[digikam] [Bug 367604] New: Reduced usability of combined slider/input widgets in editing tools

[Frank Steinmetzger via KDE Bugzilla]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367604

            Bug ID: 367604
           Summary: Reduced usability of combined slider/input widgets in
                    editing tools
           Product: digikam
           Version: 5.1.0
          Platform: Other
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: minor
          Priority: NOR
         Component: showfoto
          Assignee: digikam-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: Warp_7 at gmx.de

The widgets I am talking about are those with which the user sets plugin
parameters, for example the angle of the rotation tool or the dimensions in the
resize tool.

Compared to Digikam 4, the new widget behaves very differently. That in itself
is not necessarily open for critique, and is rather a matter of opinion and
getting-used-to. But the new widget also introduces some shortcomings that go
against expected behaviour and does away with some useful features, as
described below.

First and foremost, when the user left-clicks on the number, the slider moves
to maximum. This should not happen. In any other situation, clicking a number
in such a context means set focus on and edit the number. Only by accident I
found out that the number now needs to be right-clicked to activate keyboard
input mode, which IMHO goes against common UI conventions.

In Digikam 4, there were five different ways to increment or decrement a value,
each way having a distinct increment interval¹:
- 1-increment by clicking the spinner up/down arrows or using the mousewheel on
the input widget. Especially the latter is fast because there is no need for
precise and time-consuming mouse movement to click on the arrow buttons.
- 3-increment by turning the scrollwheel on the slider
- «pagewise» increment by left-clicking on the slider (depending on tool,
sometimes ±10, sometimes more).
- absolute slider movement by middle-clicking on the slider

Especially the last two are default behaviour across Qt applications. In
contrast, in Digikam 5 a left-click moves the slider absolutely, there is no
page-wise increment anymore. I can live with the fact that using the
scrollwheel on the slider and on the number increments by the same amount. But
the increment in some tools is so high that it makes no sense to use it
anymore, e.g. 18 degrees in the free rotation tool.

Perhaps I am a bit more sensible to the described behaviour because I recently
bought a mouse whose scrollwheel moves too easily and I just upgraded from
digikam 4 to 5 last week. But I hope you understand my point.
Thanks for your time and effort in any case.

Reproducible: Always


Actual Results:  
Clicking on a number in an input widget moves the slider and thus the value to
maximum.

Expected Results:  
The keyboard focus moves to the number input.

¹ This old behaviour could also be criticised for being inconsistent. For me,
the typical Showfoto workflow consists in the loading of many images at once
and do necessary corrections, such as rotation, crop, colours etc. Having
several increments to choose from with a single mouse action made this work
very fast, because I very seldomly need to use the keyboard (mostly for calling
the tools through shortcuts) or do precise mouse movements to hit the spinner's
arrow buttons.
IMHO, Digikam does not aim to be a simple and easy tool for every-day photo
management. Judging from its range of features, it is rather for users who want
to dig deeper into a subject matter and are therefore more accepting towards
more functionality in exchange for a steeper learning curve.

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