On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:17:13 +0200 Danny Milosavljevic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, > > Am Montag, den 22.08.2005, 16:19 +0200 schrieb A.J. Venter: > > > > > > > I would say a more sane approach is that application settings should > > > > override theme defaults. I know the gnome guys have this thing > > > > about deciding how every human being on the planet ought to think > > > > but surely they didn't make it impossible to do this ? Did they ? > > > > > > The gnome guys think, that fonts and themes should be controlled by > > > the user, i.e. every human being on the planet, not by the > > > application, i.e. programmer. > > > > > Oh I've heard their arguments, I even agree with them. It's their > > METHODS I don't approve off. > > Works pretty well... all gnome apps more or less feel the same. I can > use all of them with minimal learning. Which should be the point, cause > I dont use the comp to play around with fonts but to get some actual > work done. > > Note that your actual problem comes from the fact that you use a > pixel-based widget placement scheme. Your app translated into chinese > will not look good with a pixel-based widget placement scheme either. Or > hebrew, or any of the "double-width" languages. Or a top-down language. > Or on a 10000x10000 pixel monitor. Or on a 320x240 pixel monitor. It > will look crap on anything _but_ exactly the system you developed it on. > This is bad. > > gtk uses so-called containers. If you dont specify coordinates and sizes > but relationships, you'll never run into those problems. > > Now I was a delphi user too and I know that there you dont have another > choice than using pixel coordinates all over the place. However, I do > think that lazarus added better anchors with relationships. Use them. > > In gtk, "placing" a edit box and, to the right a button is > (pseudo-code): > > container := THorizontalBox.Create; > container.BorderWidth := 7; In LCL: container := TPanel.Create(Self); container.BevelSize:=0; container.ChildSizing.LeftRightSpacing := 7; container.ChildSizing.TopBottomSpacing := 7; > e := TEdit.Create(); > e.Text := 'edit'; e.Align:=alLeft; > b := TButton.Create(); > b.Caption := 'Boo'; b.Align:=alLeft; > container.Add(e); > container.Add(b); e.Parent:=container; b.Parent:=container; > window.Add(container); container.Parent:=Self; Mattias > no pixel coordinates or pixel size anywhere in the layout. If you know > java, you know what I mean too, there those are called "layouts", which > is what they do. > > Now, in a (completely) pixel-based system, of course having: > > e := TEdit.Create(Window); > e.left := 0; > e.width := 250; > e.parent := window; > e.Text := 'Edit'; > b := TButton.Create(Window); > b.left := 260; > b.width := 200; > b.parent := window; > b.Caption := 'Boo'; > > That of course will get you into trouble when the screen size/resolution > (and thus the font size has to in order for the user to be able to read > anything) changes, the language changes, the window size changes, the > theme changes, ..... did I miss anything ? > > > I think they go about their goal of consistency in completely the wrong > > way and fail exactly at what they set out to do - controll by the user. > > Where KDE gets it right is letting the user configure everything, then > > sticking with it as DEFAULT which the user can overwrite PER > > APPLICATION because not all apps do the same tasks and thinking that > > there can be a completely universal "good" standard is just stupid. > > They dont do the same tasks but they do look the same, in gnome. Which > is good. > > I'm actually one of the borderline persons, in that I even hack the > filedialogs of qt, gtk and mozilla to be _the same one_. (part 1: > http://www.thundrix.ch/projects/gtkfiledialog4qt/ ) > > > Some apps NEED to look different in order to > > actually work usably. I have actually had a lead gnome dev (who shall > > remain nameless) say: "any setting that would only be usefull to one > > application must never be implementable". This I dissagree with 100%. > > Note that he probably meant "any setting that would only be useful to > one application will never be included into the user-visible gnome > settings manager". If so, that would be a prefectly good policy. App > settings into the apps. System settings into the system. > > > As far as I am concerned, too many options for configuration is a lesser > > crime than too few, and every real user agrees with me - and I have a > > rather > > depends on what option. > > > particular point of authority in this. I have thousands of users, and > > 95% of them were first time computer users when they touched my system > > for the first time. They all had the option of gnome or KDE, and they > > all tried both, and they all preffered KDE - because KDE could look the > > way they wanted it to. In the end TRUE userfriendlyness is recognizing > > that every user is unique, and allowing every bit of the system to be > > adaptable to the USER's preffered way of working - when you have that > > the computer learns the user and no longer vice versa. > > In fact, before I began on OpenLab 4 I did a survey among my paying > > customers, since not a single user was using the gnome desktop by > > choice. I won't be including it in OpenLab4 - I see no point of > > supporting something my customers don't want anyway. The gnome libs are > > there, cos there are some cool gnome apps. But that's it. > > > > A.J. > > > > cheers, > Danny > _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
