On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 10:06:39AM +0200, Abdelrazak Younes wrote: > Enrico Forestieri wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 12:47:25AM +0200, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> >> You are of course free to detach and use them as dialogs. > > > > That's why I say they are annoying, as I have to do that all the time. > > The docks consume horizontal space, so when I am in a long formula and > > I open the docked math panel, I could not see the cursor anymore and have > > to detach it perforce. > > You could have it docked the bottom or the top if you want. I think that the point is not what I want but rather user preference. I understand that people on Windows are accustomed to fully maximized windows, such that having a dock on the right or left is not a problem. On *nix, however, I think this is not a custom practice. Window managers let you configure things such that when a window has focus it is not brought to the front, so its common to have two or three windows in sight, perhaps with some part of a window covering a part of another one, but otherwise you can input something in each application by simply moving the mouse over a visible part of its window. This is very handy because you can copy and paste between apps very easily, for example. It is irritating that a dock modifies the layout of what you are seeing, so docking at the bottom or the top would be preferable. However, this means that you have to also account for the dock layout such that it appears fine whatever the dock position. But the math panel has a non negligible vertical extension and this, in turn, may be a problem if the window is not sufficiently tall. I see that when I detach a dock, after closing and reopening it, it comes back as dialog. So, it should not be so difficult to add a preference flag for opening something either as a dock or as a dialog since the first time. Who likes the dock is happy, who dislikes it can be happy, too. User preference are the magic words here. > >>> The correct solution would be that each separate panel > >>> appears as an icon in a toolbar and that it expands to its contents > >>> when clicked, pretty much as texmacs does it. > >> This is for 1.6. We need a Qt4.2 feature to do that easily. > > > > Well, this feature would not be eye candy and IMO would justify by > > itself the requirement of an higher Qt version. > > As a window user I am of course open to this but others might not. > For the record Qt4.3 is imminent and will be the minimum required > version for KDE4. But Qt4.2.0 is 6 months old only so I am sure it won't > be accepted... > If it can be slimmed, I reckon the dock widget is a good interim solution. > > Other candidates for the docking: > - The find&replace dialog > - The spellchecker dialog > > Those two are _very_ user-unfriendly; for example, you often have to > move them around to see the text underneath. Again, it depends if you work with a fully maximized window or not. Who works with fully maximized windows chooses a dock, who likes a smaller window chooses a dialog. User preference. -- Enrico
