[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: [Kde-pim] KPilot Developer's notes for sept. 30
From:       Adriaan de Groot <adridg () sci ! kun ! nl>
Date:       2001-10-01 23:10:43
[Download RAW message or body]

[cc to kde-usability because it offers a little comparison app between two UI 
approaches. Usability readers, please see footnote [1] at bottom.]

On Monday 01 October 2001 08:28, David Bishop wrote:
> On Sunday 30 September 2001 10:56 am, Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > I *still* think it's an improvement, though, on what we had. As for the
> > conduit setup dialog: the behavior David was complaing about, where
> > single-clicking on a conduit would start its configuration is caused by
> > me interpreting the KDE single-or-double-click policy as intended. Ie. in
> > many places you *can't* select things by clicking on them. Anyway, it's
> > changed now.
>
> Heh.  Goes to show why you should always have multiple perspectives.  I
> *never* use the single click, so I would never have thought of that....

Well, now you can try both. I've disabled configure-on-single-click in the 
old-style widget, and added long texts. So

	kpilotConfig -c

gives you the old-style conduit configuration (which is ugly because i used 
the wrong colours, but you get the idea) and 

	kpilotConfig -c -n

gives you the new-style .ui based one.


> > Then there's tooltips -- or descriptions -- for conduits. We need to add
> > comment fields to the .desktop files for the conduits. That's enough,
> > since the comment is displayed in the config widget. There's no need to
> > do any more. Note that long comments look ugly, so I'll have to look into
> > doing a decent formatting job on the description entry.
>
> Cool.  There goes two of my biggest ui complaints, all in one update :-)

The old-style configurator uses multi-line descriptions, visible on screen 
all the time. The new-style version uses dynamic QToolTips. Man, have I 
learned a lot about UI niftiness while doing this. Oh, and I learned that 
QListBoxes suck for doing this kind of moving-items-around work. Maybe the 
d&d should be removed from the old-style dialog completely.

[ade]

PS [1]: Note for kde-usability readers: David has been pestering me about 
usability for KPilot, and has designed a number of .ui files for me. 
kpilotConfig is a program that exercises those .ui files and compares them to 
old-style hand-coded dialogs. It gives us a platform to experiment with 
various approaches on. (Actually, David's redesign of the general 
configuration dialog for KPilot won the battle and is now the only one 
available, but we're still thinking about the conduit configuration dialog).

A tarball for kpilotConfig can be obtained from

	http://www.cs.kun.nl/~adridg/kpilot/kpilotConfig.tar.gz

It unpacks to its own subdirectory (kpilotConfig-0.2/) and contains a 
Makefile which should work with some minimal tweaking (it's geared towards a 
RH7.1 system). Running kpilotConfig will pop up a dialog with KPilot 
configuration options. Use -c to get a conduit setup dialog (that's the 
interesting bit right now). Use -c -n to get a new-style dialog. You may have 
to have some KPilot conduit .desktop files installed -- this is usually the 
case on a stock distro install, otherwise you'll need kde-pim. Oh, and 
kpilotConfig compiles under KDE 2.1, 2.2 and 3.0. 

PS [2]: I realize I'm really tired and may not be coherent above here. 'scuze.
_______________________________________________
Kde-pim mailing list
Kde-pim@mail.kde.org
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]