[Okular-devel] Consistency in user interface

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Monday 29 February 2016, a les 12:29:57, Jonathan Schultz va escriure:
> On 29/02/16 10:08, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > El Monday 29 February 2016, a les 09:13:10, Jonathan Schultz va escriure:
> >>> They operate differently because they do different things, after drawing
> >>> the rectange there's nothing else you want to do so the menu is
> >>> triggered
> >>> immediately.
> >> 
> >> I differ with this interpretation in several ways:
> >> 
> >> 1. On what basis do we know 'there is nothing else you want to do'? Some
> >> useful examples of things you might want do do include adjusting the
> >> boundaries of the selected area,
> > 
> > This feature doesn't exist
> 
> 'Doesn't exist' is not the same thing as not "want[ing] to do" them,
> which is the statement I was responding to.
> 
> >> making a compound selection (eg by
> >> selecting another area while holding the control key
> > 
> > This feature doesn't exist
> > 
> >> ), displaying properties of the selected area
> > 
> > This feature doesn't exist
> > 
> >> just to name a few. The fact that none
> >> of these have been written yet is not a good reason to preclude them.
> > 
> > Yes it is, why make you take an extra step to do the only thing you can do
> > in spirit of adding features that may never exist?
> 
> As I mentioned, I am in the process of adding such a feature, and am
> working out how to integrate it into Okular.
> 
> >> Moreover, my current project (more on this below) will need some of
> >> these functions (at the least adjustment of the selection boundaries),
> >> and I believe that such a change would be an improvement of Okular as
> >> well.
> > 
> > If there are new features that make sense adding an additional step in
> > between selecting the area and showing the menu, it may make sense to add
> > such step.
> I'm happy to show this to you when I am ready. It's just that I'm going
> to have to modify in some way the UI in order to do so.

Sure, that's fine and expected, new features sometimes need to modify existing 
ones so that things work better together. 

> >> 2. It means that Okular is unlike just about every other GUI program
> >> ever written. I tried to find a reference to UI standards in the KDE
> >> Usability standards, and it is a bit unclear, but I think that the
> >> 'correct' (ie standard) way is implicit in the description of context
> >> menus: https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/ContextMenu
> > 
> > *every other GUI program ever written* is a very strong statement, you may
> > want to reconsider it ;)
> 
> You misquote me. I said *just about* every other GUI program.

Right, sorry for the misquoting.

> 
> >> 3. The same logic of 'there is nothing else you want to do' would also
> >> apply to text selections, yet Okular uses a more standard approach with
> >> those. In this sense Okular's behaviour is clearly inconsistent.
> > 
> > As i said, there's a well known pattern for text selection out there, so
> > we
> > follow it. And it fact it *does* copy the text, you can just middle click
> > somewhere and it will paste it.
> 
> Yes but in that case the text does not pass by the clipboard, so it
> isn't really the same thing.

It really does, i mean we do call QClipboard::setText for that to actually 
work.

Cheers,
  Albert