[kde-guidelines] Grids

[Aurélien Gâteau]

Le jeudi 29 août 2013 14:01:17 Heiko Tietze a écrit :
> Am 26.08.2013 16:05:38, schrieb Heiko Tietze:
> > Am Montag, 26. August 2013, 12:59:50 schrieb David Edmundson:
> > > I'm not sure I fully understand the question.
> > > There's a QTableView
> > > http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtwidgets/images/qtableview-resized.png
> > 
> > Exactly! Is there a difference from the point of implementation between
> > list view with multiple columns and this table view?
> 
> The guideline for list view states:
> Implementation     
> * QListView, for single-column lists.    
> * QTreeView, for multi-column lists. Be sure to set the rootIsDecorated
> property to false if the items in your list do not have children.  But
> QTreeView does not look like lists with multiple columns, IMHO. I'd
> recommend to rethink it in respect to QTableView.

(back from holidays, catching up on email)

Qt terminology is confusing:

QListView can either look like a single column list or an icon view (!)

QTreeView can show trees. These trees can have multiple columns. It is the 
recommended way to create a multi-column view, even if it is flat.
QTreeView can show a header for the different columns.

QTableView is for 2-dimensional data like a spreadsheet. The main difference 
is a QTableView can have headers for columns (like QTreeView) and rows (unlike 
QTreeView).

> 
> At the moment I'm unsure whether we should 'allow' lists with multiple
> columns or rather separate simple lists from grids (aka tables). On a first
> glance I'd say lists do not have inline editing but tables does. Or do I
> expect editing on single clicks for tables and after double click with
> lists?

All 3 view classes can have inline editing.

> What else: Usually, tables have a distinct bevel and a fixed first
> column (both are non-functional and not a guideline), tables can be
> extended in both directions... That's not productive, both controls may
> appear similar to users.
> 
> I vote for simple, single column 'lists' and extended, multi column
> 'tables'. Two, user-centric pages in the HIG, implemented by either
> QListView or QTableView. And perhaps we should duplicate the list view page
> for complex views without the selection stuff.
> 
> What do you think?

One thing which would be worth mentioning in a HIG about multi-column views is 
the sizing of columns. Unfortunately, Qt does not provide a very good way to 
get this right. You can specify default size and let the user resize manually 
or use one of the two automatic resize modes (stretch to fill space or resize 
to content) but in this case the user cannot resize the columns himself.

For this reason I personally try to avoid multi-column views and instead draw 
the different elements in one column when possible (but it's much more work)

Aurélien