RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] ImageMagick

["Gerry Iles" <GerryI@xxxxxxxx>]

About the filter dropdown, it appears to be because the popup appears
underneath the mouse pointer and they want the mouse pointer to be over
the currently selected item as simply moving the mouse over the list
changes the apparent selection.  Moving the mouse pointer
programmatically is bad UI form so they have chosen to move the list
contents instead.  On Windows, the popup appears either above or below
the field and the mouse is never over it so the problem doesn't occur.

It does look completely horrible and seems to make this sort of control
a very bad choice for selecting something from any reasonably large
list.

They could possibly fix it by cropping the popup down to the top of the
list and then expanding it once you cause it to scroll but it would
still be quite nasty as there would be cases where the user can only see
a couple of the entries and would have to scroll the list to see what is
available.

I actually think they should totally redesign the control so that it
behaves in a more user friendly manner.

The overall plan (for export at least) is to select the filter before
the export and only show the file selector dialog once the export has
happened.  This will remove the need for us to use this control to
select the filter.  Eliminating it for import is harder as we use it to
both control what files are displayed by the dialog and which filter (or
filter family) is used to do the import.  This allows you to import a
file using a specific filter (e.g. that isn't what Xtreme would choose
as the best one for the file).  I think the solution for this is to add
a separate control to the file dialog for selecting the filter as
described by Alex that behaves in a nicer way.

Gerry

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Neil Howe
Sent: 19 July 2006 12:39
To: dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] ImageMagick

Comments below.

> >> The ImageMagick stuff is ready for testing as of
> >> r1475.
> >>
> >> * The image format selector looks a bit stupid. Ideas?
> >
> > This is all about to change with the work Luke is doing. We agreed
that
> > the bitmap type selector would be in the export dialog, so you can
> > switch the type while playing with the settings. So I guess this
will
> > just be 1 (rather large) popup list on the dialog.
> >
> > Or perhaps, since the list is so long, it would be better to have a
> > separate "Bitmap Types" tab on the dialog, which has a scrollable
list
> > box?
> 
> I had a long and unproductive discussion with the GTK folks on IRC
> last night about this. The summary of it is:
> * They perceive the "filter" as a filter on the files displayed in
>    the box, rather than a means of selecting save type. They see
>    using it to select save type as an "abuse" of the control and
>    thus are uninterested in fixing bugs that derive from this
>    usage (I think they are wrong, but...)
> * Hence they are uninterested in fixing things so the box can appear
>    with "Browse for other folders" pre-expanded
> * The behaviour where the GTK choicebox with the list of file-types
>    on appears as a huge list, filling the screen, with the top half
>    completely blank is allegedly deliberate (unbelievable, that).

Yes, that is amazing as my first impression was that it had gone very
wrong.