[Goodies-dev] Panel plugins HIG

[Harald Judt]

Am 03.06.2012 18:56, schrieb Mike Massonnet:
> Le mercredi 30 mai 2012 à 11:44 +0200, Harald Judt a écrit :
>> Am 29.05.2012 21:47, schrieb Landry Breuil:
>>> - when in vertical mode, labels should be angled vertically to display
>>> fine (but keep them horizontal to please people still using 4.8
>>> orientation-changed mode..). I assume if people wants labels
>>> horizontal, they'll use deskbar mode with a wide enough panel or with
>>> 2 or 3 rows.
>>
>> That's right about the labels,
>
> I'm all OK for using rotated labels at the time in vertical mode, I
> updated the Wiki page in that regard. One question is still open, what
> angle should be used for the labels? Is it always 90°? Or rather 270°
> when the panel is on the left side of the screen, and 90° for the other
> side?
>
> Currently plugins (clock, and menu plugin) seem to set an angle of 90°
> despit the position of the panel.

Yes, they all do and sadly there have been no efforts yet to do anything 
else. I'd be very fond of rotating the plugins depending on the panel 
position, but can that be done easily? And then, which way to rotate 
them? Does the plugins order need to be changed? Further, shouldn't the 
decision which way to rotate be ultimately left to the user (personal 
preference)? There must be a reason why it is 90° now and I'd really 
like to know it. I never got to like the vertical mode in the state it 
is now; the idea is nice but its realisation is a bit weird.

[...]

> One open question is the size of the labels. When the panel size is too
> small, for example<  18px, the font size may be reduced because it tends
> to be unreadable. But that's hard to tell, since it depends on the
> system font size.

I would not be opposed to the idea of setting a manual (fixed) font size 
instead of using the system font size for such small panels if 
necessary. At least that would make the small panel sizes usable for 
other things than launchers.

Harald

-- 
`Experience is the best teacher.'