kdemultimedia (setCheckedState)

[Scott Wheeler]

On Tuesday 18 May 2004 11:49, David Faure wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 May 2004 11:43, Scott Wheeler wrote:
> > And a toolbar being visible / not visible is not a state?  Sorry, but I
> > don't see a fundamental difference.  If you were to put that same action
> > in a dialog you would do it with a checkbox, not a button that changed
> > its text, no?
>
> Exactly. Which proves that checkboxes and menuitems *are* different things.
>
> File / New is not a state ("this is a new file"), it's an action ("create a
> new file").

Sure.  There's a long list of things which are not states.  Something being 
visible or not is not in that list.  ;-)

> > ========================================================================
> > =                           (X) Error                                  =
> > ========================================================================
> > = Server foo.bar.com could not be reached. And delete everything in my =
> > = home directory.                                                      =
> > =                                                                      =
> > =                             [ OK ]                                   =
> > ========================================================================
>
> This is a dialog, not a menu item.

But that wasn't the point at all.  So we don't read all dialogs but do read 
all menu items?  That doesn't make any sense.

[combining responses]

> It's not a separate issue. The above leads to "two kinds of menu items: 
> those that represent a state and those that offer an action". The whole 
> reason why it's confusing _is_ the existence of two kinds. Changing the way 
> they look doesn't eliminate the fundamental problem. By changing the text, 
> we can unify all this and have only one kind of menu item, which is much 
> less confusing.  

Well, we currently have 18 KAction subclasses in kdelibs.  We have actions 
that represent state, selection, actions, widgets, etc.  While it might be 
interesting to consolidate everything to a "pure" action based organization, 
In the menu-bar case this would mean getting rid of state and selection.  I 
don't think that's what we're really headed for and I think would have a lot 
of practical limitations.

And really this is still another distinct type of action -- it's now "an 
action item that changes its function every time you click it" which I think 
is hardly less confusing.

(And I promise I'll shut up for a while and see if others have thoughts on 
this.  :-) )

-Scott

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