[Kst] Comments on the new plot dialog

[Brisset, Nicolas]

I have just tested the new plot dialog, and I have the following
comments:
- generally speaking, I like it as it looks cleaner and uses less screen
real estate
- I'm glad to see that the possibility of applying legend changes to all
legends is back, though I have the feeling that there may be usability
issues if not only changes but all parameters are applied (which seems
to be the case from what the label implies). I'll need to think about
that a bit more and experiment, but I recently had the case of one user
struggling because he had overseen the "Allow plot dialog to reset
legend contents" checkbox...
- I used to switch from one plot to another without closing the dialog
by either a) right-clicking on the new plot and calling the "Modify"
menu, which would update the open plot dialog to the selected plot or b)
choosing another plot from the dropdown list. b) would actually be
enough if the plots had names in connection with their contents (which
is why I created bugzilla wishlist #115665 and now we even have lots of
room to display plot names :-)), but both possibilities are now gone :-(

- it would be cool if double-clicking the plot background could open the
dialog (this is not linked with the recent changes, as it did not work
before)

Interestingly, I had a small discussion yesterday with a user who has
not completely switched to kst and showed me why. Most of the issues are
usability-related and could be fixed easily (I'll post a more
informative mail and create bugzilla entries when I have a bit more
time). The only non-usability issues are connected with bugs 109430 (the
most accurate description probably being
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108027#c10) for the "reserved
areas" part and 132954 "metadata from datasources".
The usability discussion actually started after we had a demo of a
commercial data storage/analysis/plotting tool called DynaWorks (info
can be found on the web). It seems to be very powerful and mature, but
possibly a bit too complex for simple daily plotting tasks where kst
excels... Or so I thought until I was shown how tedious some things can
actually be... 

OK, I'll stop here. Sorry for the long post, and stay tuned for even
more details :-)

Nicolas