nick/settings-manager needs testing

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:58:40 +0000, Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org>
wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:50:23 +0100, Nick Schermer
<nickschermer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org>
> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:31:17 +0100, Nick Schermer
>>> <nickschermer at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Last evening I've pushed the category-based settings dialog. Maybe
>>>> some folks can give it a shot.
>>>>
>>>> Big changes:
>>>> - Category-based.
>>>> - Uses Garcon for items
>>>> - Pluggable dialogs by default (you can't disable it).
>>>
>>> Yay, I like all three points! Things I noticed:
>>>
>>> * most of the items are in the "Other" category on this machine,
>>>  even with latest garcon from master installed. I wonder whether
>>>  that is expected behavior (haven't looked into it in detail yet)?
>> 
>> We need to set the categories in the various desktop files.
> 
> Right. That makes a lot of sense. :)
> 
>>> * in the demo app you posted on IRC on Sunday, the active item had a
>>>  selection box around the icon and label, which I think was due to
>>>  GtkIconView; with ExoIconView the icon/labels each have their own
>>>  small selection box. Can we somehow make it look like with a
>>>  GtkIconView? I thought that looked really good!
>> 
>> In gtk3 we can, exo has a couple of advantages: good single click (but
>> that is easy to simulate) and follow-state emission, gtk has this in
>> gtk3.
>> So I think we should keep it like this and switch to gtkiconview when
>> we port to gtk3.
> 
> Sounds ok. This is no "visual regression" anyway, so not really a 
> concern. The demo app just looked a bit sexier.
> 
>>> * Like I mentioned on IRC the other day, I think we should move the
>>>  "<= All Settings" button between the header and content, and add
>>>  a filter entry like we have in the MIME editor. Categories take
>>>  up more vertical space, which will cause some items to be out of
>>>  the visible range on many machines. Also, if we allow more items
>>>  than just our own dialogs to show up in the settings manager, the
>>>  number will quickly become large enough to justify a filter.
>> 
>> Ok fine, will add this. Had this in mind as well.
> 
> Cool, thanks!
>  
>>> * I wonder if the category titles are prominent enough visually.
>>>  Maybe we can indicate the hierarchy in a stronger way, e.g. by
>>>  using expanders (which will show an arrow and allow to collapse
>>>  categories---perhaps permanently?). One alternative could be to
>>>  render a horizontal separator below the titles, I think that's
>>>  how KDE does it.
>> 
>> Separator is possible, will look into this. Personally I don't really
>> care about the titles: the obvious icon groups are important.
>> Expanders are overkill, we should keep it simple/stupid.
> 
> Right, expanders will also make keyboard navigation more annoying 
> (unless they are removed from the focus chain, which on the other hand
> may be undesired by some). I agree, let's not use them. Separators
> might be an improvement though.

Here's a screenshot of a quick attempt with separators:

  http://www.zimagez.com/miniature/screenshot-01252012-032002pm.php

I think it makes more clear what the categories are and what items
they contain, even though the separator style is not ideal in this
case (it works better with centered titles where the separator has
the highest opacity; but centered titles... nah).

Opinions about this style?

  - Jannis