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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Toolbox
From:       Cyrille Berger <cberger () cberger ! net>
Date:       2008-02-05 22:03:09
Message-ID: 200802052303.09122.cberger () cberger ! net
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On Sunday 03 February 2008, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> On Monday 28 January 2008, Cyrille Berger wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I think the toolbox needs a little bit of love, and some adjustement,
> > especially for the integration in Krita.
> >
> > Here are the problems I have noticed :
> >  - "koffice default" tools appears at the top of the toolbar, while it
> > might be ok for most application, for Krita they should appears below
> > Krita tools (and it might also be better if they only appears when a
> > "shape" layer is selected)
>
> I'm not sure I agree with you here. There are a couple of issues: the tools
> in this part can also be used to create a shape layer, so they cannot be
> hidden by default.
And that's a problem, because they only create a layer shape if the current 
selected layer isn't a shape layer. Besides they are the only tool behaving 
like that, for instance, the "painting" tools don't create a paint layer if 
the current layer isn't a paint layer. So I find that a bit confusing.

> Also, to keep a sense of uniformity with Karbon, the 
> position should be the same.
While I am all for consitency between KOffice application. For me, on top of 
the toolbox should appear the most usefull tools for the application. The 
text editing for KWord, cell editing for KSpread, chart editing for KChart, 
vector editing for Karbon, paint tool for Krita (for KPresenter, it's a bit 
difficult to see which one is more important :/ Ideally when doing a 
presentation I wouldn't need any tool at all, I would just import outside 
data (image) and type some text with predefined layouts).

But well, that's a decision we should leave to people who know interraction 
design, so that would be left to kde-usability.

> >  - I also think that spliting into a few categories would be a good idea,
> > like "navigation" for zoom and pan, "vectors shape" for "create
> > path", "freehand", "pattern" and "gradient"
>
> Yes -- Thomas was going to implement creating categories automatically
> based on the "path" in the tool identifier -- but although I remember he
> told he'd done that, I've never seen it work. The idea was to parse
> something like
>
> "default/navigation/pan" into top, navigation section, pan tool.

Well Thomas told me that he didn't intend to do that, but that we should 
simply use "setToolType" and that KoToolFactory::toolType() should be seen 
as 'category'. And I do think that is perfectly suited for our need, I don't 
really see the need for parsing the path of the tool identifier. And the 
question was more : "do we agree to have a navigation category ?".

> >  - Krita tools are disappearing when selecting a "shape" layer, after
> > discussing with a few users, it appears that most of them are confused by
> > this. Some of those tools need just to be disabled (paint tool mostly),
> > some are still valid (grid tools, color picker)
>
> Yes, that needs work. It's easy to stop making them disappear, but harder
> to disable the useless ones -- we'd have to special code that.

I haven't look, deeply, at the code, but instead of hidding, couldn't we just 
call setEnable on the buttons ? (and we probably just have to add an option 
to the tool that determine if the tool is native to the application or not).

> > I don't know if other applications have other problems as well ?
Answering, to my self : I am not convinced that the toolbox should be visible 
in KSpread.

> I think the basic interaction design of KOffice2 is sound -- with toolbox, 
> one toolbar and palettes, but that we could benefit from some really 
> thorough discussion with interaction designers and usability experts. How 
> about I draft a mail to kde-usability and see whether they can help us?
That would be definitively be helpfull.

-- 
Cyrille Berger
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