[Kalzium] Thoughts on Kalzium from a user

[Carsten Niehaus]

This is a edited Mail from Ryan Kroetch. I don't want these information to be 
lost:

First I'll look at the periodic table and the sidebar (overview etc)
-- I really like the overview and new KDE tooltip + picture at mouse
over. However, at first I had problems figuring out how to get the
element to get over into the overview, I tried clicking,
click-dragging, etc -- It appears as though there is an intentional
delay there. This initially confused me as an unfamiliar end-user, so
it might be preferable to get rid of the delay or provide some visual
notification (loading on the left perhaps) that it is getting there if
a delay is necessary for CPU use etc.

Second, lets look at the Calculate tab. Very Very nice. It is very
intuitive and a useful function to help eliminate alot of needless
data lookup + entry. My only thought on this tab would be that when
there are alot of elements the buttons (especially clear) resize to
fill what the scrolling sidebar would be, rather than remaining on the
visible sidebar, while this may be a limitation of Qt, it would be
great if they could stay visible (I didn't notice there was a clear
and was trying to get rid of a bunch of elements!) -- Also, I seemed
to have the gut impression that hitting the remove button would
sequentially remove element by element in push-pop order. The remove +
click element is a very Good thing to have, but it might be good to
have an 'undo' or 'remove last element' somewhere in there without
over-complexifying it :)

 Third, Timelime and State of Matter are two very self-explanatory
tabs that do their jobs well, I don't know of any way to improve these
features and definately find them interesting to play with.

Fourth, the general overview popup. This is relatively unchanged aside
from the prettiness (which is appreciated). The interface remains
intuitive and snappy. (And the melting and boiling point icons are
cute. I don't have any recomendations for this.

Next I looked at the different view modes and glossary. All are again
appreciated and no suggestions are present.

Finally, the plotting device. For me, this feels slightly detached
from the program. The main reason I feel that way is the input of
range of elements. You have a beautiful periodic table yet depend on
periodic table #s for input of range. This requires a focus switch
which is both awkward and unproductive. One suggestion for
implementing a range using the periodic table would have a 'select
range' button by the numeric inputs which either brings to focus the
main periodic table with a selector method (click, click, or
drag/select, or click, ctrl+click, shift+click) or bringing up a
seperate periodic table popup with range selection there.

Overall I really love the improvements to Kalzium, you have maintained
a generic easy-to-use interface while increasing the feature set to
provide a very useful tool for both general and advanced use. Keep it
up!
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