On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Sven Neumann wrote: > > I was playing around in Paint Shop Pro trying to see what it does well and > > what caught my interest today was that in seemingly every dialog window > > you are able to maximise the window unlike standard dialogs where this > > functionality is usually disabled/greyed out. > > > > This is more useful than it sounds, take for example the File Open Dialog. > > If you maximise the window the widgets reflow and the space with the > > document list exands to fit the avialable space (and I think the preview > > box expands too, but I dont have it in front of me right now). > > > > If the GIMP was to consider this feature would it require a whole lot of > > work to make sure the dialogs reflowed properly when maximised? > > (Keep in mind that users might be using text sizes larger than the > > defaults so static widget layouts are a really bad idea). > > In general all GIMP dialogs can be maximized and widgets reflow as you > described. What are you talking about? Sorry I took so long to reply, thank you for replying to my original question. I took a much closer more careful look at the GIMP 1.3.x on RedHat and the short answer is yes most widgets do reflow as stated. I'm quite impressed actually, with the glaring excepting of Gfig most dialogs do resize as they should. The problem is that to resize the windows you need to grab the window edge and drag, so this useful and worthwhile feature is wasted. If a window can be resized then it really should have the Maximise Window decoration (with the rare exception of a few message dialogs). (Similarly you there should probably be a minimise icon for any of the non modal dialogs). By the relatively simple step of making sure the maximize window decoration is shown we can make this useful feature much more convenient to use and easier to discover for new and old GIMP users. I am using Gimp 1.3.x on RedHat 9 with is Gnome 2, the default Gnome 2 window mangager Metacity, and I have not ruled out the unlikely possibility that this is the fault of metacity. Sincerely Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ PS You can ignore this next bit if you already understand what I mean. I went to the trouble of writing these notes earlier and I feel I may as well paste them here. RedHat 9 (Gnome 2, using the default Gnome window manager, Metacity). Dialogs that dont resize New Dialog but not much point in making it resizable Open Dialog does resize, so why doesn't it have the maximize window decoration? Save does resize, so why doesn't it have the maximize window decoration? Save As does resize, so why doesn't it have the maximize window decoration? Send to Mail reflows, should have maximize window decoration but doesn't Layers Dialog reflows and resizes, but still no window decoration. Gfig does not resize. The only way to resize gfig is to start gfig with a differnt size of image. The ImageMap plugin is one of the Few plugins that does actually have a the Minimize and Maximise window decorations. To make it explicitly clear: Any window that can be resized, should have a maximise window decoration. (Caveat: Almost any). Since people have gone to the trouble of programming these Graphical User Inteface for these items so well it should be made both explicitly clear and obvious to users as well as easy to use this feature. Why hide away useful features that actually make things easier and more powerful? - Alan H.
