[Compcomm] CCS Manager problems / features

[Patrick Niklaus]

2007/6/3, Erkin Bahceci <erkinbah at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> CCS Manager looks pretty nice and useful. The new "effects" icon has
> much better contrast than the one in Beryl settings manager. Closing
> subgroups with # items > 3 by default is also nice. Thanks for all the
> hard work on settings systems/managers.
>
> Below are some problems and missing functionalities I saw (which you
> are probably already aware of):
>

First, thanks for your suggestions, they give a really nice overview
of what still needs to be done in CCSM, which makes my work much
easier.

>
> - It takes very long to start up. Can't the plugin options be loaded
> when the user clicks on the plugin button? I guess Compiz Settings
> Manager was doing this. Like this, it will take longer and longer to
> start up as new plugins get added.
>

Thats more an CCS-library thing, it takes some time to initialize all
plugins + metadata etc. (since XML parsing is slow sometimes) You
should talk to Dennis or Danny if you have some suggestions on this,
but I'm quite sure there is no real alternative to this behaviour yet.
CCSM itself does not initialize the plugin options widgets at startup,
but when you click on the plugin button in the main window. ;-)

>
> - Plugin options are not sorted in any way, i.e. randomly ordered (xml
> order is not used either). Alphabetical ordering would be nice to
> have. e.g. "minimize animation" should be at the top in the "minimize
> animation" option group, instead of being at the bottom.
>

Currently the options are sorted after type, which looks sometimes
quite random, indeed. I'll change that to alphabetical ordering.

>
> - The message "If you click No, the action will still be set." in
> conflicting key/button dialogs doesn't make much sense (Clicking on No
> acts like cancel anyway).
>

Yeah, you are right, I'll try to change that.

>
> - Enabling Desktop Wall says it will disable Cube if I click yes, but
> fails because it should also disable Rotate, which it doesn't.
>

Hm, I noticed this bug earlier but didn't find time to dig deeper into
the corresponding code yet.

>
> Would-be-good-to-have functionality:
>

>
> - Mouse tooltip should show long descriptions for options. Or there
> could be a help/info button for each option to show long descriptions,
> or a help button to enable help mode to show long descriptions when
> clicked on options.
>

Tooltips are planed for the future. Another way to display long
descriptions of options would be to display them on mouse hover in the
left pane. That is how we do it for plugin long descriptions in the
main window at the moment.

>
> - Category selection buttons at the left could be shown by default,
> which would help users navigate. Why hide it by default?
>

The category buttons take up too much space and are quite ugly. So
default hidden is quite sane here.

>
> - "Option search" at the left part to find an option among all plugin
> options (like in kde control center).
>

I'll take a look at this. It will probably be slow to go through all
plugin options, but I'll do some testing on it.

>
> - "Show advanced options" functionality (with a button at the left
> part). e.g. for animation plugin, "Random effect pool" and "window
> match" options should be hidden. Some options could have an "advanced"
> tag/attribute in the xml to achieve this.
>

Thats a good idea, what I had in mind is more an extensible priority
tagging with "advanced", "normal" (default) and "simple". But again
that involves some further discussion with the ccs-lib
developers/compiz ML.

>
> - "File name" tag/attribute in metadata to show a file browser button
> to open up a file dialog.
>

Again, good idea but thats a ccs-lib thing.

>
> - "Clear filter" button at the left part.
>

I don't really think that's needed, you could simply press backspace. ;-)

>
> - Option grouping above plugin level (like Sam suggested) through a
> tag in plugins' xml. e.g. horizontal/vertical virtual size should be
> able to be grouped in the same place as cube and wall options. Those
> are really important options (and relevant to cube and wall) which are
> pretty much hidden there in general settings.
>

Unsure about this. CCSM is still supposed to be an advanced
configuration tool and functional grouping can be done better by hand
written GUI's which are supposed to be simpler and easier to use for
the average user. But if someone comes up with a good idea how to
implement and integrate this into CCSM I would probably take a look at
it.

>
> Are these features and fixes to the above problems planned?
>

I'm currently busy with real life so I'm not sure if I can find time
to take a look at them soon. But I hope I can find time next week.

Regards,
Patrick

>
> Thanks again.
>
> Cheers,
> Erkin
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