[maemo-developers] Moving windows in Maemo

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

ext Sean Luke wrote:
[...]

Thanks for the information!

It's better that some developer more familiar with Gtk answers
these, I'm not completely sure on all of this (I've done very
little with Gtk).


>>> But to get back on track: this is essentially orthogonal to the issue of
>>> giving developers the *option* of moving and resizing dialogs.
>>
>> Developers already have that.  They can (from code) set dialog to
>> any size and position at any time they want to.
> 
> Is there a standard API for developers turn on a switch in their
> application (not a global switch for all apps) that says "let the user
> resize this particular dialog from a resize box" or "let the user drag
> dialogs by their title bars", short of making a global modification to
> the window manager?  That's what spawned this thread.

No.


>>> So: why are we restricted to
>>> being unable to make dialogs which can be dragged and resized?  Why
>>> can't the developer be given the option to handle these corner cases
>>> himself?
>>
>> You're asking for an option to set that dialog should be resizable
>> and movable?  (that's different from what you asked earlier)
> 
> Hmmm, I'm pretty sure that's what I asked.

There are now three different things being discussed:
1. Being able to set dialog size & position from code
   -> already possible
2. Original issue: all dialogs in the device being resizable and
   movable by the user
   -> Already possible, but only by setting the corresponding DIALOGMODE
      in /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs (this is given as command line
      option to matchbox window manager)
   -> This UI policy is not going to be changed as it's against Maemo
      UI policy and need for that just indicates either bad application
      UI design or implementation (ie. bug)
      - If UI policy is not at Maemo site, IMHO it should...
3. Being able to set just specific dialog to be user movable & resizable
   -> Not possible


But let me be more specific
> to summarize my requests in the discussion so far.
> 
> First, I'd like the option, as a developer, to:
> 
> - set a specific dialog as movable
> - set a specific dialog as resizable
> - set a specific dialog as non-modal

This can be already done.

> - set a specific dialog as closeable or minaturizable

This might be something that you could control from Matchbox theme
file, see its documentation at:
  http://matchbox-project.org/

Then you could create a theme that does that and install it.


> Second, I believe that Nokia should set many of its dialog boxes as
> resizable, and *all* of its dialog boxes as movable.

I'm pretty sure this is not going to happen (dialogs in phones
are not movable either + their UI is also very modal).


> Third, I believe Nokia should place notifications somewhere where they
> don't cover widgets (the right half of the menu bar is the obvious
> place),

Many of the banners come from dimmed menu items, so then the banners
would cover the item you just tapped (they are quite high), which would
be even more annoying I think.


> and at the very least, make notifications dismissable by
> clicking on them.

This has already a bug.

> No notifications should be permitted to be on-screen
> more than a very short time (the present 3 second length is irritatingly
> way too long -- perhaps this could be a control panel setting?).

It's very little detail to be put in control panel, but file it to
Bugzilla.  Maybe it could be just a Gconf setting, then somebody else
could provide the applet for setting that?  (I'm not deciding on these,
but you could get the hildon sources and provide a patch for this
in bugzilla, that could help)

IMHO above feature is more useful though.


> And violating notifications, such as email's "deleting message"
> notification, which keep the notification up for minutes at a time,
> should be eliminated.
> 
> Fourth, it'd be nice if Nokia significantly reduced the height of the
> Dialog's title bar given the small size of the screen.

Bug?


	- Eero