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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: QWhatsThis - how to use it in dialogs now ?
From:       Tomas Furmonavicius <f1926 () kaunas ! aiva ! lt>
Date:       1999-12-03 6:31:55
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Hi,

I was following this hot thread, an now I want to pour my 3 gallons of petrol
to the fire.

I have a couple of thoughts. Such 'What This' style help is only useful in
config dialogs (if app need something more than tooltips and normal docs, then
there's something wrong with the app), as options can be confusing for new
users. But all these question mark  buttons  (in windowmanager, taskbar, or on
the dialog itself), are cool hacks, but just hacks. IMHO the whole concept of
tabed dialogs filled with nice controls with confusing  names is fundamentaly
wrong.

There is much better example - old and good *NIX rc files. All options in rc
files are usualy documented. We open rc file in editor, see option, see
description, see possible values. Everything in one place, easy to understand.

Such concept could be 'ported' to the GUI. Imagine: instead of tabed dialog,
you get a simple scrollable list of items. Every item - control widget and
description. Description could have two modes - Novice and Expert. In Novice
mode description could be longer - 3-4 sentences, with possible values. In
expert mode only option name could be displayed, and even control widget could
be changed - for example slider in Novice mode, simple entry field in expert
mode. To make navigation easier, listbox with option group's names (normaly
diplayed in tabbar) could be added - option list simply scrolls to the begining
of required group.

The best thing that such dialogs could be built on the fly from, say, XML
based description. No more kcmthis, kcmthat apps, no more hard work for Harri
and Mario with config dialogs in kppp ;-) 

Tomas

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