UI selector in settings.

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paddle
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UI selector in settings.

Post by paddle »

A lot of people are offering modern UI / UI general reshuffle.
I think a lot of ideas are being lost because of the impossibility to reach a consensus due to the lack of dictator making hard choices.

So I was thinking, why not offering the possibility to choose between several UI to the users in pref settings? This way we can keep the original UI available and offer new UIs. This would let people be more free in their redesign of the UI.

I think this has probably been discussed before no? If so what was the conclusion?
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adrianinsaval
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by adrianinsaval »

depending on how deep the change goes it would be hard to maintain two or more alternatives in the master branch so it's not always a good idea, no opposition against addons since the creator would be the only one responsible for it. Other than that it usually boils down to nobody implementing it, a lot of people come here with big words, sometimes with mockups, pretending to revolutionize FreeCAD with their holy design skills, that's all good but what would be actually be needed is someone to actually implement it. Realthunder implemented some very interesting stuff in his branch but we know how hard it is to integrate his stuff into master.

What kind of changes do you have in mind? If maintaining options is simple I doubt there will be opposition, and if the change is an overall improvement that wouldn't hurt others then there's no need for options.
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paddle
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by paddle »

Things like :
- Putting the wb selector and the menu bar in the window bar (as I mentioned in another post)
- Removing some commands
Maybe more.

The thing is that it is so tiring having to negotiate on the forum about things. Being able to have several UI means I could make decisions without having to meet the un-reachable 100% agreement that seems required to get anything merged. As basically people wouldn't have to use the new offered UI if they don't like it.
Just look at the merge coincidence / point on object topic I opened few months ago...
Even few icons rework seems impossible to get merge.

Basically I think it would allow designers to be much more free in offering quality UI.

But you are right, the big question is, how hard would it be to maintain. Which depends on how deep are the modifications
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adrianinsaval
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by adrianinsaval »

removing commands is very questionable IMO but if this is controlled by a switch is likely to be accepted since a ton of people has asked for this over the years, but this has to be done in a simple way, that is, just hide them. The example you bring up is more than just shuffling some icons, it's merging commands, this type of thing IMO is not possible to keep old and new behavior at the same time, not without ugly code anyways. This could be done with custom toolbars and preference packs to distribute them IMO.

WB selector and menubar on the titlebar might have technical challenges behind it but I believe it's possible to have both options without too much maintenance burden (it might even be possible through an addon), I'd be happy to have that on windows where it's Qt drawing the titlebar anyways. No clue what's the view from the folk on macOS. On linux I want to keep my native titlebar though, since I already have the menu there + the rest of my customized decorations (I literally compile this crap from my own fork, you better not take it away from me :lol: ). The workbench selector I don't care about since I disable it anyway and just use selector toolbar addon.
Screenshot_20220810_214204.png
Screenshot_20220810_214204.png (82.47 KiB) Viewed 1672 times
For deeper stuff there's no way around it, you need consensus because it's not worth the burden to keep both at the same time, and I don't mea just the burden of keeping it working but of developing new stuff to work on them, eventually one of them will be abandoned and if there is no consensus on which is preferred we're gonna have fights. We should also be careful on how many divergent implementations we can allow at the same time, it sounds nice to give designers freedom but it's not a good idea to have 10 different people pushing the software in 10 different directions, IMO at this stage we should be consolidating and making the experience more consistent across the different components of the software, rather than coming up with many new wacky ideas that make it all even more confusing.

PS: for the love of god please don't take inspiration from the gnome crap for the titlebar :oops:
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paddle
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by paddle »

Oh you already have that on linux!
Why do you compile that on your side? This is clearly an improvement as it removes a useless bar and gives more screen view.
Why not pushing it to merge?
On windows and mac it seems that it's possible too from what I read so we could make that the standard no?

By the way what are those customized decorations? What do they do?

Regarding your thoughts, you're probably right, it might be a pain to maintain several UI.

Regarding the gnome title bar I'm not sure what it is as I haven't used gnome for a while now.
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adrianinsaval
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by adrianinsaval »

paddle wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 5:21 am Why not pushing it to merge?
because this is not done in FreeCAD, in KDE the window borders and titlebar are called "decorations" and are drawn by the window manager (kwin), what I compile is a custom window decoration for kwin that I forked and adjusted to my needs: https://github.com/adrianinsaval/material-decoration
So I have this incorporated menu for all applications that expose their menu through standard protocols, including stuff like FreeCAD, GIMP, Brave, inkscape, etc.

Oh and the extra buttons are just additional window controls to pin, keep bellow/above, etc.
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onekk
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by onekk »

paddle wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 5:21 am Oh you already have that on linux!
...
Not every people use KDE and Kwin decorators, some of them use more simple things, so I think that this could not be assumed as an "universal way" to make things, as probably FC is targeting to a some more "universal approach".

I think that it will be better to iron out some other UI problem like "hardcoded fonts" that will cause problems as example in "Navicube" or create an uniform "FreeCAD StyleSheet" that could be used to customize the interface, but this will involve:

- That every author of a part of FC will adere to some "guidelines" that I think are "non existent" for now, so someone has to put them together.
- A deep revision of many aspects of the interface, and in a more than 20 years old software like FC this will involve even to identify "less maintained" sections and eventually assigning them to someone who is "decently skilled" to do the job.

As someone as told many times, proposal are good things, some real work on source is better.

Without having a deep knowledge, it could be an advancement to identify something that could already be done as example settings Stylesheets, as done in:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 47#p619447

Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
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Jee-Bee
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by Jee-Bee »

paddle wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:00 pm - Removing some commands
If you meant that it is possible to switch individual features off from their toolbar. I personal think it is great.
Years ago i discussed it. i can't remember the outcome about if it is feasible yes or no(probably a lot of work).
My memory says that then the implementation of QT5 / Pyside2 was more important.
adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 1:58 am No clue what's the view from the folk on macOS.
Not in fullscreen mode:
Screenshot 2022-08-20 at 20.55.24.png
Screenshot 2022-08-20 at 20.55.24.png (370.57 KiB) Viewed 1401 times
The grey bar is annoying. When in fullscreen mode the grey bar is gone but also the menu bar. So then lose i a bit and i gain a bit...
Last edited by Jee-Bee on Sat Aug 20, 2022 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
drmacro
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by drmacro »

So, what your saying is the pref pack work that is currently going to provide this sort of thing (instigated by @Kunda1 and me proceeding to work on for the last 2 days) should be tabled and let this thread take over.

:roll:

:mrgreen:
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Kunda1
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Re: UI selector in settings.

Post by Kunda1 »

Related thread discussing capabilities of Preference Packs: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=71110

@paddle feel free to participate. If we get the preference pack system where it needs to be then customization will be extremely powerful and easier!
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