GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 714991
Calculator misuses its application menu
Last modified: 2014-02-13 07:12:39 UTC
Created attachment 261219 [details] View setting inconsistencies with multiple windows The application menu should not be used for window-specific settings in multi-instance apps. We need to either: a) add a View menu to the header bar, and remove the view section from the app menu b) make Calculator single-instance Note that this is an immediate practical issue as the setting does not work as expected with multiple windows. Furthermore, the app menu should have a New Window item on top (unless we decide to make it single-instance).
Having multiple calculators open is very useful so please don't make it single-instance.
That would be my preference as well.
I'd be interested to hear about use cases for multiple calculators.
Let's get this sorted soon -- 3.12 is fast approaching. Arth, do you have a preference here? I'd like to implement either: a) Leave mode setting in app menu; forbid multiple calculator instances b) Move mode setting out of the app menu and into the window (my preference) My gut tells me that there's no convincing reason to forbid multiple calculator instances, that to do so would be to second-guess the user. But that's hardly a decent argument, and I can't think of any convincing use cases for multiple calculators. (When I myself use Calculator, I only open a single window to do one or a few quick computations.) c) We could also just fix the radio button so that the mode that is set for the current window is always activated when the app menu is opened. I don't think we should go this route because it is forbidden by the draft HIG, which state that an action in the application menu should not affect a "particular window" of the app. (In reply to comment #1) > Having multiple calculators open is very useful so please don't make it > single-instance. Could you please tell us more specifically why you find it useful to have multiple calculators? It might help us reach a better decision.
Hello Michael, According to me the best way to fix this issue would be to go with option (b). Forbidding multiple Calculator instances would not be a good idea. We don't want to kill some functionality just because it might not be useful for most users. A good use case of multiple instances would be: Let's say you're planning to purchase a new mobile (or laptop) and hence are doing some market research for that. So you're calculating something complex. Say, the PPI ratio of two screens (because the website doesn't show you the PPI values right away), and at the same time, you want to do a quick currency conversion (or even length conversion, as somehow in our universe all screens sizes are in inch while device dimensions are in mm). In such case you would like to do the conversion without losing the PPI calculation state you are already in. There can be many such cases when having multiple instances of Calculator is really useful.
Created attachment 268100 [details] [review] Let the window handle window-specific actions Pull copy/cut/paste/undo/redo and mode changing out of application scope and into window scope. Remove mode switching from the app menu and put it into a gear menu instead. The gear menu is on the left instead of the right because this looks far better in Basic Mode.
I think you're right, so above is a quick little patch to implement (b). On Unity, we probably want to use the global menu bar rather than the gear menu for this, but I'm not going to touch that here as an alternative is currently being discussed in Bug #712831
Review of attachment 268100 [details] [review]: Michael, Great work. Thanks for the patch. :)
Sorry, I forgot to close the bug. :/