Re: [Texmacs-dev] Qt interface TODO list

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 05:06:06PM +0100, Miguel de Benito Delgado wrote:
> 1) There are still many bugs: see the bug tracker on Savannah and
> >   select 'Qt port' as the category. Any help on fixing these bugs,
> >   or reporting new bugs is welcome.
> 
> So the tracker *is* used, just low activity.

Please feel free to report any interesting activity ;^)

> > 2) The Qt iconbars are very ugly and not very native under MacOS (for
> > instance).
> >   The following things have to be redesigned with care:
> 
>   a) Under MacOS, there is no border between the title bar and the icon bars.
> >      Also, the main icon bar should not be visible by default.
> >      Probably, the mode dependent icons should be made larger and
> >      the focus dependent icons should remain small with a distinguished 
> > layout
> >      and a border with the mode dependent icons.
> 
> QT has QMainWindow::setUnifiedTitleAndToolBarOnMac() which I just tried and
> produces a very nice MacOS-like toolbar but with way too many buttons on it
> because all go into the same and only toolbar. This is explained in the QT
> docs as follows:
> 
> QToolBars in this toolbar area are not movable and you cannot drag other
> toolbars to it
> Toolbar breaks are not respected or preserved
> Any custom widgets in the toolbar will not be shown if the toolbar becomes
> too small (only actions will be shown)

Yes, for the typical Mac layout, we will have to drop the main iconbar
(this is the convention anyway), enlarge the icons in the mode dependent bar,
and use a separate bar for the focus dependent icons (available in the current
SVN version).

> >   b) The style of the icons should be customized: all icons are currently 
> > monospaced.
> >      This is both ugly and a waste of space.
> 
> What does "monospaced" mean?

They all have the same width.

> >   c) The small triangles indicating submenus are ugly. Instead we should 
> > make
> >      the existence of buttons apparent when going over the icons with the 
> > mouse,
> >      and the existence of submenus only in that case as well. Furthermore,
> >      it would be nice to implement buttons with a default action *and*
> >      a submenu when dragging out of the icon on the bottom.
> >
> 
> I think it's customary to show the small triangles. At least, I expect them
> when there are submenus under buttons. We could use prettier ones.

They are ugly and quite superfluous: showing them when going
over them with the mouse should be enough as a hint.
To hell with this "standard" !

> >   d) We need various new widgets for placement on the icon bars:
> >
> >      * Toggle buttons
> >      * Text fields
> >      * Textual input fields
> >      * Groups of small buttons (e.g.: go back, go forward)
> >
> >      Also, various styles might be used. For instance, text fields might
> >      use a smaller grey bold sans serif font and input fields a smaller font
> >      on a lighter background.
> >
> >   I will try to implemented most of these things in the X11 front-end,
> >   so that others may try to do the same thing for the Qt front-end.
> 
> In QT this is pretty straightforward, since it's all already done, just
> waiting to be used with a couple of instructions, even the styling which can
> be dynamically changed to almost anything you want. Are you sure you don't
> want to drop X11? :) Just kidding...

Well, I wait and see ;^)

For the moment, the symbol menus do not work as they should...

> > 3) The following widgets should be added at a certain point:
> >
> >   * A page setup widget (and a printer widget).
> >   * A color browser with three modes: standard and recently used colors,
> >     an rgb color picker and a background pattern selector.
> >   * A font browser widget (more complex, since it also requires
> >     a reorganization of the font system).
> >   * A paragraph properties widget.
> >   * A preferences widget.
> >   * A style/package browser widget with basic explanations?
> >
> >   All these widgets also have to be implemented on the X11 side.
> >   Some of them, such as the preferences widget, would benefit
> >   from a general mechanism for designing widget via markup.
> 
> With QT it's already there and called QUiLoader.

This might be overkill. Anyway, we will need these widgets;
they won't be shared with the other GUIs. As I said,
whenever sharing is required, we will rather export
the widget construction code via Guile.

> >   Nevertheless, we do not need that many extra widgets
> >   (most issues are better adressed by a well designed focus icons bar).
> >   If we are impatient, then we may actually implement a few ad hoc
> >   widgets which might later be replaced by something better.
> >
> 
> What's exactly the purpose of this focus icon bar? Provide buttons specific
> to the context in the editor, right?

Yes. The context will rather be called the current focus.
For instance, inside a theorem, the focus is usually the theorem.

Best wishes, --Joris