GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 495781
show chart sample by default (make it a toggle option instead of press and hold)
Last modified: 2010-01-15 00:30:11 UTC
The current chart wizard has no "instant preview" in the sense that: - you must click the "Show sample button" - you must keep that button clicked down - you cannot change charts and compare styles while it is clicked down, obviously - it requires uneccesary clicks and prevents good keyboard interaction (with automatic previewing, you would just have to use arrow keys to sift through different chart styles) Seeing how fast gnumeric draws those samples, I see no reason why it couldn't be shown at all times (with a checkbox to deactivate it if needed). Other information:
I agree with you. There's a lot of unused empty space in the first page of the guru dialog that could be used for sample display.
this should be reasonably straight forward to be implemented
Hmm, I don't see where the sample should be displayed if we do not want to have a larger dialog box.
Personally I would make the main list of types smaller, adding a scroll bar, reducing the size of the pane for the subtypes also by adding scrollbar(s) [If you currently reduce the window in size to its minimum some subtype icons disappear halfways). Then there should be space for a sample, I think .
Some random ideas: - OOo's approach is to show the chart preview directly onto the sheet. Not sure if this is doable/desireable - Perhaps you could consider making the subtypes actual sub-items in the Types list to the left (but I guess there would be two disadvantages: that list would at least triple in length, and the icons for the subtypes would be much smaller). On the other hand, icons wouldn't matter much since we would could have a live preview at all times (unless the user has not selected any data). - Enlarge the dialog (make it wider)? Hey, it's ~530px, you can expect to have at least 1024 pixels in width (or 800 if you still believe there are 800x600 spreadsheet users out there; I don't, my website statistics tell me they are between 0.25% and 0.67% of visitors for popular FOSS apps) - Use a combobox widget to select the main type (takes much less space than a listview) and put the subtype at the place of the current type listview... but I wouldn't quite like this solution as it removes your "greater overview" of the types. - Squeeze the subtypes area into a horizontally scrolling icon listview thingy (don't know how that's called in recent GTK versions), and squeeze the graph right below it, and remove the "Show sample" button. - Remark: that "description" field at the bottom takes a lot of space.
Created attachment 151325 [details] [review] Proposed patch Andreas, please test and tell me your opinion about the new UI.
I like it! And it seems to work very well! [The desription of the second row of line plot subtypes need some work since they are identical to the descriptions of the first row.]
Comment on attachment 151325 [details] [review] Proposed patch including a fix for line plot types descriptions
This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.
Could you attach a screenshot for the sake of those not running the dev version? Thanks!
Created attachment 151440 [details] screenshot of the new guru
The screenshot was from the patch, in the real version the word sample is of course aligned tot he left like Subtype.