GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 354073
Initial layout of "Related" item is confusing
Last modified: 2009-02-22 20:11:05 UTC
I was fooling around with the Layout editor and added a "Related" item to my Details layout. All I got was a table of folder icons. I eventually figured out that if I right-clicked on the layout, I could choose what fields in the related item were displayed, but it would be good to default it to show at least some field. Also, it would be good if the "Formatting" button in the layout editor dialog took you to the Related Records Layout dialog. While I'm at it, it's not clear to me what the "Related" layout item even does, but that's probably just a matter of me not knowing much about Glom and RDBMSs.
Yes, I'd like to add a "right-click to choose fields" label, or a button there. I guess we could do that in a custom treemodel when there are no fields for the related records item. The "Related" item shows related records. I guess that name was truncated to save space in a window. Maybe that's not a good idea.
(In reply to comment #1) > The "Related" item shows related records. I guess that name was truncated to > save space in a window. Maybe that's not a good idea. For clarity, I'm talking about the "Add Related" button in the Layout editor. On second thought it's not super unclear; I'm not very familiar with relational databases, so maybe real database developers wouldn't be confused.
So, we should have tooltips on those buttons. It should also get better when we have an actual palette for the layout items, with drag and drop layout. And we still need that special "Right-click to choose fields" row in empty related-records treeviews when in developer mode.
In HEAD (glom 1.1.x, to be 1.2.0), the list view and related records portals show a single line saying "Right-click to layout, to specify the related fields.", when there are no fields chosen in the layout. I have also added explanatory tooltips to the buttons in the layout editor. That's a bit awkward, but it seems better than nothing. Suggestions for improvements are welcome.
I gave HEAD a spin and the change seemed to work well. I did see two rows, each with the "Right-click ..." text. Might be because I had two "Related fields" items in the layout. The whole process still seems a little circuitous, but I'm not sure what can be done about that. But right now to show fields from a related record, you have to go Layout -> Add Related -> Select relationship -> right-click, Layout -> Add -> Select Field. It would be nice to improve that flow, which I'm sure you can do in all your copious spare time :-) Thanks for responding to this so quickly, Murray.
Yes, there should be only one warning row, so I'll keep this bug open until I fix that. Regarding the layout, it's just that the layout dialog is generally awkward. It's a bit of a hack just to make layout possible at all. What we need is drag-and-drop layout with a palette: See bug #358092.
Will the dialog be reshown after showing the help? I assume that is what is meant to happen.
Sorry, wrong bug.
I don't see two warnings rows now, so I'm closing this bug.