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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Resizeable Dialogs, Layout & Co.
From:       "Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" <Friedrich.W.H () Kossebau ! de>
Date:       2001-01-03 16:48:24
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Happy New KYear!

I didn't find it in the style guide but I think it is something that
should be a preferable style for KDE to stay and get more userfriendly:

1a)
All dialogs that have elements which could be expanded to show more
should be resizeable. Think of a file dialog or any simple name giving
dialog. By now most of them are but I think this is mostly because the
standard programmed setting of dialogs is this way not because the
programmer thought of this feature. So this should be advised
explicitly.

Reasoning: 
If the user is able to resize he can adjust the dialog to his needs.
E.g. if he wants to have a look at something that his dialog inputs are
based on he can make a to big dialog smaller, or if she wants to see
more items of a selection range at the same time she can make the dialog
wider. I guess you have a lot of examples yourself. I myself are always
cheated by windows when I try to act like I'm used in KDE and dreadfully
pull on the edge of a file dialog. Its behaviour is Not The Right Thing
(tm) I believe.

1b) 
The last used size should be remembered next time, maybe optionally. 

Reasoning: 
I found out that I always resize the same dialogs because their default
size doesn't satisfy me. There should be only little effort I think to
enable this via the config files.

Alg:
read user size from config file
resize dialog before display
take size of dialog after close
save user size to config file

There are at least two possibilities to configure this:
Either a check whether to store the actual size or a button to take
actual size as standard size. It might depend on the dialog what should
be used.

1c)
Don't know if this is useful but there could also be a way to let the
user configure the place of the dialog. 
Up/Down/Left/Right/Center of App/Screen or in coordinates...

Jumped into my mind right now... but still don't see benefits.

2)
What about a setting for the distance between the elements in dialogs?
This would a) make all dialogs look even more simililarly, b) allow to
fit the look to the size of the screen (small distance with big fonts
looks as ugly as small fonts with big distance in the extreme). 

If we think of embedded devices where we would like to use KDE too there
is the need to adjust to their small display. This is done by choosing
the smallest font size by now. But if we could also set the distance
between the elements to e.g. "3" instead of fixed "10" what is mostly
used actually we might be able to get even the bigger dialogs of now on
a small screen by especially gaining in the vertical.

Those who use wide screens often choose larger fonts to please their
eyes. But then dialogs look strange as the proportions aren't any longer
those which were when the dialog were layouted by someone using a
smaller screen and smaller fonts. Adjustment of distance would be
welcomed again.

As almost all dialogs are rendered/layouted the moment before they are
displayed to take care of the font size it should also not be a problem
to use a parameter to set the distance of the elements.

Maybe there is the need to discuss whether there are different distances
to be defined and which they are.


SO far for my proposal. What do you think? Isn't this worth the effort
which is by the way not to complicate I think?  One little step more to
configuration overkill ;-)

Friedrich

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