I'm cc:ing Lucasz on this bug since he did much of the work improving the gdmsetup GUI lately.  If the window needs to be made 24 pixels shorter, then hopefully he can fix this.

Im suspecting its the security tab (as it is the larger of them all). I will replicate this set-up and will cut the size down where necessary

The problem is caused by the local tab - plain greeter setting (and possibly security tab). There are few choices that we can make:

1. Move some of the components into one line (rather than having them cascading) im not sure if this is a good idea as cramming multiple components into one liners will look and feel wrong (i think we have done all that we can in that department)

2. Remove some of the options available through the local tab - this would defeat the object of the previous extensions we have made

3. Tweak vertical spacing such that it fits just right. I think this is probably the most plausible option. Again i cant find any gnome guidlines regarding vertical spacing (i had a look at http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/design-window.html#window-layout-spacing but i cant see any clear definition of vertical spacing)

cc:ing Calum to see if we can get any UI perspective on this.

Hmm, I can't set this display to 1024x768 to check exactly how much shuffling is required, but a couple of ideas off the top of my head might be:

- Reduce the (default and/or minimum) height of the scrolling theme list on the Local and Remote tabs... possibly making the thumbnail previews a few pixels smaller if need be.

- Move the "Deny TCP connections to X server" checkbox from the security tab into the "Configure X Server" sub-dialog.

- Move the "allow local/remote sysadmin login" checkboxes from the security tab to the local and remote tabs respectively.

>- Move the "Deny TCP connections to X server" checkbox from the security tab
>into the "Configure X Server" sub-dialog.

This would defenately fix the security tab problem. Although all the Configure X Server options are X-server config entry specific rather than global so the new option would have to go right at the bottom, underneath Add/Modify buttons and above Close/Help. Wouldnt that cause user confusion though (between the global/local options)

>- Reduce the (default and/or minimum) height of the scrolling theme list on the
>Local and Remote tabs... possibly making the thumbnail previews a few pixels
>smaller if need be.

This would solve the problem for the themed greeter but we still left with plain one. Remote tab is not an issue as it doesnt have the Menu Bar block.

>- Move the "allow local/remote sysadmin login" checkboxes from the security tab
>to the local and remote tabs respectively.

I think this wouldnt work as the local tab (plain greeter) is already overgrown


Im guessing reducing vertical spacing between elements is not very feasible option

There are some gdmsetup features that show up in dialogs that pop-up when you click on a button.  Would it make sense to move more options to such pop-ups to make more room in the GUI?

I would but we would have to think long and hard as it would probably mean re-designing the interface (or most of it anyways). 

1. We could move the Security section from the security tab into a separate dialog 
2. We could move Local and possibly Remote tabs into separate dialogs containing multiple tabs (for plain and themed greeters)

But this would remove  Local/Remote tabs completely leaving General, Security and Acessibility tabs very sparsely populated. Also we would end up with tab(s) containing multiple buttons for diferent aspects of the configuration.

I think the easiest way to fit gdmsetup to 1024x768 is to tweak vspace on Local/Security tabs. Would that violate any GUI design guidelines?

I think there's scope for losing some vertical space between the checkboxes in the Local/MenuBar and Security/Security groups, and between the radio buttons in the Local/Welcome and Security/Permissions groups... looks like they've all inherited spacings of up to 6 pixels, IIRC the HIG recommends 3 pixels, and in practice it's usually fine to have zero.  (But _only_ between rows of checkboxes or radio buttons).

I don't think you'd want to squash the space inbetween frames/groups if possible, though (e.g. between the Menu Bar and Welcome Message groups on the Local tab), that would make things look pretty cramped I think.

Created attachment 83033 [details] [review]
built against the latest (today's) svn HEAD 

Changed vertical spacing between groups of checkboxes/radiobuttons in gdmsetup interface.
Affected were: 
Local/Background checkboxes (spacing 3)
Local/Behaviour checkboxes (spacing 3)
Local/Menu checkboxes (spacing 0)
Local/Welcome Message (spacing 3)
Simmilar changes were made to the Remote tab to keep both greeter tabs in sync.
Security/Security checkboxes (spacing 2)
Security/Security Permissions (spacing 0)

Also moved groups of checkboxes/radiobuttons to their own vbox containers such that changes in spacing between them does not affect overall alignment of different elements in the main vbox container.

Is it worth looking into adjusting all the remaining radio/checkbox groups in other tabs to match the new 3-0 pixel spacing?

THanks, fixed in SVN head.

Changes look good... yeah, I guess to be consistent the spacings ought to be the same everywhere, but I wouldn't call it a high priority...