Hi,

On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 20:20 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

And now, what of this is lost with the patch? 1 is not lost because the patch makes tabs always show, also when there only is one dockable, and tabs are drag handles too. 2 is addressed by the patch, it moves the flashing from the drag handle to the entire dockable, using the same highlight as in drag-and-drop. 3 is fine, the button is simply moved to the row of tabs. 4 is the tricky one, the patch doesn't really address this.

I can see two main approaches regarding 4:

a. Use the tab tooltip for the textual description b. Make use of that the tabs themselves are configurable, they can be changed to show the dockable name instead of an icon, or even both

Right now I lean towards a, the icons are descriptive by themselves.

IMO it would be nice to be able to have the name in the tab, besides the icon or text-only. It might even be nice to make icon+label the default for a dock that hosts just a single dockable.

Sven

On Monday 01 February 2010 21:53:15 Sven Neumann wrote:

IMO it would be nice to be able to have the name in the tab, besides the icon or text-only. It might even be nice to make icon+label the default for a dock that hosts just a single dockable.

Some icons carry more information, than just type of the dock, but dock icons hog precious vertical space. This makes me wonder if the icons could be thinner if shown with the label so they wouldn't stretch the tab higher.

Hi,

Martin Nordholts wrote:

I just attached a patch to

Bug 346881 - Remove redundant title of tab and move menu button up

works fine with a small nit:
when there's only one tab, the "Tab Style" menu entry is missing.

a. Use the tab tooltip for the textual description b. Make use of that the tabs themselves are configurable, they can be changed to show the dockable name instead of an icon, or even both

In principle icon+label is best, both easier to locate and to click. The only reason to display less is contrained space. IMHO.

Ideally, the tabs would gracefully degrade when there's not enough space available. For increasing number of tabs: 1. icon + label
2. icon + short label
3. icon only
4. icon || arrows for scrolling

If i understand the GtkNotebook API correctly, it is not possible to base something like this on the actual size of the tabs.

So, instead of trying to be clever i think it's best to display only the icon as default (with tooltip) and allow the user to customize as before.

regards, yahvuu

Hi,

On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 08:18 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

In principle icon+label is best, both easier to locate and to click. The only reason to display less is contrained space. IMHO.

Ideally, the tabs would gracefully degrade when there's not enough space available. For increasing number of tabs: 1. icon + label
2. icon + short label
3. icon only
4. icon || arrows for scrolling

If i understand the GtkNotebook API correctly, it is not possible to base something like this on the actual size of the tabs.

It's a good idea and I think we should try. It could work fairly well to hook into size-allocation of the tab widgets, and if the total width is wider than the width of the GtkNotebook, go one step down in your list.

One thing is unclear though, how would we map the current Tab Style settings to this? One approach would be to add a new style "Automatic" and make it default, but that doesn't feel very elegant...

I'd also like to, just for reference, link to a related discussion about making Tab Style a more global setting:

"[Gimp-developer] Making dockable tab style a global setting" http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2009-December/023825.html

I don't think it makes sense to turn this into a global setting. Simply because what setting is best depends a lot on the environment of each dockable. So it should be possible to tweak this for each dockable individually. It would make a lot of sense though to come up with a saner default for new dockables. The proposed "Automatic" mode would probably make a nice default.

Sven

Martin Nordholts wrote:

On 02/02/2010 02:40 PM, yahvuu wrote: Thanks, I've uploaded a new patch with this addressed.

thank you for caring about this stuff! will check it out..

Ideally, the tabs would gracefully degrade when there's not enough space available. For increasing number of tabs: 1. icon + label
2. icon + short label
3. icon only
4. icon || arrows for scrolling

here's how that might look like:
http://yahvuu.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/tabsdegradation.png To be honest, i like neither 2a) nor 2b) very much.

One thing is unclear though, how would we map the current Tab Style settings to this? One approach would be to add a new style "Automatic" and make it default, but that doesn't feel very elegant...

i don't think a default "Automatic" style hurts much. Nobody should have to mess with that menu on a regular basis.

I'd also like to, just for reference, link to a related discussion about making Tab Style a more global setting:

"[Gimp-developer] Making dockable tab style a global setting" http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2009-December/023825.html

while re-reading, i had a look at how CS4 looks like, and i now understand what Peter meant by calmness of text: http://www.softpedia.com/screenshots/Adobe-PhotoShop-Trial_1.png - très chic. and really guides the attention to the dialog.

But i don't think that discreet icons really hurt. Here's a second comparison, which also tries small icons, like Alexia said: http://yahvuu.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/tabheighticons.png

I guess icon size is within the domain of theming?!?

regards, yahvuu