Re: [Pan-users] squished headers pane columns

[Duncan]

thufir posted on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:36:37 +0000 as excerpted:

> At first the additional columns were squished to, I guess, a zero width,
> but by stretching or shrinking the first column other columns then
> became visible.  Weird.

I've seen that a few times too (but not that I recall with pan), in three 
different types of instances.

1) The app had no way to toggle off a column but I didn't use it, so I 
made it zero-width.

2) A column judged to be for "expert" use.  IIRC kde3's task list used to 
do this with PPID, since it already displayed PID, and had a "tree" 
option that would make parent (and thus its PID) obvious already.

3) Cases where an app changed config file format, and I was using the new 
version with the old config file.  (A sub-case of this is when a toolkit-
library such as gtk changes, thus changing the app's layout even if it's 
exactly the same app code only now built against and/or simply running 
with a new toolkit library; it doesn't have to be the /app's/ code that 
changes!)

This last case is the one I was wondering about, since you'd just 
upgraded, thus my suggestion to test with a fresh user config if you'd 
kept /home and reused the same user config after the upgrade.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that in some, but not all cases, a zero-
width column is hinted at in the GUI, if you know what to look for.  It 
can be either a slightly different divider (like a double-divider) when 
they're stacked, or a different divider-hover-arrow.

In kde and very possibly all qt apps, hovering over the divider shows a 
divider-arrow, like this:

<-|->

... instead of the normal simple double-headed arrow.  The kde app I just 
tried wouldn't let me zero-width a column, but IIRC, where it's possible 
to have zero-width columns and thus stacked dividers, kde/qt changes  to:

<-||->

That makes it a bit easier to discover and expand the hidden columns, but 
you still have to hover in the right spot, so either having a minimum 
width of something like a half a character, or having a distinctive 
divider symbol for stacked dividers in the title row, makes finding the 
hidden columns even easier.

But FWIW, tho kde/qt apps give me the "divider arrow", gtk2 apps only 
give me the usual double-headed arrow.  I don't have gtk3 installed, so I 
can't say what it does.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman