Kate: File menu: Put Save, Print and Export actions into submenus
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Authored by cullmann on Nov 24 2018, 3:39 PM.

Details

Reviewers
ngraham
gregormi
Group Reviewers
Kate
Summary

Depends on: https://phabricator.kde.org/D17137 ("With https://phabricator.kde.org/D16830 the file menu gets more entries. This is a suggestion to do some cleanup before.")

File menu BEFORE:

AFTER:

Screenshot updates pending:

  • Save As... will stay on top level
  • Three of the Close actions will get their own submenu
  • Final submenu names are not decided yet

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R40 Kate
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arcpatch-D17138
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Build 7058: arc lint + arc unit
gregormi created this revision.Nov 24 2018, 3:39 PM
Restricted Application added a project: Kate. · View Herald TranscriptNov 24 2018, 3:39 PM
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gregormi requested review of this revision.Nov 24 2018, 3:39 PM
gregormi edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Nov 24 2018, 3:42 PM
gregormi added a reviewer: Kate.
gregormi edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)
ngraham requested changes to this revision.Nov 24 2018, 3:54 PM
ngraham added a subscriber: ngraham.

I approve of the goal of simplifying the menu presentation, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to hide the very commonly used actions Save As... and Print in sub-menus. For all the other ones, I think it's okay though.

How about something a bit more like this:

Save
Save As...
More Save Actions              >

...

Print...
More Print and Export Actions  >

...

Close
More Close Actions             >
This revision now requires changes to proceed.Nov 24 2018, 3:54 PM
  • With Save As... I am also not sure. I thought it is a well-known operation which will be easily found even in a submenu and then there is the keyboard shortcut
  • Print: I think printing of text documents is so rare that putting it all into a submenu won't hurt - and can save paper ;-)
  • "More ABC Actions": this text feels a bit long. Maybe something like "More on ABC" or "ABC Advanced" or "ABC More" (like in Edit > Search More)?

I think we could maybe compromise with putting the Print action under a submenu as long as it has the word "Print" in it, like you originally had (e.g. "Print and Export" would be fine in that case). But I'm going to have to stick to my guns with Save As.... That one is super common and I think it deserves to be on the top level of the menu rather than in a sub-menu.

  • Keeping "Save As..." at the top level is fine with me.
  • Putting some of the Close actions in a submenu - as you suggested above - sounds good, too
  • How should the submenus be named?

I think we can postpone some of the decisions until and the general restructuring idea is approved by others.

gregormi edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Nov 24 2018, 4:34 PM
gregormi edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)

I think hiding the seldom used other actions is a good idea.
For the naming, I have no good taste for such things ;=)

For the case where the sub-menu replaces all currently visible items, I think what you currently have works great:

  • Print and Export

For cases where one or two common items are visible and the uncommon ones are un a sub-menu, my suggestion is "More <thing> Actions". So we could have:

  • More Save Actions
  • More Close actions
  • etc.

Open to other suggestions of course! :)

richardbowen added a subscriber: richardbowen.EditedNov 24 2018, 7:53 PM

Print, Print Preview and Export are related but not variants and are fine on the first level of the menu; grouping them seems unnecessary.

Since there are many variants of Save and Close, a group for the other less used actions could work. But this may actually make things more complicated with deeper nested menus.

gregormi retitled this revision from File menu: Put Save, Print and Export actions into submenus to Kate: File menu: Put Save, Print and Export actions into submenus.Dec 1 2018, 8:26 PM
loh.tar added a subscriber: loh.tar.Dec 4 2018, 3:19 PM

I like the approach to move much into a 2nd level menu because I'm easy annoyed by long menus where I have to scan and move a long way down.

... Save As... That one is super common and I think it deserves to be on the top level

It would be good to give new idea's a chance and not to cling to old fashioned ones only on principle.

Furthermore is it to me often confusing where to find some point, on 1st or 2nd level. So when all is in 2nd and 1st level is short (in height) and descriptive it could help to find faster what your are looking for.

However, it's even worse when you have more than two menu level or when the 1st level menu is to wide, as often in German where the translators seams to focus more on to be as accurate as possible rather than short as possible.

So my suggestion would be to have only "Save >", "Print and Export >", "Close >" and so forth on 1st level.

gregormi updated this revision to Diff 49370.EditedJan 13 2019, 2:09 AM
gregormi edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)

Screenshot see here: https://phabricator.kde.org/D17137#392304

gregormi updated this revision to Diff 49373.EditedJan 13 2019, 2:58 AM
  • Adapt kwriteui.rc

This adds the "Save" and "Print and Export" submenus to KWrite (otherwise these menus would be appended at the end of the File menu).

Ideally, KWrite would not need these submenus but I don't know how to accomplish this. (Currently, I don't understand some aspects of menu mechnism)

So what's the status of this? I still feel like it would be worthwhile.

Hi, thanks for asking. The problem is, that I have trouble with how the menu mechanism works. E.g. some time during my (non-root) development now my system/distro-installed Kate shows changes in the File menu. I don't know how to revert/reset these so I am not sure if my change actually does the right thing.

You probably need to delete ~/.local/share/kxmlgui5/kate*/*.rc

You probably need to delete ~/.local/share/kxmlgui5/kate*/*.rc

Oh, cool. This fixed the problem.

Right now, I have no time to finish the work here. :(

cullmann commandeered this revision.Aug 13 2019, 8:58 PM
cullmann added a reviewer: gregormi.

I think we need to start here from scratch.
Gregor, if you have some time again, open a new request please!

cullmann abandoned this revision.Aug 13 2019, 8:58 PM