qpdfview team mailing list archive

[Adam Reichold <adamreichold@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hello,

On 15.07.2012 23:28, Sandor Ortegon wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have observed a couple of things about tab management that I
> would like to "bring to the table":
> 
> 
> 1) If we think in a "web browser mode", an important feature that
> is missing is the following: Currently, the size of a tab depends
> on the length of the filename. However, there are PDF files which
> very large filenames and not all people "rename" files to see a
> short title.
> 
> For example, recently, someone sent me two PDF ebooks with the
> following titles:
> 
> Kepler_039_S_Conjecture_How_Some_Of_The_Greatest_Minds_In_History_Helped_Solve_One_Of_The_Oldest_Math_Problems_In_The_World.pdf
>
> 
Gelfand_Kapranov_Zelevinsky_Discriminants_Resultants_And_Multidimensional_Determinants_(birkhauser_1994)(ka)(t)(isbn_0817636609)(532s)_Maa.pdf
> 
> With the current system, opening these files in new tabs would make
> the program show only two tabs and then need to use the arrows to
> see the other ones. So, perhaps is possible to set a limit for
> length of the text in a tab (of course, once we locate in that tab,
> the Window title shows the file name) and then truncate it. Or ...
> (I have no idea which is easier) try to make the tab length depend
> on the number of tabs opened, rather than the length of the
> filename. Web Browsers with tabs can give ideas on how implement
> this in a tabbed viewer.

I am sorry, enabling text eliding just went missing somewhere in
between 0.3.1 and 0.3.2beta1. I enabled it again which should
alleviate the worst problems. It is actually a Qt-supplied feature
with a very sensible default implementation, I just have forgotten to
enable it. Thanks for reminding me!

> 2) It is possible to reduce the height of tabs?

Basically, yes. But actually such properties are controlled by Qt's
styles or even style sheets that are user-configurable and supplied by
the desktop environment. So it's nothing that should be explicitly set
by the program (i.e. the developer) but you should rather configure
that in the same way you configure other properties of your desktop theme.

But of course, how easy this is and how well the tab bar properties
are exposed here very much depends on your specific setup.

> 3) An observation: Usually default choices in a program (i.e the
> default .conf file) are made to make the program "look better" for
> a new user.
> 
> I think with respect to tabs, show the tabs vertically (left/right 
> instead of top/bottom) could be the best choice by default.
> 
> My explanation: Web browsers can't do this, but usually the number
> of tabs people use to have in a web browser is less than the
> corresponding number in a pdf viewer; so, it is not a problem if we
> use vertical instead of horizontal space. But there is a great
> difference between manipulating tabs located vertically or located
> horizontally: vertically, we can switch tabs with the mouse wheel
> (placed in the tab bar) and can do it very fast, regardless the
> number of tabs opened!!  In tabs that are located horizontally,
> when not all the tabs fit into the screen (many tabs), we are
> forced to use the arrows and this process actually is somewhat slow
> (and the arrows are too small), so users might think that tab
> manipulation is always slow, ignoring they have another choice.  In
> my case, I discovered this by accident :)   In other words, by
> using the tabs vertically, we have one more choice besides the 
> traditional one.

Switching tabs using the mouse wheel should work independently of the
position of the tab bar. And it does so for me (running Qt 4.8.x).
Could you maybe retest and if it really does not work if the tool bar
is on top give some more information on your Qt version etc.

> With this comment on the default choice, I also want to bring the 
> attention to the fact that qpdfview allows the user more choices
> to place toolbars with respect to other programs, which is
> excellent, but we still imitate the default choices of programs
> that doesn't have that possibility. Perhaps if they had more
> choices, they could set some default options differently. Of
> course, power users like us (the first users of qpdfview) can
> change the behavior to suit our desires, but we have a possibility
> to show new users  "a fresh way to see the world".

Nice that you like it but I can't take any credit for these features
since they are really just Qt-supplied. The only thing we did was to
make the widgets take less horizontal space than they used up initially.

Now concerning the orientation of tab bar and tool bars, personally I
would leave them at the established defaults just to meet most
people's expectations. It is probably good for new users to have a
"sweeping glance" over the possible settings when beginning to use a
new program anyway.

But maybe other readers of the mailing list you chime in whether they
think we should try changing the default orientation of the tab bar or
the tool bars for the 0.3.2 release.

(There's probably reason to leave the tool bars alone besides personal
taste as the do work vertically but just not as good as horizontally.)

> Thanks for your attention and kudos for such a great program!
> 

Best regards, Adam.
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