Filer_Action enhancement!
Vince M Hudd (116) 534 posts |
I like the last version, other than the empty space to the left of the counts, which I think is wasted. I’m not sure this would look right either, but what about putting it all on a line in a more sentence like format? x,xxx,xxx bytes of y,yyy files counted.(Using an icon for each bit, obviously, rather than faffing around building the sentence for each update). |
Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
Crumbs! :)
I agree, I think despite what the Style Guide says (and I do have a copy somewhere, I should probably read it), it does look better without the slabbed in fields.
We tried that already, or pretty much. I think consensus was that a separate bar looked better.
I agree it looks a bit odd but there’s room for over 12 digits there, I don’t think the fields need to be bigger.
Possibly, but it’s never been reported as an error previously. I’m not saying that’s right, just that moving the status field into the title bar is going to require some more work because it’ll require rewriting a lot of the messages file and possibly some different descisions about when and where to show stuff.
Currently FA uses the C function |
Trevor Johnson (329) 1645 posts |
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Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
OK, so territories are implemented as modules – I assume this is what the “UK” module in the default ROM is? So if I build the, say, “Germany” module, I shoudl be able to test this… [a few minutes later] It seems to work. I loaded the Germany module, did *territory germany, and the commas in Filer Action turned to full stops. However when I tried to go back to territory UK, I got a data abort inside MessageTrans! Ho hum :) |
Steve Revill (20) 1361 posts |
Sure, I’m well aware of that. I’m writing this from the UK so clearly I’m commenting on what I see here. I assumed that the character was localised using the Territory manager. My comment clearly wasn’t advocating that a comma is the answer to all my problems; I was simply stating that making the numbers readable rather than “10328234903428409” was a good thing. Anyway, as has already been observed, this is way off-topic. |
Steve Revill (20) 1361 posts |
Rik: keep up the good work – design by committee is never an easy thing but I’m liking what I see and it feels like it’s close to being ready for CVS. There will always be some people that don’t like a particular design (perhaps even me) – you can’t please all of the people all of the time. |
Trevor Johnson (329) 1645 posts |
Should the files be amended in accordance with the ISO? There may be a few other inconsistencies too, e.g. no negative sign for Canadian currency. I’m happy to begin reviewing all of this if that’d be helpful (in a new thread), although I’m not sure on some of the lower parameters. |
Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
I realise that you can’t please everyone all of the time, or even some of the time :) I’ve addressed some of the issues raised, and here’s a new version for people to try out: http://www.btinternet.com/~rik.griffin/Test_FilerAct.zip Summary of changes:
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Trevor Johnson (329) 1645 posts |
Would it be a good idea for any source changes which have significant corresponding forum discussions to include the forum thread URL somewhere in the docs/changelog? That way, trying to summarise/justify decisions in the docs may not be totally necessary. It may also lead to some interesting thread resurrection in a few years, if/when current changes are revisited. |
Andrew Conroy (370) 725 posts |
That’s great, thanks :-) |
Bryan Hogan (339) 589 posts |
One small addition – please give Filer Action windows a close icon. It has always bugged me that they can’t be closed in the normal way. Plus you can’t iconise them without a close icon! BTW, I hope that all this extra progress code does not get executed if Verbose is turned off, so it isn’t wasting time calculating things that are not going to be used. I spend far too much time at work with Windows “Preparing to delete/copy/move” rather than it just getting on with it! |
Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
I think there’d be potential for confusion there. Would the close icon act in the same way as “Abort” or would users expect it merely to hide the window so the operation continues in the background?
The progress calculation code is pretty minimal and has a negligible effect on overall speed. Other changes I’ve made mean the new FA is faster than the old one anyway, even in non-verbose mode. Besides, remember that you can turn “verbose” on during a FA operation. |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
Could it have an iconise button? |
Ben Avison (25) 445 posts |
Not without a close button it can’t – they share the same window flag. If you just want to hide the window, there’s always the back button… |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
I just tried it on my Iyonix, which has the “clean” theme. It would look far better with the wells (and separate well for the progress bar as Colin suggested). |
Steve Revill (20) 1361 posts |
Screenshots or it never happened ;) |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
Netsurf for comparison. |
Andrew Hodgkinson (6) 465 posts |
The theme is broken, though. It has a white background which means the white highlight edge of any 3D field is lost. It looks (IMHO) awful in the NetSurf example, for example with the “missing edge” around the bottom and right borders of the fields, along with their arbitrarily coloured filled in backgrounds. It’s all very RISC OS 2… I really don’t think developers should try to make some window work in an arbitrary theme. They should work in the vanilla default desktop. Anything the user does after that is the user’s (or theme designer’s) lookout. |
Chris (121) 472 posts |
Rik – I think this is very nice. The current version is a huge step forward from the one in ROM, and you’ve done a heroic job marshalling all the different comments. I like it. |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
> I really don’t think developers should try to make some window work in an arbitrary theme. They should work in the vanilla default desktop. Anything the user does after that is the user’s (or theme designer’s) lookout. But it appears to be the case that if the style guide is followed, the theme looks fine. (The NS window pasted into webpage looks poor out of context, but looks fine on the desktop.) Surely, if style guide followed, then any problems are down to the theme, if it isn’t then problems could be down to either. (Analogous to, rendering problems with valid HTML being down to the browser.) |
Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
I’m torn WRT Jess’ comments … on one hand, I think we should try to follow the style guide (or at least A style) as far as possible. On the other hand, I think the design for the FA window we’ve come up with looks best in the current incarnation, without too many slabbed in fields … On the other other (gripping) hand – these templates are loaded every time FA is started and there’s nothing to stop anyone changing |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
Could what goes in the ROM be strict style guide? (i.e. Colin’s comments on slabbed design.) Then provide the other templates you have designed in a app dir to be loaded on start-up, if desired. (Or even a configure plug-in.) |
Steve Revill (20) 1361 posts |
I’d say no. For two reasons:
I think we’ve arrived at a design that most people like and if we’re all happy that it’s working functionally, then it’s probably time to get it into cvs and build a ROM with this in. |
Jess Hampshire (158) 865 posts |
Isn’t that a tiny bit like saying we won’t fix this bug, because everyone is used to it? Shouldn’t the style guide be the target? (And if it is wrong, then it should be amended, then followed). On the default RISC OS styling, I like both the style guide option and the other option equally, however all the similar windows (e.g. netfetch, netsurf) match the style guide version (and also look nice with the theme I use). Has everyone judged how they like it from the image on the webpage, or in context amongst similar windows on their desktop? |
Rik Griffin (98) 264 posts |
Aesthetic issues aside, I’m going to try and get the code ready for commit to the CVS. So if anyone notices any bugs, misfeatures, quirks etc can you please let me know. I’m not going to consider adding new features at this stage. |