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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Minicli Polishing
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () olympusproject ! org>
Date:       2002-09-15 3:29:51
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On Saturday 14 September 2002 03:16, Martijn Klingens wrote:
> Anyway, does anyone have a strong objection regarding this, or can I clean
> the code up and commit?

some comments;

 o i have thought about the group box replacement thing and came to what now 
seems to me to be the obvious realization: this is a style thing. meaning it 
should be handled by the widget style. simply change keramik or the default 
style to draw groupboxes without a frame and the text in bold. i hope this is 
possible (haven't researched it copmletely yet) because that would mean that 
all of kde (and Qt apps) could be made conformant instantly! doing this by 
hand in one place as a non-consistent thing is probably a poor solution.

 o the space between the label and the widget (e.g. User&name: and the 
lineedit) is not good. they should be close for association. the widgets can 
still line up on their left edge, but there is no reason for them to be 
shoved to the right edge of the dialog.

 o speaking of style issues, sliders with the ranges to the left and right of 
the slider are not optimal IMO. the clash with the label (e.g. Priority) and 
don't work if you have more than one. if you have three labelled positions, 
they have to appear below. this should probably be stuck to even in the case 
of 2 labelled positions. using a 0 spacing layout to group the labels and 
slider make for a nice tight layout, i have discovered.

 o we need an "advanced" icon. using "Configure" for "Advanced" doesn't help 
the meaning of the icon (multiple meanings per icon is bad, and should be 
avoided if possible)

> Two questions regarding this code:
>
> 1. Should QLabels with disabled buddies be disabled themselves too? The

yes. we've been practicing and advocating this style on the list. the label 
and the widget are a single logical unit and should behave together. this 
will help users with association and improve clarity by keeping windows 
cleaner when options are off. if this isn't in the style guide, it ought to 
be.

> 2. To get a _reliable_ pixel-precise alignment of the checkbox labels and
> the 'normal' labels like Username and Password I had to introduce a
> QLabel-derivative QCheckBoxProxy. That way the checkboxes don't have a
> caption and form the leftmost column of a QGridLayout. It is possible to
> use a snippet like

unless we do this everywhere, i'd recommend against it.  i do like the look, 
but i'm always concerned about consistency: once users see it a certain way 
changing it (esp for the better) will inspire thoughts of "the rest sucks" 
;-) i don't think it enhances usaiblity tremendously, and it will always 
break w/Qt only apps (if that matters to you)

> Does anyone have a better idea, since both the checkbox proxy and the
> hardcoded metrics have some serious associated downsides?

using a spacer size that == the width of the checkbox as brought back by 
QStyle's pixel parameter method? this would be a challenge w/designer derived 
dialogs, but perhaps some additional post-uic-and-pre-compile magic (as is 
already done for things like i18n) might work? i dunno.. hard to say...

- -- 
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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