Bug 463902

Summary:	let's reduce the zoom step
Product:	[Applications] gwenview	Reporter:	Misha Aizatulin <avatar>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Gwenview Bugs <gwenview-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	avatar, nate
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	21.03.90
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	A patch for the proposed change

Description Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-06 01:32:08 UTC

I'd like to propose a drastic change: we should greatly reduce the zoom step. I've been running a hacked version of gwenview which has a zoom step of 0.92 and I'd like to claim that it is strictly superior to the current sqrt(0.5). 

  With a large zoom, you can almost never achieve the perfect zoom: it is either too big or too small. Empirically 0.92 gets you satisfactorily close almost always.

  I suspect a bigger step was chosen because it reduces the number of keystrokes. I think this is a wrong metric because people don't zoom by stroking the key. People zoom by mashing the key and when you mash the difference between 3 hits and 10 hits is negligible in terms of brain effort. Think of using a space key to align words in an editor - you don't really care much how many spaces there are, 99% of your effort goes into stopping at the right time, not into holding the key down. 

  In summary, I claim that reducing the zoom step allows to improve zoom precision without sacrificing zoom speed or cognitive effort. Try it on your friends!

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2023-01-09 21:17:43 UTC

Feel free to submit a merge request with your change and we'll see what people think!

Comment 2 Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-10 01:45:01 UTC

Created attachment 155169 [details]
A patch for the proposed change

Comment 3 Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-10 01:46:18 UTC

I've never made a pull request, and I think I failed to compile tip the last time I tried, but here's the patch against the version I'm running. It's trivial. Does that suffice perhaps? Let me know if not and I can try harder!

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2023-01-10 15:15:52 UTC

I bet you can do it. :) See https://community.kde.org/Infrastructure/GitLab#Submitting_a_Merge_Request for the instructions.

Comment 5 Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-10 20:00:35 UTC

The first item is "Build the project from source and make your change". I don't think the current tip builds on OpenSuSE 15.4. At least I didn't figure it out. 

Is it possible to submit a pull request not from tip?

Comment 6 Nate Graham 2023-01-10 20:50:49 UTC

You can just build it from the master branch.

Comment 7 Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-10 21:05:47 UTC

Sorry, to be clear: no recent version builds. Guess my system libraries are too old. I am using a version couple years old.

Comment 8 Nate Graham 2023-01-11 15:50:34 UTC

Yeahhhhh you should really upgrade. :) Software development and ancient libraries don't mix well. :) 

Of course you can also build all the relevant KDE libraries from source using `kdesrc-build` if you need to. See https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development.

But, I would recommend upgrading your system instead.

Comment 9 Misha Aizatulin 2023-01-11 19:15:48 UTC

Sorry, when I said "I'm using a version couple years old" I was referring to gwenview. I'm on OpenSuSE 15.4 which is the latest version. It ships with gwenview 21.12.3.

Comment 10 Misha Aizatulin 2023-08-19 23:09:29 UTC

Ping. I think needing to compile the most recent tree is an incredibly high bar for a casual contributor like me who only wants to change one line. I'm happy to submit a PR from whatever version I can compile on my (latest) OS, and pretty promise it will rebase fine.