Toolview Buttons

[Vladimir Prus]

On Friday 17 July 2009 Andreas Pakulat wrote:

> Nuno just talked to us on IRC and suggested that we don't rotate the
> text on the toolview buttons as it breaks alignment and is also harder
> to read.
> 
> I think I convinced him that there's currently no suitable alternative to 
> the rotated text because anything horizontal takes too much space if the
> toolviews are hidden.
> 
> He suggested to remove the text in that case and I have to admit that it
> doesn't look that bad without text. Additionally eclipse seems to do it
> this way too, i.e. hidden toolviews are only shown by an icon (and of
> course with proper tooltip) 

And it's fairly messy, IMO. 

> and if they're shown there's a horizontal
> header (which we also have). So how about doing that, but allowing to
> re-add the (rotated) text by an option in the ui-settings?
> 
> Additionally Nuno suggests to not rotate the icons as that also makes
> recognizing them a bit harder. Personally I feel non-rotated icons look
> a bit weird if the text is rotated, but they look better if there's no
> text. So we might want to connect this with the option of hiding the
> text.
> 
> Patch attached should work for any toolbuttonstyle except
> TextUnderIcons, so you can just change it in ideal.cpp, IdealToolButton
> constructor.
> 
> For easier comparison here are some screenshots:
> 
> 1. No text, upright icons:
> http://www.apaku.de/vardata/kdevelop_toolviews_no_text_no_rotated_icon.png
> 
> 2. No text, but icon rotated:
> http://www.apaku.de/vardata/kdevelop_toolviews_no_text_rotated_icon.png
> 
> 3. Text, upright icons:
> http://www.apaku.de/vardata/kdevelop_toolviews_text_no_rotated_icon.png

I prefer this one. Just icons are bad because:
1. However good the icons are, they are still not as clear as text
2. With text, the clickable area is large, which is good for quickly
showing a toolview.

- Volodya