Bug 161420

Strange, this has been fixed on trunk some weeks ago. I could not reproduce this issue on the latest trunk version. Could you please give me the information what you did? Maybe I'm missing something... Thanks!

sorry for taking so long to answer, but I wanted to recompile from trunk first and it took me so long to come around to it. With yesterday's trunk (compiled with kdesvn-build, only kdesupport failed but all other modules compiled OK) I still see the problem. When I configure the icon view to use small icons for folders (left-most slider position) and large icons for previews (right-most slider position), when I hit OK the icons appear as large as the previews (which seem to have priority).
Maybe that's a configuration problem here (I've had KDE4 svn laying around in the install directory in various development stages for months, so maybe some things are a bit broken ?) but otherwise it looks like a bug. I'll attach two screenshots showing what I see to make it clearer.

Created attachment 24866 [details]
Screenshot of the config dialog

What I configure (notice the small size of the directory icon)

Created attachment 24867 [details]
What I see

And that's what I see. The directory icons are as big as image previews (a bit
truncated here, but you get the idea).
Maybe OK (looks well aligned after all) but not consistent with the config
dialog...

Ah, thanks for the explanation, now I understand your problem. If View->Preview is turned on, the size of all items are expanded to the "preview size" (also directory icons). The "icon size" is used only if View->Preview is turned off.

This is mainly because of 2 reasons:

1. Users complained in Dolphin for KDE 3 that the size of directories is smaller than the preview size when View->Preview is turned on. Although I personally liked the smaller directory icons, it was not very well accepted by most users.

2. In Qt4 it's not possible anymore in an easy manner specifying different grid heights for the icon view per line. This would mean that even if we'd use small icons for directories we would waste a lot of space because of the fixed grid height.

So currently there is no plan for fixing this or making this configurable. If you want we can leave this issue open as wish request so that other users might state their opinion here or vote for this wish.

I guess the best thing to do is to change the string to make it explicit what the user should expect. Maybe right now is bad for a string change, but as soon as the freeze is lifted it is an easy change to make...

I agree with Nicolas in #6. 
Icon size:
1) icon mode
2) preview mode
something like this.

Who are these "most users" who complained that icon size should be same as preview size?
Are we talking about "most vocal" here again?
Why would I want to have a preview of directory icon in the first place?
What is the use case for "viewing preview of the directory icon"?

Preview of the file and directory icon, not preview of the directory. The point is to keep size the same.

that's what I'm talking about
"a preview of directory icon"

read my question again.

@k.t: There is no "preview of a directory icon". The icon is increased to the grid size - thats all. So your question is wrong...

but the change in directory icon size then you switch to preview mode forces user to make an assumption that this must be the "preview of directory icon"

So the issue now is not the size, but naming right? I think it is superficial -- I doubt that any user exists who switches to preview mode and expect to see no directory icon but preview of the directory or the preview of the directory icon.

Naming in settings could be better -- not "preview size" but "preview mode". And the title "sizes for icon and preview mode".

I'm not here to troll or piss off somebody, I'm genuinely interested. Who are these most users, for who you did this change, that to me (kde3 user for 3 years) seems absolutely illogical?
Was it usability research, there it was concluded that preview size should equal icon size?

@k.t.
> who are these most users, for who you did this change,
> that to me (kde3 user for 3 years) seems absolutely illogical? 

This is based on the feedback of having up to 8000 Dolphin related e-mails in the in-/outbox that I've collected during the last 3 years (bug-reports, wishes, discussions). In Dolphin for KDE 3 (let's call it Dolphin3) we had the behavior that the size of the directory icon is smaller like e. g. in Nautilus and I got a high number of complaints argueing "What's the benefit of having a smaller directory icon? This is inconsistent and does not look good." For Dolphin in KDE 4 we used the same size because of this feedback.

Although the user base for Dolphin3 to Dolphin4 has increased dramatically because Dolphin4 is shipped with KDE per default, I got no single complaint yet. This bug report and your feedback is the first complaint yet from around 400 bug-reports I got since January...

Let me rephrase your original question to yourself: Whats the benefit of having a smaller icon size for the directory? The grid size won't change in this case, you just have more empty space...

A very interesting point for me is that you say "... that to me (kde3 user for 3 years) seems absolutely illogical?" Konqueror in KDE 3 only supported having the same icon size for the directories like the previews, so the current behavior of Dolphin is compliant with the behavior KDE had during the last years. Only Dolphin for KDE 3 supported the different icon sizes like Nautilus...

Created attachment 26121 [details]
konqueror in kde3

I am used to a little smaller folder icon than previews. That is why I
originally attempted to get folder icon slightly smaller in size than previews
in dolphin.
But never mind, looks like I am very tiny minority with odd concepts about what
should be how big relative to each other.

Honestly speaking until you posted this ss I was against your idea, but now... This looks convincing, the same size is too "heavy" with bigger (than small) size.

New option? Peter?

Created attachment 26123 [details]
dolphin preview mode kde4.1 beta2 default settings

Again. Don't do anything just to please a few individuals, we could be just two
freaks with odd sense of "visually pleasing proportions".
If I look at this picture, then I would like to have previews which take
maximum width and not height (like previews are done in kde3), I would also
like to make icons a bit smaller.

Is preview not based on image proportions? Having such image

=
=
=
=
=
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it is rather hard to present it full width not reaching full height. Or I misunderstood you?

Created attachment 26128 [details]
both previous pics in one compared

yes in both cases image proportions are correct.
in kde3 image preview is resized until it reaches certain width, in dolphin
until it reaches certain height.
I myself would prefer kde3 way. But that is a candidate for yet another
wishlist-bug report.

So, this has actually diverged quite a bit from the original report I made, which was qfter all just a misleading config UI. Could we find a way to make the dialog explicit as to what will happen, close this bug and open a new one for the issue of whether image previews need to expand in width or height ?

@Nicolas: I agree, a new wish request/bug report should be opened for the other topics. Back to your original report: In Dolphin for KDE 4.2 the settings dialog for the icon view will be replaced completely, as it will be possible also for the details view and column view having:
- more zoom levels
- different sizes for the preview mode and the non-preview mode

OK. Good to know. By the way, I think I saw a request to have a zooming slider in the status bar like in gwenview or digikam to select the icon sizes. I tend to think this is a *great* idea, even though I'm too lazy to look for the corresponding bug report and go vote for it now :-) But if that was implemented, then the current problem with non-predictibility of the config dialog will be gone, as this kind of slider is seen more and more in KDE (also koffice applications now if I'm right)...

I plan to add the zooming slider to the status bar like in Gwenview. The current problem is that the performance is not as good as I want to have it for a smooth zooming (Dolphin has more complex item layouts than Gwenview, which consumes much performance). But I hope I can improve this until 4.2 is out :-)

Fixed in KDE 4.2.