Review Request: Make mouse cursor size configurable

Thu Jul 21 09:37:12 BST 2011

> On July 20, 2011, 2:46 p.m., Fredrik Höglund wrote:
> > Lucas, first of all I want to say thank you for working on this.
> > 
> > In good UI design it is important to think about the problem the user
> > wants to solve from the user's point of view, and not in terms of how
> > the underlying implementation works.
> > 
> > Unfortunately I feel that this feature as it is now falls short of that
> > mark in a number of ways.
> > 
> > You are essentially giving the user a list of pixel sizes to choose from
> > and an input box to type it in. To choose a size they have to be able to
> > picture in their mind how large these sizes are in relation to the monitor.
> > They also have to understand that if the size they type in isn't
> > available, the Xcursor library will pick the closest size that is.
> > 
> > Exposing all these technical details of how the Xcursor library works
> > behind the scenes just detracts from the problem of wanting larger or
> > smaller cursors.
> > 
> > In my opinion it would be much more intuitive to have a slider that snaps
> > to the sizes that are available, and update the preview when the user moves
> > the slider. If the theme only has one size, you would indicate this by
> > disabling the slider.
> > 
> > Another option is to load a version of the left_ptr cursor for each
> > available size and display them in the right-hand size of the listview.
> > The user would select a size by clicking the one they want.
> > 
> > I also don't think it is useful to offer the user a way to go back to
> > choosing a size automatically based on a heuristic. The user can't predict
> > what size that will be, so it's akin to having an option to pick a random
> > size. If they have at one point made an active choice, they can just as
> > easily make another one.
> > 
> > The KCM should perhaps go back to using the heuristic if the user clicks
> > the "Defaults" button in the KCM, but not otherwise.

> Lucas, first of all I want to say thank you for working on this.

Thanks for the feedback :-)

> Unfortunately I feel that this feature as it is now falls short of
> that mark in a number of ways.

Okay, let's change this :-)

> In my opinion it would be much more intuitive to have a slider

Gnome is also doing this
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/images/guides/mouse_pointer/computer/mouse_pointer_gnome_fig3.jpg).
And it seems that Mac OS also does it this way
(http://kofler.info/uploads/images/blog/mac-bedienungshilfen.png).

> Another option is to load a version of the left_ptr cursor for
> each available size and display them in the right-hand size
> of the listview.

Do you mean display the different cursor sizes image above the
button "Remove theme"?

Personally, I would prefer this one more than the slider. Somehow
more directly for the user.

> I also don't think it is useful to offer the user a way to go back
> to choosing a size automatically based on a heuristic. The user
> can't predict what size that will be, so it's akin to having an
> option to pick a random size. If they have at one point made an
> active choice, they can just as easily make another one.

Hm, here I disagree. I would like to see KDE's UI being more
resolution independent (see also bug 272266). This means that
the user has a simple option that "makes everything bigger".
The fonts, for example, are yet depending on the font DPI value.
And also for the Oxygen widget style, there are plans to make
it scalable. I think that it is a very important feature that
the cursor adopts automatically to the DPI. Actually, KDE
is doing this, and I would not like to remove this behavior
completely.

What's about this? Remove the current combobox and spinbox
and add a label "Size:" above the "Remove theme" button, and
above this label a new combobox. This combobox has as first
entry "Automatically", and the following entries are the
available sizes. Example: "Automatically, 24" or
"Automatically, 24, 36, 48". Each entry has an icon with
the left_prt cursor in the corresponding size.

Would this be okay? Or should I use another widget than
the combobox? Maybe a small listview?

- Lukas

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http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101701/#review4898
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On June 20, 2011, 10:04 a.m., Lukas Sommer wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101701/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated June 20, 2011, 10:04 a.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for KDE Base Apps, KDE Runtime, kdelibs, and Christoph Feck.
> 
> 
> Summary
> -------
> 
> X11 mouse cursor themes can contain cursors in multiple sizes, making them pseudo-scalable.
> 
> It is yet possible in KDE to configure manually the mouse cursor size (editing kcminput.rc). However, the GUI of the corresponding KControl module didn't provide support to change this. This patch add support for changing the mouse cursor size to the GUI.
> 
> This are mostly GUI related changes. The underlying data structure XCursorTheme did yet provide support for choosing different sizes and only needed some adjustments.
> 
> 
> This addresses bug 90444.
>     http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90444
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/xcursortheme.cpp a987487 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/themepage.ui 2e38054 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/xcursortheme.h b474086 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/themepage.h 902148f 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/themepage.cpp 24b9efe 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/previewwidget.h f4d2c4e 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/previewwidget.cpp 3c264fc 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/cursortheme.h 8f7834b 
>   kcontrol/input/xcursor/legacytheme.h 23c9d5f 
> 
> Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101701/diff
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Tested locally. Works fine for me. Also when using non-standard font DPI values.
> 
> 
> Screenshots
> -----------
> 
> 
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101701/s/188/
> 
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101701/s/189/
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Lukas
> 
>

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