Re: [Bino-list] GUI polishing

[Martin Lambers]

Hi Joe!

On 22/04/11 21:46, Joe wrote:
> Please see attached patch for loading theme-specific icons - so far only 
> working on Linux. I would like to add other icons from theme, because I like 
> when the programs fits into the desktop environment - especially when QT has 
> good support for adapting look and feel to the desktop.
> Would you accept similar more complete patch? Windows and MAC does not 
> support 
> themes, so there would have to be theme icons delivered with Bino. I would 
> vote for oxygen theme, because I really like it and for example my favorite 
> media player Smplayer use oxygen theme on Windows as well. What do you think?
> 
> Here is the specification of theme icons:
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html

I like this very much! I did not know about the icon theme
functionality, thanks for pointing this out.

I pushed a patch based on your suggestion that uses icons from the
current system theme and falls back to built-in icons from the Oxygen
theme if this fails:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bino.git/commit/?id=ac84c5f0f614911a60c1c9a374015bd8cb91ec1e

This is a preliminary patch. Two current problems are
1. there is not standardized icon for the "center-view" button, so I
misused the "view-restore" icon.
2. there is only one icon for forward and backward seeking, so I made
the different seeking buttons slightly smaller or larger depending on
the amount of seeking. Is this ok?

Please comment on this. Should this be done in a different way?

> Also, do you have something against GUI created using QT Designer? I think it 
> is much easier and more flexible to have GUI in Designer and generate it 
> during 
> build. Would you accept remake of Bino GUI in QT Designer?

Do you know of other free software projects that use Designer?

The GUIs created with designer I saw recently (at work) often had severe
problems, for example using fixed sizes for widgets so that the layout
does not behave properly when choosing fonts of a different size or when
the user resizes the window, and I sometimes hear complaints of the type
"yes, that should be done differently, but I don't know how to do this
in Designer".

I did not use Designer myself yet so please correct me if I'm wrong, but
my impression is that it is only good enough for small quick-and-dirty
GUIs that never do anything unusual.

I agree that the current GUI code in player_qt.cpp is not very nice and
could use some cleanup, but I'm not convinced that Qt Designer is the
right solution.

Martin