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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KFloppy checkup needed
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () olympusproject ! org>
Date:       2002-12-04 1:00:22
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On Tuesday 03 December 2002 02:16, Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> While I was at it, I switched the UI over to standard menus. Personally, I
> think that's an improvement over weirdly placed quit and help buttons.

why? i really can't comment on statements without reasons =)

> So I have two questions for a KFloppy checkup:
>
> 1) Does it still format floppies as msdos and ext2 on Linux?

no. see the attached (hurried) patch .. i haven't checked to make sure that 
the formatting works yet, but at least now the options are showing up in the 
UI, which looks rather poor when it has not formats available BTW. if there 
are no formats, all the widgets may as well be hidden along with an 
explanation that there are no formats available and what to do about it (e.g. 
report it)...

i'd have included this (as well as some issues i cover below) in the patch, 
but i think there are bigger issues with the new UI...

> 2) What do styleguide / usability people say about the UI change? If you're
> used to the old KFloppy UI, then I'm sure this can lead to a moment of
> confusion.

personally i'm not sure what it adds. it does make it more like other full 
featured KDE applications, but then again it adds three menus in a menu bar 
that hold nothing that wasn't immediately apparent previously. does this 
change make the app easier to use or understand? <== that's the important 
question.

note that other simple KDE utils do not have menus such as kcalc, ksnapshot 
and kscd (though that one arguably should)... simple "dialog-like" 
applications may not benefit in clarity at all from having a menubar.

even more importantly, the old layout had a nice alignment of labels, widgets 
and buttons. the new window has no such alignment due to the stackwidget. the 
old app had a nice cascade of decisions: "where is it, how big is it, what do 
you want on it?", now it is "what do you want on it, where is it, how big is 
it?" note that now the user has to answer questions about the disk before 
they've defined which disk it is they are talking about.

the filesystem dropdown now contains "ext2 floppy" and "dos floppy". this 
looks visually less appealling than the previous versions that didn't have 
"floppy" in them. is this because it lists "ext2 zip" if it sees it? if so, 
what is the point of the "Floppy drive" menu.. shouldn't "zip" etc go in THAT 
menu since THAT is where you define which drive? (i have a zip drive and it 
didn't see it, if it is supposed to =/ something else to look at on my side?)

also it seems that we've lost the "Verify Integrity" option? and the default 
disk label text is gone as well? and there are no keyboard accelerators in 
the new UI! ai-ee!

note that this app was looked at on kde-usability for 3.1 and changes were 
made to the UI to improve its usability. i think that while the BSD compat is 
GREAT, the UI changes are a step backwards.

i've attached screenshots of kfloppy before and now for those who have one but 
not the other, so everyone can compare and see what i'm babbling on about =)

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
    - Albert Einstein
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["kfloppy.patch" (text/x-diff)]

Index: format.cpp
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/kde/kdeutils/kfloppy/format.cpp,v
retrieving revision 1.1
diff -u -3 -d -p -r1.1 format.cpp
--- format.cpp	27 Nov 2002 21:37:15 -0000	1.1
+++ format.cpp	4 Dec 2002 00:55:24 -0000
@@ -700,7 +700,10 @@ bool DosFloppyFormat::runtimeCheck()
 #if defined(__FreeBSD__) || defined(__NetBSD__) || defined(__OpenBSD__)
 	msdosfs = findExecutable("newfs_msdos");
 #endif
-#ifdef __FreeBSD__
+#if defined(ANY_LINUX)
+        msdosfs = findExecutable("mkfs.msdos");
+#endif
+#if defined(__FreeBSD__) || defined(ANY_LINUX)
 	ext2fs = findExecutable("mkfs.ext2");
 	// Support ext3 only if ext2 also found.
 	if (!ext2fs.isEmpty())

["kfloppy_now.png" (image/png)]
["kfloppy_then.png" (image/png)]
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