My experience with novice users is, that they do not expect stuff anywhere at all. They do not search the menus for usefull content. Nor do they look at comboboxes in detail. Just remember, you asked for colorizing activities and it was right in front of you nose.
Why are the global settings in the track detail dialog? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When I did that stuff I considered a dialog for the global settings. I chose the current solution as the less evil one. 1) If you want to select the global limts/values and you want to adjust them for your current use case, you have to find the menu, the menu entry, switch to a dialog, find it among all the settings. Sure you can shortcut that stuff by adding an additional setup button. Just another road to Rome. Right now you select the global limit/value, you see what it is , you can change it. 2) For your simple tracks such a dialog might look nice and simple. But consider tracks with a lot of extensions. Like a drone will provide you. Or your scientific research project. Or your various cycle computers. If it really comes bad several of these extensions have the same property as extension but with a slightly different tag. Will you find it easily in a list of 20+ limits? And you have to load at least one track of that kind to append the list of possible limits. Which brings us close to the current solutions Right now you set global limits for extensions right at a track containing these extensions. I think this is much easier than any dialog with a list of all limits. ToolTips and help text: ------------------------------ If you do not like them, change them. It's really not that hard, especially if you started to compile the stuff on your own. Most GUI elements are defined by the *.ui files you find in the code. These files can be changed by Qt's tool "designer". Right click on the element to change, select "change toolTip" and edit the text in the source tab. Not the "rich text" tab as it will spam the string with all kind of HTML decorations and will give the translators a bad day. If you need help to find the right file ask me. If you changed just a single *ui file send it to me via email. If you start to change a whole bunch of files consider to fork the project with BitBucket and commit the work as pull request. Am Freitag, 25. November 2016, 15:03:18 schrieben Sie: > Oliver, > > On Friday, 2016-11-25 10:44:58 +0100, you wrote: > > ... > > As the buttons are in the track details dialog the selection is for the > > track only. > > Erm, except when you change some global default values. > > > You can either choose: > > > > * user defined limits or values for this track > > > > * automatic limits for this track > > > > * apply the globally stored limits to this track > > > > If you select global limits you will see the current ones. And you can > > change them. > > Basically, I see two problems here. The minor problem is that the Style > tab in the track details dialogue provides two pairs of tool tip texts: > > * For the minimum/maximum range: > > - User defined limits for this track > > - Automatic limits > > - User defined limits for all tracks > > * For the width and arrow visibility: > > - Use/edit user defined scale factor for this track > - Use/edit user defined visibility of arrows for this track > > - Use/edit system's default factor for all tracks > - Use/edit system's visibility of arrows for all tracks > > These help texts should be made as similar to each other as is possible > and meaningful but in any case the word "system" should be avoided here. > > The major problem, however, is that there's probably just way too much > crammed into this track details dialogue, that is to say the definition > of global defaults. > > A new user would probably expect fo find a "Setup" entry in one of the > pull-down menus. We could combine such an entry for setting global def- > aults with the already existing "Setup Map Paths" and "Setup DEM Paths" > entries. But having to already have a track to be able to globally spe- > cify how a track should be displayed is almost as surprising for a new > user as would be having to already have a map to be able to specify the > map paths. Almost. > > If we separate the definition of defaults from the track details dial- > ogue, we'd have to specify what preciseley will happen when the user > changes these defaults: > > - The new defaults will only affect new tracks. > > - The new defaults will affect all tracks where the property in > question is still set to "default" (which, of course, is the def- > ault setting for new tracks). > > The first is relatively easy to implement, the second resembles more > what we are currently having, but would require a new "default" entry to > be selectable for every property. And it should tell the user what the > current default is. Perhaps an initially checked checkbox "Use default" > next to the selectable item which shows the yet unchangeable default > value. Unchecking the checkbox will make the value changeable (greying > out unchangeable values is good for numbers, but for colors?). The ab- > ove would work at least for the colors, the width, and the arrows, the > latter then requiring a two items pull down selection "with arrows" and > "without arrows". For minimum and maximum we would probably need radio > buttons, "auto", "default", and "custom". > > > A change will affect every track where you chose to use > > > > global limits. There is a small caveat: it will not update current > > opened graphs. You have to reopen them. > > This just needs to be documented. As soon as the user clicks "Ok" in > the global default changing window check whether any defaults have been > changed at all, check whether there are any open tracks, and if both > conditions are met, pop-up a window telling the user something along the > lines of "To apply the new default vaules to the currently open tracks > close the tracks and re-open them." > > Lads and lassies, this is pure brainstorming! I've never ever said any- > thing like the above :-) > > Sincerely, > Rainer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Qlandkartegt-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/qlandkartegt-users
