[Kde-games-devel] Size grips

[Luciano Montanaro]

On giovedì 21 giugno 2007, Ian Wadham wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 07:40 pm, Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> > Hi all. I'm not subscibed to the list, though I read it occasionally.
>
> Hi, Luciano, and welcome.  What list are you usually on?  Or
> where in KDE are you from?

Oops! Now I have subscribed... The message bounced back, and I'm not sure 
there is actually a moderator moderating... I tried writing some time ago 
too, and I didn't see my message in the  archives.

However, I'm already subscribed to most KDE related mailing lists.
This issue should be on kde-core-devel or usability, I think.

>
> > I'm not fond of the idea of having the size grip in-window, basically
> > because that's normally handled by the window manager (and because
> > it looks awful :-P).
>
> That's your opinion, but I think the size-grip widget looks OK and
> certainly no worse than the buttons at the right of every title-bar. 

Yes, of course. It was meant as sort-of-a-joke... well, I actually don't 
think the widget fits how windows work normally under X - the window 
manager is supposed to handle resizing. But aestethics issues are 
important, and one of the deciding factors for my adoption of KDE is that I 
managed to make it look and work pretty close to the way I liked. 

> However this is a discussion about functionality.  It is not easy (for
> me) to hit the precise spot in the window border for resizing (using
> Plastik style).  Others have said they find a size grip easier to hit.
>

There are already a number of options available to make resizing easier:
- most window decorations let you change the border width, even plastik.
  (and plastik, at, least hides the border for maximized windows, so 
  it's not wasting space in the case of maximized windows) 
- There are decorations with a larger resize handle --- 
  like B2 and Modern System 

Of course, you can be of the opinion these decorations look ugly ;)

Another issue I have is that there are many window manageres out there -- 
some are quite different in functionality from ordinary window managers. 
For those, the handle may be useless...

> > Anyway, if the consensus is that we want the size grip, I think it
> > should not be handled per application; either we enable it (in
> > KApplication?) everywhere, or we do not.
>
> I think Aaron's idea is for us to "experiment" with size grips in KDE
> Games, then maybe we go for a universal KDE approach if the experiment
> works out OK.  It's just one line of code that adds it to a status bar,
> so not a large investment of development effort.

As long as we do not get a mix of applications with and without the embedded 
size grip. That would really irk me. As far as I know, Qt defaults to 
grip-enabled windows, and this setting is usually overridden by our KDE 
classes --- Is that KApplication? --- so if the purpose is to experiment 
with this, it would be easier to change a global flag and see what happens.

>
> > I still hope this could be offered as a configuration (maybe in the
> > style preferences?) option. It may be useful to enable it, if "other"
> > desktop environments do so too.
>
> Absolutely.  I certainly believe people who no longer have the clear
> eyesight and excellent eye-hand co-ordination they had in their 20s
> (and that would be nearly everybody over 35) should have some
> such option available.

First, I'm sadly over 35 myself... But I use fat window borders. Not that my 
eye-hand coordination is so bad, for now. I just like largish yellow 
borders around my windows :) There are cases when it's not even case of 
coordination, however, like on laptop with touchpads. In that case, another 
way to resize the window is to use the titlebar menu.

Anyway, many people are not so keen in adding configurable options, that's 
why I asked. Actually, keeping options to a reasonable minimum is good.
Maybe this could be made into a widget-style dependent option.

The default could depend on the platform convention... 

>
> > By the way, the Oxygen window decoration seem to have large enough
> > resize grips. So I'm not sure this feature is really needed.
>
> Now there you have the advantage.  Where can we see a screenshot
> or mockup of this window decoration and judge for ourselves?

The style is still much like work in progress. It currently renders las a 
red border around the window, but the borders should have the look and feel 
of the window splitters in the corresponding theme. 
You can have a look yourself; the decoration is in kdebase at the moment.

you have to use "kcmshell kwindecoration" directly, though, because kcontrol 
is not working.

Ciao,
Luciano