On 14/3/11 18:10, Nicolas Dufour wrote:
Revision 10103 adds horizontal sliders to the Int and Float extension widgets in order to make parameters a bit easier to handle. It perfectly fits large numbers (colors or angles related values) but may be less efficient with small range parameters (as in the SVG calendar extension). Thus I've implemented two modes (mimicking the radiobutton parameter), full (default, with slider) and minimal (no slider) that can be used by adding an appearance="<mode>" attribute to the int or float element in the inx file or internal extension structure. The size of the slider is the same for all widgets, 200px (about the same as the sliders used in Gimp). Please test and comment!
Just picked a few random extensions to test - e.g. 'Generate from Path > Pattern along path': the lower and upper limits of the sliders for 'Space between copies', or 'Normal offset', are so big, that the sliders are not very useful unless you work with huge dimensions.
First impression: the sliders should not be the default mode, but only used when lower and upper bounds are carefully set and the slider is actually useful for the specific option [1].
It tends to widen all dialogs quite a lot when a (verbose) label, slider and spinbox are aligned in one row and the slider has a fixed width.
Also, it does change the default for contributed, externally hosted extensions, without their authors being aware or able to easily modify / updated already installed extensions. IMHO it would be preferable to add a new widget or mode, instead of redefining an existing one.
Other than that, I think it's great to have enhanced options for parameter input - thx for your continuing work to improve usability of the extension dialogs :)
~suv
[1] e.g. I'm not sure if a slider for the resolution of rasterization (dpi) when exporting to PDF makes sense - isn't this a value one normally enters precise numbers?