GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 133423
Need recommendation about selectable labels
Last modified: 2021-07-05 10:53:34 UTC
Label widgets can be configured to allow selecting text in them (gtk_label_set_selectable()). The idea is that you make labels selectable when you may want to copy&paste from them: error messages, machine or email addresses, etc. By default labels are not selectable. The HIG should have a recommendation of when to use selectable labels; they should be used sparingly because they are in the focus chain.
Currently the HIG specifies that any text within error, warning or information alerts should be selectable.
The text in GtkMessageDialogs is selectable by default, IIRC. (Correct me if I'm wrong...) So with my 3.x hat on, other than reminding people to make text selectable if they're crafting custom message dialogs, is there anything specific we need to say in HIG 3.x other than "anything that it would be useful to copy into another application"?
(In reply to comment #2) > The text in GtkMessageDialogs is selectable by default, IIRC. (Correct me if > I'm wrong...) Indeed it is! > So with my 3.x hat on, other than reminding people to make text selectable if > they're crafting custom message dialogs, is there anything specific we need to > say in HIG 3.x other than "anything that it would be useful to copy into > another application"? That seems to be sufficient, thanks! You may want to recommend that chunks of text that are likely to be copied should really be in the same label. I've seen apps that have Foo1: blah Foo2: blah blah Foo3: blah blah blah And each line is a separate label. It is hard to copy all of that information, as you must do the select-copy-paste dance three times. A multi-line label would make this much easier for the user.
While it seems like a good idea to include this, I'm not entirely sure where it would fit into the structure of the new HIG - we don't have a generic section on "labels".
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