[Sugar-devel] Calculate toolbars work in progress shots

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Simon,

On 12 Sep 2009, at 10:45, Simon Schampijer wrote:

> On 09/12/2009 03:10 AM, Gary C Martin wrote:
>> Hi Eben,
>>
>> On 11 Sep 2009, at 21:01, Eben Eliason wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Gary C Martin<gary at garycmartin.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hi Eben,
>>>>
>>>> On 11 Sep 2009, at 20:11, Eben Eliason wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Looks great! The icons are quite nice.
>>>>>
>>>>> My only suggestion is that (still retaining the modularity!) the  
>>>>> misc
>>>>> toolbar actually just be added as another secondary toolbar. That
>>>>> leaves the basic toolbar mostly empty, but that's ok! This is an
>>>>> instance, I think, where all of the basic functionality of the
>>>>> calculator lives outside of the toolbar, and each toolbar adds
>>>>> advanced functionality on top of that. Moreover, "misc" controls  
>>>>> seem
>>>>> to be the worst suited for a primary toolbar, which should instead
>>>>> contain controls that are nearly always useful, or useful in all
>>>>> contexts.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, that's pretty much where I was at but wanted another  
>>>> opinion
>>>> :-) The
>>>> one exception (for the future) will I hope be the Plot function.  
>>>> I'd
>>>> love to
>>>> see that UI improved via a Secondary toolbar, at the least with a  
>>>> set of
>>>> standard example graphs for folks to plug in values (now that  
>>>> matplot
>>>> lib is
>>>> supported).
>>>
>>> Yeah, definitely. It would make sense to have a toolbar dedicated to
>>> that.
>>>
>>> I could also see dedicating a toolbar to constants. You've got  
>>> buttons
>>> for a couple of them. Perhaps a few more could be added. If some  
>>> don't
>>> have obvious symbols or frequent use, the constants toolbar could  
>>> also
>>> have a dropdown that read "add a constant" by default, and  
>>> contained a
>>> list of many with full names to add. A suggested symbol for this  
>>> would
>>> follow the trend of the color and shape icons in the mockup of the
>>> Paint activity, which showed a small 2x2 grid of colors and shapes,
>>> respectively. I'd use e, pi, phi, and something else.
>>>
>>> If constants and graphs had their own secondary toolbars, I could  
>>> see
>>> an argument for exposing the display mode in the primary toolbar,
>>> since it affects all calculations and could be useful to see at all
>>> times.
>>>
>>>> Any suggestions for a "Misc" icon? ;-)
>>>
>>> I don't, unfortunately, have a good idea for a generic misc icon. It
>>> seems like any option I can think of I would consider bad design,
>>> which might be because using the concept of "leftovers" to group
>>> together a set of tools in a toolbar is just a bad idea. Heh. But
>>> short of breaking out the functionality as described above (which
>>> itself could seem odd without more functions in each toolbar), I  
>>> don't
>>> have a better idea.
>>>
>>> I could get behind leaving the modes and the graph button up there  
>>> for
>>> now if we could find a few more constants to add to a secondary
>>> constants toolbar and leave it at that. What do you think?
>>
>> OK, this is the best I have right now. As you can see, it is just the
>> old Miscellaneous tab content all under an icon (intended for the
>> Constants). If I can wrangle the code tomorrow in a way works for old
>> and new toolbars, I'll add a couple more constants (Golden Ratio, and
>> Euler's Constant) and move Plot, deg/rad, sci/exp, and digits –  
>> though
>> I'll have to leave out any string changes for the new constants, so
>> their hover palettes are likely to be an uninformative φ (lowercase
>> Greek letter phi), γ (lowercase Greek gamma):
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> --Gary
>
> I like the misc icon! What does the 9 stand for? Maybe I missed a  
> math class...

The 9 icon is an existing feature that changes the number of digits  
calculated, clicking it cycles between 6, 9, 12, 15.

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Regards,
--Gary