[wxMaxima-devel] Fwd: wxmaxima (translation) issues

[Andrej V. <and...@gm...>]

Hi all,

Harald and I have been talking about some changes to the button panel
under the input line. Something has to be changes since the space
required for the panel in translated versions of wxMaxima is usually
bigger than in the english version (sometimes it does not fit the
screen). Rather than reducing the number of buttons, some other option
might be better, which would allow for more functional panel. Using
another library could be usefull (like wxDockIt from
http://wxextended.sf.net/ ).

If anyone else wants to participate in the discussion, please join in.

Andrej

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Harald Geyer <Har...@gm...>
Date: 6.12.2005 10:33
Subject: Re: wxmaxima (translation) issues
To: Andrej Vodopivec <and...@gm...>


Hi Andrej!

> I have been thinking some more about this problem. Another option is
> to use a notebook for the button panel. This way we can group buttons
> for similar commands together in tabs (similar structure as in the
> menus). This would allow for even more buttons - like constants,
> common math functions and so on. Descriptive translations would be
> appropriate with this solution. What do you think?

I've been thinking about changes in the UI too. At some point I thought
about making the buttons user configurable. I think generating the
buttons dynamically shouldn't be much of a problem, but I'm not sure
about the configuration feature (i.e. some possibility to drag menu
items to the button area and set some custom lable) itself. Do you
think that would be easy to implement? Also I'm not sure if the users
needs vary enough to justify the additional burden...

I think adding tabs would be a good idea, because they don't collapse
after selecting an item as menus do. This would be especially handy if
the user is experimenting without knowing yet which function suits his
needs best. (At least I do that a lot.) However tabs need a lot of
space themselves so they probably aren't very useful without reserving some
extra space. Extra space of course makes the need for tabs less pressing ..=
.

An other benefit of tabs comes to my mind: If you ever plan to support
additional maxima packages (like vect), the UI would already have a
modular structure. But of course this is true for menus already.

If we want the buttons in the tabs to remain fast accessible, then we
propably shouldn't stick to much to the hierachic structure of the menu.
Actually I think it would be useful to duplicate some of the buttons
across some ot the tabs. However I'm not sure, which layout would be a
good idea. I will try to observe my own usage habits more closely.

Perhaps we should take this discussion to the public? If you agree, feel
free to quote this message whereever you want.

Harald