GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 561068
"Apply" button not visible in default window size in some translations
Last modified: 2008-11-19 20:32:53 UTC
Reported at launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gparted/+bug/45449 At the default window size, the "apply" button is not visible, at least not in the german translation. ("apply" is "Anwenden" in this case...). You have to increase the horizontal window size to see it. That's relativly annoying for first time users. I search for a possibility to apply for severall minutes... Other information: - It seems that the "Resize/Move" text becomes too big, hence some important buttons such as "Apply" get hidden due to this problem. - There's a screenshot attached with the bug at launchpad showing the problem using Ubuntu live cd (in virtualbox/virtual machine): http://launchpadlibrarian.net/19696637/Screenshot-ubuntu%20hardy%20%5BRunning%5D%20-%20Sun%20xVM%20VirtualBox.png - It was confirmed (at launchpad) for spanish translation
Thank you Savvas for reporting this problem. Operations can also be applied using the "Edit -> Apply All Operations" menu entry. Also the "Apply" button can be accessed by clicking on the "v" symbol in the toolbar. Do you have some suggestions on how to address this problem? My preference is to keep the window size the same.
I agree, the window should stay the same, but I also agree with the belief that the apply should be visible at all times, it's like the "Enter" key for a command. My suggestion would be to break the text "Resize/Move" into two lines: "Resize Move" This should probably give more space for all the buttons.. The other suggestion (not recommended though) is not to use the text below the icons and use tooltips to show their functions instead.
Thanks for the suggestion. I had not thought of that one. The one downside to breaking the "Resize/Move" into two lines is that the toolbar takes up more vertical space. Your suggestion reminded me to look at the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines again, and there may be a solution there. Specifically the paragraph that states: <begin-quote> Don't add buttons for Help, Close or Quit to your toolbar by default, as these are rarely used and the space is better used for more useful controls. Similarly, only provide buttons for Undo, Redo and the standard clipboard functions if there is space on the toolbar to do so without sacrificing more useful, application-specific controls. <end-quote> Quote from: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/toolbars-appearance.html.en From reading this it may be better to remove the Undo button, or the Copy and Paste buttons.
> The one downside to breaking the "Resize/Move" into two lines is that the toolbar takes up more vertical space. a) The extra vertical space shouldn't be a problem, the gtk dialog could probably handle that or manually be set to "steal it" from partition list's vertical space. It's a matter of pixels that would save the entire toolbar! b) The other thing is that I think the drop-down device list in the toolbar already takes up the space that the extra line a text tag would require, so it probably won't take more space than now. Can you please give these a try? I don't know much about C coding, hence I can't build something to test it locally and prove my point. > From reading this it may be better to remove the Undo button, or the Copy and Paste buttons. The copy/paste functions are main functions of the gparted for device partitioning, like gedit is for text processing. If the above suggestions fail, then.. perhaps the Undo button?
As an addition to proposal (a), it could be set to also "steal" some vertical space from the graphical partition bar. Either way, I think (a) would be more suitable (from a user's point of view at least).
Thank you again for your suggestions. I'll try a few out and then I can post pictures of the results back here.
Created attachment 122817 [details] Picture of German translation with Resize/Move split into two lines Hmmm... As can be seen in the attachment, splitting "Resize/Move" into two lines still does not free up enough space for the "Apply" toolbar button to display. I also tried maximizing the window to 640x480 and there is still not enough room to display the "Apply" button. Any other thoughts?
Created attachment 122818 [details] Picture of English Translation with out Resize/Move split into two lines I have noticed an anomaly. The spacing between the icons in German appears to be more than that in English. This is obvious when the two screen shots are compared. For instance the English "New" button has less whitespace around it than the German "Neu" button. I wonder where the extra white space comes from?
How about combining that with the removal of the "Undo" button? Or making buttons at the lower end? For example, when there an operation is added, it pops up the "Pending operations" on the lower end. Most of the space in the right is not used by "Pending operations" section. Can it possibly be split and the right side to be used for "Undo" and "Apply" buttons? This way, you can remove the "Undo" and "Apply" buttons from the toolbar and keep their usage when necessary (i.e. when there is a pending operation in queue). > I wonder where the extra white space comes from? Maybe gtk resizes them equally in the leftover space because there's not much space to fit in all the buttons? It's really weird, I'll have a look and consult with some Ubuntu maintainers.
Created attachment 123060 [details] Picture of German translation without Undo and with Resize/Move split into two lines Attached is a picture of the German translation with Resize/Move split in two and without the Undo button. In the code I removed the undo button, but made the splitting of the Resize/Move text conditional on whether the overall text length was greater than 14 characters. This way languages with less text can still preserve some of the vertical toolbar space by keeping Resize/Move on one line. > > I wonder where the extra white space comes from? > > Maybe gtk resizes them equally in the leftover space because > there's not much space to fit in all the buttons? It's really > weird, I'll have a look and consult with some Ubuntu maintainers. When I enlarged the window for all of the icons to fit in the toolbar the spacing between them remained the same. My hunch now is that the spacing is somehow based on the length of all of the text sizes. Perhaps an average? Does this solution seem appropriate to address the problem raised in this bug?
Fine by me - I believe the original bug reporter will be happy with this solution as well. Let's hope people won't miss the Undo button :) Is there a way to add/remove buttons?
I believe significant extra coding would be required to permit the user to add/remove buttons. Since GParted is many times used from a Read-Only LiveCD, the extra step of saving this setting would be a challenge too. What do you think about removing the "Undo" button only if the size of the translated "Resize/Move" text is greater than 15 characters? That would permit languages with shorter text to benefit from the additional button, but still display all the buttons (minus the Undo) for longer text languages.
Yes, wonderful solution! But do make a clear note about it in the code, I wouldn't want any future developers to get mixed up. :)
Thank you Savvas for your help with this problem. I have added comments in the code as can be seen in the following URL (search for "Resize/Move"): http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gparted/trunk/src/Win_GParted.cc?revision=971&view=markup In my mind this is not a perfect solution so I have added a FIXME noting that there may be a better way to do this. For now I think it is a good compromise. :-) This change has been committed to the GNOME svn repository for inclusion in the next release of GParted (0.4.0). Closing this bug.