Oh, also, does anyone know offhand of a dialog in OOo/Neo that has multiple rows of tabs?
Text or Paragraph formatting? _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
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Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 1:53 pm Post subject:
Actually, it seems the majority of the text formatting dialogs in Writer, at least, only have one line of tabs. The stylist one Patrick suggested did have multiple lines of tabs, and man do they look goofy in the 10.3 style:
I'll look into exactly how the tabs are laid out, whether it's an overflow thing that's automatic in the tab control object or whether it's explicitly done in the dialog code itself. Since multiple rows of tab entries are sucn an anathema on OS X we'll just have to find a way to remove them somehow (abberviate text, make tab control wider to accommodate all text, etc.). For now I'll ignore the multiple tab lines and just focus on getting the basic controls working and then handle these other dialogs later.
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject:
OPENSTEP wrote:
Since multiple rows of tab entries are such an anathema on OS X we'll just have to find a way to remove them somehow (abbreviate text, make tab control wider to accommodate all text, etc.).
There's also the possibility of hiding the "overflow" behind an extra popup menu (see extra-button on the right, examples are from ArgoUML for Mac OS X, a Java App, please ignore the weird triangles) – although I'm not sure about the "usability"-aspect of such a solution: It always disorientates me, when such tabs are "moving" (that's for me the problem with multiline tabs, if you select one from the upper row, the complete row moves down and the whole tab order changes). Obviously, I identify (in short memory) a tab not only by its label, but also by its position.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject:
Well, the real idea for me is to try and find the change that is the least invasive. I shirk away from modifying OOo dialogs or controls for two main reasons: there are a *lot* of dialogs, and modified labels require custom translation. I don't know what road I'm going to go down yet which is why I'm going to punt on the multiple row issues for now.
Doing something where there's a custom button to handle a switch between rows or more available tabs is an option. The Ui guidelines used to do something like that for tab controls with a right/left arrow at the ends of the tab bar and that's definitely an option that may be worth exploring.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject:
While the source for most of these is already in CVS, it is disabled in the main build since it's not even ready for preliminary testing and the CVS repository is being used to build various alpha releases at this time, so dangerous code gets taken out.
There are also other major issues with NWF and compilation support. Code won't compile on all machines, particularly on 10.3 in its current state. In fact, there really is no way to do the tabs on 10.3 along with other problems, so most likely NWF and the aqua widgets will be isolated to 10.4 only when all is said and done.
While the source for most of these is already in CVS, it is disabled in the main build since it's not even ready for preliminary testing and the CVS repository is being used to build various alpha releases at this time, so dangerous code gets taken out.
And, thankfully, Ed has been PMing me before he commits any changes so that I can verify that he has fully disabled this code in his commit as I am only building non-Aqua code these days (I'm still working on the non-Aqua Intel build for the start of the Intel EAP on June 5).
In fact, there really is no way to do the tabs on 10.3 along with other problems, so most likely NWF and the aqua widgets will be isolated to 10.4 only when all is said and done.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 9:47 pm Post subject:
It was a real bummer to see that the APIs weren't there for tabs and the like in 10.3, but in limited trials there are also problems with buttons, checkboxes, etc. I may revisit 10.3 at a later date, but it's never going to be possible to get a fully functional implementation like on 10.4 since the Carbon APIs just aren't there
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:56 pm Post subject: centered tabs
Well the tabs are now centered at the top of the control, so it's getting a bit more looking like normal:
The multiple tab rows are also being executed within VCL it seems, so if I get really crazy it may be possible to do the pager thing. I'm definitely going to punt on it for the time being since the splitting into multiple tab rows is performed solely based on pixel width. Changing the user interface font or, of course, different length tab names from different translations, may cause spillover into another row in any dialog in the application. Since this doesn't seem to be too common in the default English config I'll just revisit this at a later time.
Next up is going to see how to get the background rectangle drawing properly for the tab group. This is going to be interesting since, unlike other operating systems for which NWF is designed, on 10.3+ the tab background rectangle intersects the segmented controls at their vertical midpoint. Just about every other OS does the intersection at the vertical bottom endpoint, like 10.2 and those before it.
While the source for most of these is already in CVS, it is disabled in the main build since it's not even ready for preliminary testing and the CVS repository is being used to build various alpha releases at this time, so dangerous code gets taken out.
There are also other major issues with NWF and compilation support. Code won't compile on all machines, particularly on 10.3 in its current state. In fact, there really is no way to do the tabs on 10.3 along with other problems, so most likely NWF and the aqua widgets will be isolated to 10.4 only when all is said and done.
I would like to try even if it will make my screen explode and I am compiling under Tiger
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