GUI nitpicking, application initial size.

[Waldo Bastian]

On Sunday 27 February 2005 18:32, Benjamin Meyer wrote:
> hmmm.... I don't think we should blindly increase the size of app windows
> by default.  There doesn't seem to be much behind the definitions of
> "better" above. 

You haven't actually looked at these applications, have you?

> Especially when that means that some developer will just 
> go add a resize() in the constructor (which is bad).  There is nothing
> wrong with having a smaller window.

Yes there is, it looks like shit if half of the stuff that is supposed to be 
visible is hidden somewhere or so small to be unintelligable. In some cases 
this actually gets even worse by the scrollbars that now appear eating away 
even more of the actual useful space. First impressions count and having a 
120x130 sized window when a 600x400 one is needed makes that the first 
impression is rather bad. That would really be a shame because the artists 
have delivered really impressive artwork for KDE 3.4, let's match that level 
of quality at the coding side of KDE. Small effort, huge payoff.

> If there are QWidgets that have been 
> overload'd for the paintEvent make sure to overload the minimumSizeHint(),
> for example in KTouch the keyboard could have a larger minimumSizeHint(),
> but don't give random app sizes via resize().

sizeHint(), not minimumSizeHint()

> In fact every app should not ever call resize()
>
>  (minus konq with its profiles...)
>
> For more info on why to not call resize() go here:
> http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/511

I agree that in some cases sizeHints are the way to go, but for KDE 3.4 that's 
too much work. There are also cases where calculating size hints is not 
trivial at all (QScrollViews and QTabWidgets come to mind) and where it is 
way easier to just pick a size that's sort of ok.

If you want to add sizeHints... kimagemapeditor is a good example of an 
application that could use a sizeHint on the DrawZone class. Have fun :-)

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org   |   Free Novell Linux Desktop 9 Evaluation Download
bastian at suse.com  |   http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/eval.html
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