[Xfce-bugs] [Bug 12799] New: Session chooser usability issues

[bugzilla-daemon at xfce.org]

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12799

            Bug ID: 12799
           Summary: Session chooser usability issues
    Classification: Xfce
           Product: Xfce4-session
           Version: Unspecified
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: Medium
         Component: General
          Assignee: xfce-bugs at xfce.org
          Reporter: magnus.bergman at snisurset.net
        QA Contact: bjt23 at cornell.edu
                CC: benny at xfce.org, nick at xfce.org
  Target Milestone: Xfce 4.12

I think the usability of the session chooser dialog could be improved. I've
always found it odd that there is no button for logging in. I'm used to always
clicking on the rightmost button for proceeding with the default alternative,
which in this case is logging in with the last used session. Instead the
session has to be activated in the tree view (by either double clicking or
pressing enter). This is not too bad in most cases. But when using it with a
touch screen (on the Pandora handheld computer which used Xfce) I found
clicking a button much preferred over double clicking something. Pressing enter
has another issue. If there are multiple sessions in the list it's not the most
recently used one used that is in the top of the list and selected. It's
actually sorted the other way around (at least for me, maybe the order is
simply undefined). And lastly I miss an option for deleting sessions.

To fix the session order I get the expected result (the most recently used
session selected) by simply replacing gtk_list_store_append() with
gtk_list_store_prepend() in xfsm_chooser_set_sessions(). But I don't know how
the list of sessions sent to this function is supposed to be sorted. Is it
perhaps better to fix it in the caller? Or perhaps assume the list is unsorted
and sort it on access time before adding the sessions to the list store?

It's trivial to add a login button to the dialog, but the dialog isn't wide
enough to have room for another button (with the DPI I'm using), which I guess
is the reason for not having the button in the first place. If it's undesirable
to make the dialog wider perhaps the options for creating and deleting sessions
could be placed under the tree view (labeled + and - perhaps as seems to have
become some common practice with GTK+ now)?

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