Re: [Zapping-misc] Tabs in prefs dialog

[Michael H. S. <msc...@us...>]

Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> 
> I'd like to know if other people noticed
> Zapping's Preferences dialog looks overly complicated, possibly because of
> an overload of tabs.

IMO the plugin preferences need not be placed in Zapping's prefs at all.
Take the Screenshot, wouldn't it be more natural to pop up a dialog
containing a file name, format menu and stuff when you want a screen
shot? The plugin would remember the last filename and propose
dir/file<auto num++>.<suitable ext>, also overcoming the hardcoded file
names. I'm undecided if the present one-click method isn't better in
some cases though. Ideas?

Similar the "mpeg" plugin, it opens a small status window anyway. And
since the a/v format config can be rather complex I pondered to store
different configs under user supplied names. Think "videoclip" with lq
video, hq stereo audio, "letterbox movie", "divx configured for modem",
"mpeg-1 1/2 fps for cartoon", "archive quality", ... I'm not sure about
the details, basically the status window would display [config
menu][edit] and Rec/Stop/Pause buttons. Rec-Stop-Rec creates a new file,
while Rec-Pause-Rec (or -Pause?) concatenates. One-click issue as above.

Another part of the GUI worth improving is the channel dialog. To me
it's not completely obvious what the user's supposed to do next, or the
relevance of the Standard and especially the Input menu. This should be
somehow reflected in the channel list, and maybe Input should include
Tuner, perhaps dis/enabling other widgets accordingly.

I think the naming "channel list" itself is unfortunate. In de.po
"Kanal" (= channel) stands exclusively for the channel number in the
frequency table left, and the 2nd item in the right list, not to be
confused with the index into the latter, perhaps station memory number
in English manuals. So it's called "Senderliste" and accordingly
"Sendername", "Senderauswahl" (= channel choosing), "Sendersuchlauf" (=
automatic station search, German term in TV manuals) etc. Wish I had a
name to better cover baseband sources as well, but the obvious "List of
sources" sounds funny and unusual.

What about referring to channels in this sense as "station", would it
confuse U.S. users? If I understood correctly station memory numbers are
unusual there. Maybe Zapping should automagically map U.S. channel
numbers to channel list indices. Mind "Add all..." and us-bcast lacks
ch#1 (eliminated by FCC in 1945) or more importantly station search and
empty channels. What about empty list entries PgUp/Down would skip and
the Channels menu wouldn't list? All TVs I've seen have and do. Am I
right lirc refers to the indices? Shouldn't the channel list display
them for better orientation? I have no tuner or IR control, so please
bear with me if I'm talking bull's hit.

Is the term "Accelerator" (= keyboard shortcut) somehow ambiguous? I
changed a few labels in the past to make them more consistent, but left
this one alone, assuming it's a common Gnomeism. Frankly I couldn't
figure what this is when I saw it first. Also the unlabeled accelerator
entry at the bottom, maybe horizontal ordering would be clearer
(somewhere I read it's better to design GUIs top-down instead of
left-right anyway, although it may hurt the landscape geometry of this
dialog):
Station name: [_______________________________]
(yadda-yadda, in the order of the channel list)
Accelerator: [] Ctrl- [] Shift- [] Alt- [___][...]
The three dots in the latter widget, I saw that elsewhere, is it
mandated by Gnome? IMHO it speaks there's tooltip "Open the list of
known keys" to find out what it does. What about [List]?

Michael