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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Fwd: A new KColorCombo fro KDE 4?
From:       Sébastien_Laoût <slaout () linux62 ! org>
Date:       2005-08-10 20:36:47
Message-ID: 200508102236.47286.slaout () linux62 ! org
[Download RAW message or body]

Hello,

I recently posted a mail on kde-core-devel because I'm developping en enhanced 
KColorCombo (for a better usability, and a more pleasant look).

In KWord, there are toolbar buttons to choose a text, background and highlight 
color.

I think it could be replaced by the popup of the widget I made.
See the fowarded message below and the attached archive.

For the moment, the popup is dependant of the combobox.
But if you accept it could be made independant, so be used in toolbar-icons 
popup-menu.

The KWord color selector have names on the colors.
It's because you are using the "Named Colors" palette.
I haven't studied it very well but perhapse if the colors are sorted by 
rainbow/luminosity it could be very similar to what my combobox provides (and 
it could be more usable and beautiful).
If you are about to adopt my color-popup, I must add named colors (tooltips 
when hovering them...) possibility.

(BTW, where to find this named-colors palette? For me to study it...)

What do you think about it?

PS: a reply on kde-core-devel made me change the look of it.
I attached a mockup of what it could become.

----------  Message transmis  ----------

Subject: A new KColorCombo fro KDE 4?
Date: Mardi 9 Août 2005 20:32
From: Sébastien Laoût <slaout@linux62.org>
To: kde-core-devel@kde.org

Hello,

IMHO, the KColorCombo widget is not too usable.
It presents too few color choice and we have to scroll to view all choices.
The presented colors are not beautiful (they are dark colors from old
terminals), so the "Custom..." entry always need to be used to make a good
choice (and KColorDialog propose a to big amount of choice).

For my program, I created a new ColorCombo for a better usability experience.

And I found it could replace the standard KColorCombo.

You can find the sources, a screenshot, and the API docs in the attached
archive.

As you can see on the screenshot, it is a combobox that, when popuped-up,
present a rainbow (a better way to arrange colors for the user) array of
colors with different brightness (from very light, for background colors, to
very dark, for text colors, or the inverse for people who prefers
white-on-black display).
There is the possibility to select a default color (eg. use standard KDE
background color...) or choose in the entire spectre with a KColorDialog.
I tryed to make the API complete and simple enougth.

This works but isn't yet finished:
* It need to work in RTL environement, and have a min-size for the popup
* Painting should be optimized to redraw only changed colors instead of
  everything (it's why the current one can be slow with a big array of
 colors) * Dragging a color is possible only when the popup is open
* Selected color should span all the combobox width
* Add a setDefaultText() call to replace the "(Default)" string with a more
  suited string like "(Standard Background)"...

I would want to know your opinion on that.
* Can it replace KComboBox in KDE 4?
* Can it be introduced as a complement in KDE 3.5?
* Is the API right?
* Is it necessary to include the old KComboBox colors preset or was it here
  just because a default preset was needed?
* The KWord color selected have names on the colors. Is it needed?

The popup could even be made independant, so KWord could use it for theire
colors drop-down toolbar tools...

-------------------------------------------------------

Best regards,
Sébastien Laoût.

["CommonColorSelector.tar.bz2" (application/x-tbz)]
["ALightBorder_MOCKUP2.png" (image/png)]

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