Pedantic Nitpicking Issues in KRunner

[David Edmundson]

Below is a list of really minor "issues" with the default setup of
KRunner. Some possibly aren't in KRunner code.
I'm just trying to be "taking care of the details", and spend a bit of
time trying to find any of the inconsistencies that take a great
application away from being absolutely perfect.

I'm doing it in the form of an email rather than 12 different bug
reports, as if someone else agrees I can just fix them, or open the
bugs as needed.
Also I quite like the idea of bringing back "reports", I think the KDE
Usability team used to do them years ago, though I'm putting an
emphasis on "fixing the tiny parts" not "massive rewrites".

Anyway, list below: (also available as a pdf:
http://static.davidedmundson.co.uk/krunner.pdf)

* "Available Features" is a pointless heading

    1) "Features" is a new term not used elsewhere in KRunner so it
means nothing. The tab heading is "plugins", and the search text says
"Search Plugins", so the title if anything should be "Available
Plugins".

    2) AFAIK we don't list any other type of plugins, so it's a
completely useless header anyway.

* Inconsistent case in descriptions

    The majority of descriptions are in sentence case ie. "List and
switch between desktop activities". There are three exceptions to this
"Open Devices and Folder Bookmarks", "Basic Power Management
Operations". and the 'web' in "Allow user to use Konqueror's Web
shortcuts". Needless to say they should all be the same, sentence case
is the most used currently so should be the standard IMHO.

*There is no need to mention KRunner in the title/description of the runner.

    "Control Amarok with KRunner" should be simply "Control Amarok",
and "Nepomuk Desktop Search Runner" should be just "Nepomuk Desktop
Search". It's clear from the context (it being a list of krunners)
that it is a krunner.

    Also KRunner is almost a technical term that the user shouldn't
need to know.

* Typo in Amarok runner

    Controll Amarok with KRunner -> Control
    Related, is the help text for Amarok says "Let's Amarok do
<command>", which in English means "let is amaork do <command>" which
makes no sense.
    Also has a fullstop at the end of the description which is
inconsistent with all the other plugins.

*A lot of descriptions are truncated...

    Using purely the default runners, with the default krunner, when I
click on the spanner/wrench and look through the list of available
plugins 8 of the 18 decsriptions are truncated.
    Obviously with font options and translations this can never be
truly solved so that it never happens, but it's wrong for the default
setup to be "broken" so much.

    This is a problem with no single correct solution.

    Possible options are:
    1) Make the default krunner wider
    2) Make those descriptions shorter
    3) Make the delegate taller and word wrap.

* The tab bar does not show which tab you currently have open without mouseover.

    In a tab bar it is important to show which tab is currently
selected without any interaction.

* The help view is scrollable, but there is no indication of this.

    On the desktop, it's not natural to try to scroll on areas without
scrollbars. All scroll areas should have scrollbars.

*Activities plugin has no icon

    Suggest the normal activities icon

* Recent Documents has no description

    This makes it stand out as it is the only one. Though I can't
think of anything better than "Documents which have been recently
opened" which is useless. So I'm not sure.

* Inconsistent padding height above and below line edit.

    Makes the whole thing look not particularly aligned. True as a
floating window (10px above, 11px under).
    (and yes, 1 pixel differences are hugely important!)

    Looking at the code there's actually a line of code that says
"topMargin -= 2" because it was too spacious before. By my
calculations it was, but this fix goes slightly too far. When it's
sent to "at the top of the screen IMHO the padding is too small too.
(in code it's margin/2).

    (Tbh, this also sounds like working round a bug in the default
theme, but I don't want to stray into technical things.)

    I'd like to stress that I don't want to argue with any conscious
decision, only try and spot things where decisions maybe haven't been
thought about.


* List of available plugins cannot be navigated with arrow keys.

* If you have the options "dialog" open, and click on the "?" it
closes the options being shown, but doesn't show the help.

David Edmundson