Version: 0.20 (using KDE 3.1.9) Compiler: gcc version 3.3.1 20030626 (Debian prerelease) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.4.21 First of all; I'm very unsure why the concept of pagemarks is in kghostview; I can't save them, I cant get an overview of them, I can't jump to them, I can't do anything with them except click on them... Anyway; there must be more people like me that just don't know what the .. these things are good for; so I suggest to add a menu entry to the view menu to enable/disable showing them in the pagelist. I left this as a bug instead of a feature request since at the moment it is confusing. The worst thing is that I can save my pdf; and the user will not know his pagemarks are not being saved untill it is too late. I consider that a usability bug.
The pagemarks are useful for printing. Mark the desired pages and the printer will only print the marked ones. About the "The worst thing is that I can save my pdf" you mean wou can't save a pdf? or that you would want that "save as..." saved only the marked pages?
> About the "The worst thing is that I can save my pdf" you mean wou can't save a > pdf? or that you would want that "save as..." saved only the marked pages? You only read half of my sentence; the whole is: > > The worst thing is that I can save my pdf; and the user will not know his pagemarks are not being saved untill it is too late. It should be clear that saving does not save something that is in the center of my document. A save-as would be good, but I think it would be better to have file-> save-> PDF file->save-> Annotations (or whatever you want to call them) As for the funtionality to mark for printing; the naming is very non obvious; and without any functionality but marking for printing I ask you to really reconsider the naming. Second to that; since there is no mention of this functionality in the printing dialog it is very confusing since (again) the function does not relate to printing at all. The changes needed to make this more usable depend highly on your willingness to either expand the usage of markers; or move them away so normal readers don't get confused by them.
I don't mantain KGhostview (i've only made a few patches for it like the widgets for the new thumbnail view), Luis Pedro is the mantainer. I think also that marks should be either renamed to make them more undestandable, deleted (the current functionality can be achieved easily in the print widget) or expanded, but that relies more in the mantainers hands.
Hi, I was letting the thread develop on its own before replying bc I don't have a clear answer. Since my name got mentionned, I will say what I think: 1. for 3.2 there will be no changes. Too late for that. So, there's plenty of time to solve this for 3.3 (possibly backporting to 3.2.x ...). 2. I agree that there is a problem. When I committed the patch by Albert and me which changed the page marks to checkboxes I thought about this. It was about the time that Aron's what's-this tutorial came out, so I added a what's-this help thingy. So, you get an explanation if you SHIFT-F1 and click on them. I couldn't think of anything better. (I have changed the bug status to NEW to reflect this). 2. I am against removing the pagemarks. It seems like one of those features that a couple of people will complain that "i use it every day!" if I remove it and it does seem useful. I rather think of the problem as "how to make it clear what's this is about?" 3. I am not happy with the confurable solution. It still makes people ask "what is this option?" and it smells of option-creep. 4. My current could-work idea is: the first time one checks a box in any session, trigger the what's this help. technically: catch the clicked() signal with " static bool firstTime = false; if (firstTime) { firstTime = false; whatsThis::show( i18n(...) ); } " (or a similar solution based on KPassivePopup). I haven't had the time to code this and try it out. Probably this can strike the right balance between: - informative, if you care to read it - not in your face. a msg box is way-out. - ignorable. My sister always leaves her session with about 5 open "configure me" windows from mozilla. She never answered the simple questions they ask you, supposedelly just the "first time." regards, luis
> 3. I am not happy with the confurable solution. > It still makes people ask "what is this option?" and it smells of option-creep. Notice that the thing you call configurable is only a view menu entry; like you can do a show linenumbers in kate.. The original question was: > The changes needed to make this more usable depend highly on your willingness to > either expand the usage of markers; or move them away so normal readers don't get > confused by them. This does not mean delete them; it means to not show them by default. As with most applications in KDE, it is desirable to make view menu settings persistent. > 1. for 3.2 there will be no changes. > Too late for that. As I (as a usability person) feel this really is a big usability problem; which makes this a bugfix; and the only thing I would like to see before 3.2 is to add an action for the view menu that configures this (persistence would really be cool as well). As the i18n freeze is some weeks away I would really be pleased if this could get fixed. In future releases additional functionality can be added if your users want that to make these checks more usable and provide a good reason to enable the checkboxes per default. Thank you.
Created attachment 2659 [details] Proposed patch (against CVS HEAD) I think it works ok and commiting this patch will answer a big part of your concerns (which I share). I would go so far as closing this report as FIXED. Can you try it out and tell me what you think? thanks, luis pedro
Adding an explenation will not fix the naming, or the confusion I mentioned. I'm not sure how better to describe the problems I wrote about in the rest of the bug report but to say that this feature is misleading and leads to great usability problems by being visible in the first place. Saying this patch is a fix is misleading yourself and gives too little credit to the usability experts looking over KDE :( All that said; the proposed fix even gets in your face in a way that is undesirable and annoying. Don't let KDE apps behave this way. I'm curious why you have such a big problem with the fix I proposed. Care to share that?
I'm a bit worried that we may be talking about slightly different things here; so I created a quick patch (which is unfinished, but shows clearly what I mean). Please look at the "ActionsPatch" and finish/commit it.
Created attachment 2663 [details] ActionsPatch
Hi, I have looked through your patch (haven't applied it though, but I think I get the idea). My issue with that solution is that I don't find it fixes much. I feel it just shuffles the confusion from the checkboxes to a menu entry. I feel that the problem of the marks are not the UI itself, but the fact that it isn't immediatelly clear what they do, but I don't see how to explain it clearly. This is why I thought a little one-line sentence on first-use could be helpful to explain what it does. I am, in fact, still looking for a solution. regards, luis
Maybe you can phrase it in terms of "selection". The marks "select" a page, and you can refer to it in the print dialog as "Print selected pages only". In addition you could couple it to Edit-> "Select All" / "Unselect All" actions. I agree that they puzzled me as well, in large pdfs I use them as bookmarkers if I have to switch back and forth between different pages.
They are called “bookmarks” in Okular, and because of both the name and how they work I think this report does not apply to Okular. Please, reopen otherwise.