Bug 75970 - selective text for toolbuttons in toolbar
Summary: selective text for toolbuttons in toolbar
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: kdelibs
Classification: Frameworks and Libraries
Component: kedittoolbar (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: unspecified Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: David Faure
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-02-24 01:03 UTC by Mohd Asif Ali Rizwaan
Modified: 2007-01-15 21:22 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Mohd Asif Ali Rizwaan 2004-02-24 01:03:32 UTC
Version:           unknown (using KDE 3.2.0, compiled sources)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.2.3
OS:          Linux (i686) release 2.4.22

Every KDE toolbar has:

1. Text Position: Icons only, Text Alongside Icons, Text below icons, Text only

I don't want all toolbuttons to have "Text Alongside icons", but for few buttons in the toolbarbuttons.

eg.,

[^] [< back] [>] [^Home]

Only Back and Home buttons have the text alongside icons. So, Please allow buttons to show text alongside icons selectively. In this way the button size will be larger hence easy to click. thanks.
Comment 1 David Faure 2004-04-28 20:06:34 UTC
This would be overkill if each button was configured individually.

However this can be achieved by moving the other icons to another toolbar.
Comment 2 Claus Jeberg 2004-07-11 19:54:45 UTC
I think it is sad, that this wish got a WONTFIX.
From a usability point of view, I think it would be a good idea. Not necessarily to make it possible for all buttons ( as david say 'overkill'), but for a select few. 

If the wish to make it possible to configure the buttons individually comes up at a later stage, it could be looked at again, but as a very very good starting point, just a select few. 'Back' and 'Home' are in this respect very good candidates.

Weel, just my 2 cents.
Comment 3 Mircea Bardac 2005-02-09 18:09:00 UTC
Have a look for example over Outlook in Office XP/2000/2003 (This is one, if not, the best MS application). Why did MS choose to implement such buttons?  

I need a big "Send & Receive" button and a big "New E-mail" button. Even Evolution has big buttons for these 2 (AFAIK).

It's not a matter of implementing *configurable* "selective text" for each button. I haven't seen the *configurable* thing in any implementation. The developer could have the choice to add a prefference when inserting a button on a toolbar.

(unexperienced code sample following)
I assume KToolBar=toolbar object, KToolButton=toolbar button object, KIcon=icon object

const ont BUTTON_STEXT=1; //constant defining the selective text property

KToolBar *mytoolbar=new KToolBar();
KIcon *icon=new KIcon("some path");

KToolButton *button1=new KToolButton(icon,"My Button 1",BUTTON_STEXT)
KToolButton *button2=new KToolButton(icon,"My Button 2")

mytoolbar->addButton(button1);
mytoolbar->addButton(button2);


---

I don't think it would be difficult to:
1. to extend the KToolButton constructor to take another param meaning "show text when selective text is selected", default is off, something like
> KToolButton::KToolButton(KIcon *icon, QString text, int show_selective=0);

2. add another option to KToolBar for displaying selective text

(1) will also keep backwards compatibility. Once the devs realise there's a new option available, the applications could adapt. Until then, selecting "Selective text" would not show any text (=it will be similar to "Icons only").

I hope the "WONTFIX" decision will be revised considering usability and also following the current implementations found in the programs.
Comment 4 Georg Wittenburg 2005-12-13 03:14:08 UTC
Given the comments above, especially those regarding usability, I'd like to ask the developers to reconsider and implement this wish for KDE 4.
Comment 5 Mircea Bardac 2007-01-10 21:54:18 UTC
Reconsidering the implementation idea above:

Maybe, instead of changing the API (not sure how it looks right now) to take another option, this can be done:
a) giving a new flag to the constructor (this might even be possible, I just don't know the code) -> no big trouble
b) adding a setter function, such as setSelectiveText(bool)

I think the first one would allow the greatest flexibility.
Comment 6 David Faure 2007-01-11 01:20:00 UTC
b) is the qt4 way. But let's not talk API yet, when the overall idea has to be agreed upon first. I don't think applications should come up with inconsistent toolbars, where some buttons have text and some don't. Plus, deciding which ones should have text sounds like infinite debate.

OTOH kde4 currently has text on icons by default, as a way to force developers to simplify the toolbars, too. We'll see how that goes.