybody else come up with it, sounds pretty weird, 
huh?) :)

Anyway, do what you think is right but please communicate with the rest 
instead of just comitting right away.

Bye, Stefan aka mETz
-- 
ICQ#51123152 | Moege der Pinguin mit euch sein
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