Re: gEDA-user: New gtk menu system

[Kai-Martin Knaak <knaak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew Poelstra wrote:

> Why do you want this feedback? The highlighting is meant to give a
> tactile feel to the layer selector, nothing more.

There is more to it. Obvious feedback can make a fast switch of layers 
more efficient.


> Pcb doesn't care
> what layer the mouse is over. 

It does not care, what scrollbar, or what toolbox button the mouse is over,
either. Yet both of them highlight. 


> The user shouldn't care what layer the mouse is over.

For sure I do. I want to know exactly, what layer is going to be activated
before I give the mouse a click. It is pleasant to see this on first glance
without having to actually focus the eyes to the widget. (Yes, the accel
keys are even better at it. But this is not the point.)


> The old highlight mode was awful. 

I don't want to have it back!! ;-)
All I am asking for, is that the highlighting of the new box is obvious.


> (The default gtk button prelighting is even less visible than
> my layer swatch business -- look at the "Route Styles" button.)

This depends on the GTK style. Some styles feature very obvious 
highlighting on mouse-over of radio buttons, some make it less 
obvious and some don't hint at all. I for one use a slightly
modified version of the theme wasp, which is one of the default 
themes distributed with gnome in debian. See the attached screenshots
how this theme renders mouse-over of route styles. The other clickable
items in the PCB GUI behave in a similar way -- Tool box, scroll bar,
and even menu items. For consistency, the layer box should behave the 
same. 
While at it, you might also consider to change the background color 
of the layer box to be consistent with the rest of the GUI widgets.
Currently, it sticks out.

BTW, wasp is not the only theme to do such obvious highlighting. The 
popular nuvola and gorilla themes do the same.


> I have never seen a select box with prelighting
> like you suggest, and evidently neither have the gtk folks.

They do so with radio buttons. And the PCB layer box certainly has a 
radio button aspect to it. 

---<)kaimartin(>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak                                  tel: +49-511-762-2895
Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik      fax: +49-511-762-2211	
Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover           http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de
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