On Fri, 3 May 2002, James K. Lowden wrote: > On 02 May 2002 09:26:15 -0500 "Lars Clausen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: >> Could you mark the widgets somehow so that the connection between values >> in the prefs structure and widgets isn't hardcoded? That would make it >> easier to change once the dialog gets too big. > > I agree with Larry Wall about laziness, and I consider hardcoding to be > work. I'll look for an intelligent, extensible answer, a/k/a > "cleverness". No worries.
The trick is to be lazy yet simple. "Make it work, make it right, make it fast." >> I can see us pretty soon being in need of a vertical layout, but we must >> make sure to make it easy to figure out. Separate parts for the tree >> dialog, sheets dialog, and new diagrams doesn't seem too bad. > > That demarcation makes sense to me. > > BTW, is there a notion of canvas or diagram preferences, or templates, > sort of like Dia style sheets? It occurred to me today that I have > (non-Dia) diagrams in which the diagram holds defaults for the objects. > Different diagrams, intentionally, have different rules for fonts, > colors, arrow headings, and lots of other things besides. There is currently no such notion. It's something to keep in mind for the future. > On layout. It may be that you can see further than I can. The primary > advantage of the vertical layout (pioneered by Netscape?) is that it can > accomodate many more entries than a tabbed dialog. OTOH, tabbed dialogs > require less screen real estate, and are directly supported by Glade. You know, I just noticed that you can have a tabbing widget with the tabs to the left. It's not quite a tree, but with the reorganization we talked about earlier, it would probably be nicer, and it should be easy to change into a tree if so desired. I believe the tree widget is getting an overhaul in Gtk2.0, so that change may need to wait until then. > I find dialogs with more than one tab layer disconcerting to use, and I > think tab lists with little arrows on the end to get to other, hidden > tabs (because they don't all fit) are a nusiance. Top-tabbing is just bad, for the above reasons. Left-tabbing is better, but will eventually need to be replaced by a tree. Which should be easy. > I won't paint you into any corners, Lars. I'm just saying that until Dia > 1.0, I wouldn't fret about changes in the organization and appearance of > the preferences dialog. Indeed. And since 1.0 will (as it looks right now) use Gtk2.0, we should consider the possibilities there before settling on a format. -Lars -- Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| H�rdgrim of Numenor "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I |---------------------------- will defend to the death your right to say it." | Where are we going, and --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire | what's with the handbasket? _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
