#70 Various GUI quirks

[Ark]

There are various GUI things that need to be fixed. I will post them all at once in the first reply to this ticket.

[Ark]

User interaction

1. If the current file is removed from the file system, File/Refresh doesn't work and all you get is an error message. Idea: If the current file does not exist anymore, scan the current directory for another file that exists and is "closest" (according to the current order) to the current file. If there is no such file, select the "first" (according to the current order) file in the directory, if there is a file for MComix at all.
2. Depending on how you opened the current book, the PageUp and PageDown keys won't take you to the next book. More precisely, if you use File/Open to open a file within a directory, the Page keys will take you to the next/previous directory (or "book") next to the current directory if you use them at the end/beginning of the book. However, if you use File/Open to open a directory (hit "Open" when the dir in mind is highlighted in the "Open" dialog), the Page keys won't take you to the next/previous book even if they should (according to the preferences).
3. If you open a book "backwards" (i.e. if you got to the new book by hitting PageUp on the first page of the book you just visited) you should see the end of the last page of the book rather than the beginning of the last page. Similarily, if you hit the End key to get to the last page of a book, you should see the end of the last page of this book. Idea: in main.py:_page_available: there is a call self.draw_image(False, True) where the constant False might need to be replaced with something that returns True in these cases and False otherwise.
4. If you press down the middle mouse button to temporarily activate the lens and then press down the right button before you release the middle button, the lens gets permanently activated. The lens should be deactivated as soon as you hit the right mouse button, though. Note that this already works with the left button.

Preferences

1. "Escape key closes program" is redundant and should be merged with the shortcuts config for File/Close.
2. The current label "Fraction of page to scroll per space key press (in percent)" should be replaced since the semantics changed slightly here. Example: "Maximum amount to scroll when using smart scrolling keys (in percent)". Similarily for the label "Number of pixels to scroll per mouse wheel turn", e.g. "Maximum amount to scroll per mouse wheel turn (in pixels)".
3. In the Preferences dialog, the size of the magnifying lens is not displayed at all after opening the dialog. You need to interact with the component to make it display the current value. Same goes for "Thumbnail size". UPDATE: Fixed in [r1107]. Furthermore, if you change the value of "Thumbnail size" fast enough, the thumbnailer might disappear from the main window but does not reappear.
4. In the "Shortcuts" section, there are two "Autorotate" groups that should go to the "Transformation" group. Proposed new label pattern: "Autorotate to portrait/landscape format 90 degrees CW/CCW". These labels should be made consistent with the corresponding menu labels as well.

Main area

1. Maybe because of the GTK theme I currently use, the numbers on the thumbnailer are always rendered in black. They should be rendered in either black or white, though, depending on the colour that is used for the background of the thumbnailer at this time. Idea: Use the Y channel (e.g. YCbCr/ITU-R BT.601) of the background colour to determine whether the background is dark (Y is less than 0.5 and you should use white for the numbers) or not (Y is equal to or greater than 0.5 and you should use black for the numbers). Note that the background colour for a selected thumbnail might differ from the "unselected" background colour due to the GTK theme settings. UPDATE: Fixed in [r1094].
2. The "dynamic background colour" depends on the order the images are displayed in the main area. That is, if you have double page mode enabled, switching between western mode and manga mode might change this background colour. This is strange.
3. The thumbnailer's background respects the settings only where thumbnails are actually displayed but not outside of this area. To reproduce, simply open a book with only one or two images so the thumbnailer is almost empty. In my case, this area is always white even if the background of the thumbnailer is supposed to be black.
4. Right after opening a book, the first selected image is not necessarily fully visible in the thumbnailer. MComix seems to behave consistently for any given combination of book, selected image, order, window dimensions etc. Therefore, I think it has nothing to do with race conditions or the recent speedup changes. Maybe it has something to do with the different dimensions of the thumbnails or the differences between expected thumbnail sizes and actual thumbnail sizes.
5. When you flip pages, the old or the new content appears to be translated for a split second just when the old content of the main window is being replaced by the new one. This seems to happen more often or more visibly when both the old and the new content need both the vertical and the horizontal scrollbars. There are two comments saying "XXX replacement necessary?" I left behind in main.py, pointing to two calls freeze_updates() and thaw_updates() which are now disabled. I think that these two calls need to be replaced in order to solve this. However, I don't know how to do that.
6. In the thumbnailer, the substitute thumbnail for a missing image appears to be much larger (and uglier) than necessary, pushing the actual thumbnails out of view since the width of the thumbnailer is fixed. How to reproduce: Make sure MComix sorts images by name (ascending) the next time you open it. Then, cd to a directory that contains much more images than the thumbnailer is able to display at a time. Execute something like cp somepic.png zzzz_dummy_pic_must_be_last_pic_in_dir.png Then, run mcomix . and do nothing. The dummy pic must not be visible in the thumbnailer right now! Remove the dummy pic from the file system without using MComix at all. Now, switch back to MComix and go to the last image. Since this dummy pic is not available anymore, the thumbnailer displays a upscaled version of the "missing" icon instead of a proper thumbnail. This icon thumbnail is much larger than any other "normal" thumbnail so the whole thumbnailer's content is expanded to the right and partially obscured by the main area of the window. The "missing" icon should not be upscaled at all but downscaled in order to fit into the thumbnailer. UPDATE: Fixed in [r1210].

Miscellaneous

1. The "Enhance image" dialog lacks a "Reset" button. (The "Revert" button only restores the value previously saved with "Save".)
2. The histogram in the "Enhance image" dialog is not updated when you switch to another image. UPDATE: Fixed in [r1144].
3. If you select an archive (or PDF file) in the File/Open dialog, a thumbnail of the title page is displayed. For some reason, this does not happen if you select a directory, though.

[Ark]

I have to admit that I don't have much time for coding right now. Therefore, I would be glad to see someone else trying to fix the bugs mentioned above. I hope it's okay to have all these minor bugs gathered in the same thread.

Besides, what about a new official release? And where do we discuss new releases in general?