GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 510686
Make visible when a PDF document has attachments
Last modified: 2018-05-22 13:20:28 UTC
[ From http://bugs.debian.org/460842 by Eugen Dedu ] "When opening for ex. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/pdf_reference.pdf just one page is shown with evince, while the document has several MB. This is confusing for the user, since the document has several PDFs attached. Would it be possible to inform the user about attached PDFs? For ex. each time a PDF with attachments is opened, the Attachments pane is displayed." In bug 325143 it was mentioned that bringing back the statusbar would be one idea to solve this.
Yes, it's a known problem indeed.
Created attachment 103459 [details] Screenshot What do you guys think about using something like the OO impress sidepane? Every sidepane page is actually an expander widget and only one of them can be expanded. If a document doesn't have attachments, the attachments expander widget will be hidden.
I like it, though question about consistency with gedit/nautilus/totem/epiphany rises.
I do like the way it makes the different tabs always visible. I'm not sure about hiding the expanders if they are unavailable. Currently those items are disabled and I think it lets people know that we have the feature and the document could have attachments, but it doesn't. With hiding I'd be afraid that people wouldn't understand that the document doesn't have attachments and instead think that Evince doesn't support attachments. Also, for the attachments header it might be nice to include the number of attachments. This doesn't make much sense for the other headers but I think it would be a nice thing for attachments. i.e. Attachments (3) Attachments (0) (of course it would insensitive as well for 0 attachments)
I agree it's better to disable the expander rather than hiding it. UI freeze is on 28th so I'll try to have something before :-)
Just to say that what's important to me (original reporter) is that the user be informed that there are attachments, even if the Side pane is not shown by default. (If the pane is like now or with an expander, it's a bonus for me.)
Created attachment 103774 [details] Another screenshot This is how the idea looks like in evince. The only thing I don't like is the unused space in the left of the close button. We could probably add a dropdown menu like the current one, but for actions that are specific for every sidebar page, since right now they are only accesible in the right click menu. Comments?
This of course is just a variation on the popular 'accordion' widget used in many other toolkits and webapps, e.g.: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/accordion/AccordionSample.html Perhaps we just need to add one of those in gtk+, rather than inventing our own slightly different version with expander buttons?
Sure, that's why I never implemented it indeed, I also think it should be done in gtk+, I already commented on bug #307044.
I'm not huge on the accordion technique, at least in this implementation. To me, it adds visual clutter in order to promote features that users will otherwise discover. At the same time, on large monitors, it creates two locations where the same type of features are located - the top and bottom of the screen. So to make a decision about the sidebar you want, you have to look at both places. I'd prefer buttons or a simple list if we want to expose the features more, since those can all be placed at the top of the sidebar. I like the idea though of choosing to show a certain item in the side bar if it is important, such as PDF attachments. It's important people don't miss that, and I'd guess that even if the accordion method is used, unless the correct side panel is shown, people will still miss it.
Created attachment 166411 [details] this is how okular handles attachments I thought it might be helpfull to see how okular handles this situation.
I've been thinking about the sidebar "discoverability" again and I had another idea. Now that we have a fixed toolbar that can't be hidden, we could move the sidebar menu to the toolbar. That makes the sidebar easy to discover, you can see the current active page even when closed, it can be shown/hidden with a single click, and you can also see the pages available with a single click and open the sidebar directly in a given page. This way we also save some more pixels in the sidebar and reduce a bit the view menu. I've made a quick hack to check how it would look like, let me attach a couple of screenshots.
Created attachment 248045 [details] Screenshot sidebar menu in the toolbar open
Created attachment 248046 [details] Screenshot sidebar menu in the toolbar close
To not make the toolbar size dependent on the label, which can be very different size for every locale, we could have an icon and show the name sin the menu only, like mac does. I think that when the sidebar is shown is pretty obvious which page is the current one so we don't need to have the label in the toolbar all the time.
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