On 03/23/2010 09:57 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:

Changes in GtkNotebook

- GtkNotebook allows to show 'action widgets' in the space that is not occupied by tabs. This functionality is also available in GtkBuilder via the 'action-start' and 'action-end' child types.

That should allow us to save some space in the docks. IIRC, Martin has plans that depend on this new API in GTK+.

Yes, the bug report (with a patch that uses the new API) is: Bug 346881 - Remove redundant title of tab and move menu button up https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=346881

/ Martin

Quoting Sven Neumann :

just forwarding a few aspects of the GTK+ 2.20 release notes that are of interest for GIMP:

GTK+ 2.20.0 is now available for download at: :
:
:
Congratulations and a lot of thanks to the GTK+ team for this release.

Though perhaps minor, the improvements made to the keyboard mnemonics (the underlined letters in menus and dialogs) seem very elegant and intuitive.

From the description on http://blogs.fedoraproject.org/wp/mclasen/2010/03/24/mnemonics/ :

* no mnemonics are shown when menus are opened with the mouse * interacting with the menus via the keyboard (opening a menu with keyboard shortcut, or navigating with arrow keys or similar) will make mnemonics visible
* mnemonics which cannot be activated are not shown; this includes insensitive controls
* moving the mouse over a non-activatable menu item does not change which mnemonics can be activated

Thank you, GTK+ team.

On 03/24/2010 10:00 AM, saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com wrote:

Quoting Sven Neumann :

just forwarding a few aspects of the GTK+ 2.20 release notes that are of interest for GIMP:

GTK+ 2.20.0 is now available for download at: :
:
:
Congratulations and a lot of thanks to the GTK+ team for this release.

Though perhaps minor, the improvements made to the keyboard mnemonics (the underlined letters in menus and dialogs) seem very elegant and intuitive.

From the description on http://blogs.fedoraproject.org/wp/mclasen/2010/03/24/mnemonics/ :

* no mnemonics are shown when menus are opened with the mouse * interacting with the menus via the keyboard (opening a menu with keyboard shortcut, or navigating with arrow keys or similar) will make mnemonics visible
* mnemonics which cannot be activated are not shown; this includes insensitive controls
* moving the mouse over a non-activatable menu item does not change which mnemonics can be activated

Thank you, GTK+ team.

This feature:
* no mnemonics are shown when menus are opened with the mouse is quite UNfortunate and to my way of thinking, inappropriate.

IMHO the way people learn the mnemonics is by seeing them. It is the mouse-users that most "need" (should) learn them to increase their productivity and reduce visits to the doctor for "mouse shoulder".

Just my 2 øre worth....

Jay

On Wednesday 24 March 2010, saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com wrote:

* no mnemonics are shown when menus are opened with the mouse * interacting with the menus via the keyboard (opening a menu with

keyboard

shortcut, or navigating with arrow keys or similar) will make mnemonics visible
* mnemonics which cannot be activated are not shown; this includes insensitive controls
* moving the mouse over a non-activatable menu item does not change which mnemonics can be activated

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available? By seeing them when using the menu with the mouse - this is a sub conscious learning process going on, you see it the first time, the second time, the third you don't use the mouse but the keyboard because you remembered that this function is available via a shortcut without having to resort to the mouse. With this enabled you'll never find out and thus you have to replace an automatic sub conscious process with a conscious effort - something most people will not endeavor to do and is for the most part less effective.

Thank you, GTK+ team.

Yes, thank you for getting rid of a valuable function in a very unelegant way and making life harder for people to understand how to interact with complicated software!
I just hope this can be deactivated even in a few years time, for the time being the setting "gtk-auto-mnemonics = 0" will be added permanently to my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 - if that should ever disappear I'll phase out any application that uses GTK - even if that means switching to windows for my photo editing needs. But digikam is reaching maturity, maybe it's there when this bonkers development becomes standard, I'm already on the verge of giving up on the GIMP as it can't remember the last settings in many dialogs after a restart or even from one dialog invocation to the next - I'm getting fed up to reenter for example my copyright comment over and over even if I don't leave the GIMP when saving the edited image for publication. Little things like this menu change may push me over the edge and make me - and many of my friends, which I have supported over the years when editing images with the GIMP - dump it for good... regards
Karl Günter Wünsch

On 3/24/10, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available?

This is default behaviour on Windows. The majority of GIMP users (up to ~90% in my country) are on Windows. What was your question again? :)

Alexandre

On Wednesday 24 March 2010, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 3/24/10, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available?

This is default behaviour on Windows.

Which is the first thing I disable on any Windows installation I do and the users are happy about that.
regards
Karl Günter Wünsch

On 03/24/2010 03:21 PM, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

On Wednesday 24 March 2010, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 3/24/10, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available?

This is default behaviour on Windows.

Which is the first thing I disable on any Windows installation I do and the users are happy about that.

The shortcuts should definitely be shown while using the mouse. Who came up with this idea? I know this isn't the GTK+ mailing list, but seriously, how is this an improvement? Were the drop down menus getting too wide with the included shortcuts? Were they interfering with legibility? Why are they trying to fix problems that don't exist?

What percentage of users navigate the menus via keyboard? To me beginners use the mouse to navigate the menus. Experts use keyboard shortcuts. People that are unable to use the mouse use the keyboard to navigate the menus until they learn the shortcuts. It is very awkward for me to learn the keyboard shortcuts if they aren't visible during mouse navigation. I never use the keyboard to navigate the menus.

Just my two cents.

-Jason Simanek

On 03/25/10 05:02, Jason Simanek wrote:

On 03/24/2010 03:21 PM, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

On Wednesday 24 March 2010, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 3/24/10, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available?

This is default behaviour on Windows.

LOL It must be the right thing to do then !

Which is the first thing I disable on any Windows installation I do and the users are happy about that.

The shortcuts should definitely be shown while using the mouse. Who came up with this idea? I know this isn't the GTK+ mailing list, but seriously, how is this an improvement? Were the drop down menus getting too wide with the included shortcuts? Were they interfering with legibility? Why are they trying to fix problems that don't exist?

What percentage of users navigate the menus via keyboard? To me beginners use the mouse to navigate the menus. Experts use keyboard shortcuts. People that are unable to use the mouse use the keyboard to navigate the menus until they learn the shortcuts. It is very awkward for me to learn the keyboard shortcuts if they aren't visible during mouse navigation. I never use the keyboard to navigate the menus.

Just my two cents.

-Jason Simanek

I think your points are entirly valid, this is a bad direction to go in. I strongly suggest you open a bug on GTK+ about this. They are pretty intractable and refractory to any outside suggestions that they may not have made the best choice BUT if no one flags this sort of stupidity it certainly will not get fixed.

While there is some overlap of gimp and gtk+ developers since it was originally gimp tool kit, the two are basically separate now, so please bug gtk+. ;)

Post a link to the bug here if you like and I'll give it a comment if I can add anything.

regards.

On 03/24/2010 03:21 PM, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

On Wednesday 24 March 2010, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 3/24/10, Karl Günter Wünsch wrote:

This is ludicrous - how would anyone trying to use the keyboard learn the different mnemonics available?

I would imagine by holding down the ALT key -- a necessary precursor to actually using the mnemonic keystroke and thus a logical, intuitive, and discoverable action. If it is OK to presume that a user already knows that the ALT key is associated with accessing menu items (this association had to be learned somehow, it is not intuitively obvious), what is wrong with presuming that they will likewise learn that holding down the ALT key will reveal the underlined letters?

Quoting Jason Simanek :

The shortcuts should definitely be shown while using the mouse. Who came up with this idea? I know this isn't the GTK+ mailing list, but seriously, how is this an improvement? Were the drop down menus getting too wide with the included shortcuts? Were they interfering with legibility? Why are they trying to fix problems that don't exist?

The mnemonics are unrelated to GIMP's keyboard shortcuts (which will still be visible in the menus, unless the user has specified otherwise in his gtkrc). Personally, I never use the menu mnemonics in GIMP because keyboard shortcuts are much more efficient and are also dynamically configurable (surely hitting the "+" key is simpler than ALT+V, ALT+Z, and ALT+O). To me, having random letters underlined in menus and dialogs is just visual noise cluttering up the interface.

As a final note, the attention given to discoverability for facilitated access to commands or advanced features need not be so strict as that for "normal" workflows. If there is an easily discoverable way to accomplish a task (e.g., through the menus) then there is nothing wrong with a more convenient method also being provided which might not be readily apparent (perhaps only learnable by reading the manual or tutorial). Advanced users will learn to avail themselves of such optional conveniences without requiring prompting from talking paperclips or animated walkthroughs, and the neophytes are better off not being confronted with the additional complications.

On 03/25/2010 01:00 AM, saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com wrote:

The mnemonics are unrelated to GIMP's keyboard shortcuts (which will still be visible in the menus, unless the user has specified otherwise in his gtkrc).

Wait. I thought they were using the word 'mnemonics' to mean what is commonly called 'shortcuts'. I see now that what was meant by 'mnemonics' was the underlined letters in menu items. As I understand it, these underlined letters are only useful if you are navigating the menus via keyboard. Well, making those visible only when navigating the menus by keyboard makes sense.

Pardon my confusion. The UI-world use of the words 'mnemonic' and 'shortcut' seem confusing to me, since the functionality of the two in this case is very similar. I would call that a misuse of the word 'mnemonic'. But this isn't a debate about language use.

Advanced users will learn to avail themselves of such optional conveniences without requiring prompting from talking paperclips or animated walkthroughs, and the neophytes are better off not being confronted with the additional complications.

I don't think that philosophy applies to the presence of keyboard shortcuts next to the names of menu items. These subtle bits of additional information are a different species than talking paperclips. One is helpful but not intrusive. The other is condescending and intrusive when on by default.

In my experience 'neophytes' or non-expert users don't even notice that the shortcuts are there. I have people at work that supposedly work on computers every day that don't know the keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste. For some it seems the GUI is filled with lots of small details that they don't comprehend, so they just ignore those details and continue working to the highest level of efficiency that they are capable.

-Jason Simanek

On 3/25/10, gg wrote:

This is default behaviour on Windows.

LOL It must be the right thing to do then !

If you made an effort of reading things in context, you wouldn't LOL, because there is nothing to LOL about.

I strongly suggest you open a bug on GTK+ about this.

+1

Alexandre