[UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

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Jolbas
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by Jolbas »

Jee-Bee wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:19 pm In the tree view there should be only a single document at the time.
How do you do that? That may be useful, but I don't know how to have a single document in the tree view and at the same time have several documents in the tabs. Or are spreadsheets and techdraws referred to as documents? I don't use them a lot but even then I select them in the Tree View because it's easier to get it from the right main document.
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onekk
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by onekk »

adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:39 pm
onekk wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:07 pm In fact as example Gimp has chose to make "detachable" windows,to assign more real estate to the drawing, but it is old fashioned, as modern UI don't use stacked windows, it is "old school" and should be avoided.
:D
current version of gimp has all the panels attached by default, I remember I hated how older versions had everything as a separate window. Just so you know FreeCAD's panels and toolbars are all dettachable too ;) (but I think they remain as always above the app, can't remember if that was the case with gimp too)

Yes you are right. :mrgreen: It was only an example on how things could be done in different ways, my fault, and I0ve used Gimps not more than two months ago :oops:

About the "detachability" I've had some problems when I've detached them and after some time I've found asking on the forum how to "reattach" them in the "proper place" :oops:

IMHO first you have to "uniform the UI" and then try to be "modern", but "color themes" are a big improvement, as they could help with "color blindness" if correctly taylored and developed, sadly Qt is not helping too much, as I've seen that other software have spent big efforts to obtain some uniformity as some aspects of the "customization" are covered in different ways, using Stylesheets as example, as you could customize all "Qlabel" in a similar way, I've read that there is even a sort of customization based on "Widgets scope" but now I don't remember where I've read this and what was the conclusion of the article author.

But as Qt is used in many other programs, maybe trying to take inspiration would be a good way, sadly "limited manpower" is not helping, as usually these things, involve to set a complex infrastructure and defining some "politics" and "best practice" when developing the UI that are "time consuming" and could affect the UI in an "unpredictable manner" if not taylored with cautions.

Sadly this is OT here, maybe opening a new thread could lead to some more "interesting ideas" and suggestions, probably trying to "put together" different people's knowledge about FC UI and Qt things, will result in some improvement.

Sorry for polluting this Thread.

Regards

Carlo D.
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Jee-Bee
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by Jee-Bee »

onekk wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:38 pm I'm curious about what are "moderns professional CADs" "minimal requirements" in terms of screen resolutions.
I wasn't able to find it back...
But here i read that they recommended Minimum 4GB Quadro GPU...
https://www.innova-systems.co.uk/recomm ... olidworks/
onekk wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:38 pm Over all other consideration FC has a "limited asset of coding resources" so better to not waste efforts, to concentrate on "non functional" things, as probably many users are more concerned about:

- "TNP"
- Solution for some "fillets problems"
- One official Assembly WB and not three.
- TechDraw improvement to produce "technical sheets", ("Blueprints"? sorry by English is not my mother language, and I've not attended engineering courses)
- Uniform UI for similar operation
- More smooth handling of complex design.
I don't think this is a fair reaction. The initial proposal is to move the tabs to increase screen space, what is a valid question.
Yes from there it shifted( and yes i did that too by talking about a number of duplicate buttons etc..)
If there is spoken about a not to big screen size in a way it is huge... sorry than i'm free to respond on that
adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:39 pm perhaps not 800x600 but not long ago my main computer had 1360x768 and I had trouble with some software that had too many stuff vertically and didn't think of using a scroll area, and right now my work pc has that resolution too.
My previous laptop had 1280 x 800(13") and that one is from 2008.
For your company screen i recommended this:
Image

adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:39 pm Anyhow, the everybody has big screens now argument actually goes against the idea of maximizing 3D viewport since it is the small resolutions that really need the extra space.
I'm not completly agree on that. Because of bigger screens all icons, letters etc scale too. Maybe not as hard as the screen size but it scales...
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by Jee-Bee »

Jolbas wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:59 pm How do you do that? That may be useful, but I don't know how to have a single document in the tree view and at the same time have several documents in the tabs. Or are spreadsheets and techdraws referred to as documents? I don't use them a lot but even then I select them in the Tree View because it's easier to get it from the right main document.
I'm one of the users that puts a drawing in a dedicated own file... so in my case yes
For a spreadsheet i don't know. I never used a spreadsheet inside FC. The only thing i can think of where it is interesting for is a family table. And in that case it is fine for me to have it in the tree. All other things you can do with a spreadsheet i think i prefer a dedicated document!
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by adrianinsaval »

onekk wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:38 pm I'm curious about what are "moderns professional CADs" "minimal requirements" in terms of screen resolutions.
While I understand the curiosity I believe this is not relevant for FreeCAD since we are not trying to compete with them, so for FreeCAD a "Pro" user with a top of the line PC and monitor is not more valuable than an amateur with a shitty old laptop, the amateur could even end up being more valuable if he starts contributing to the project!
Over all other consideration FC has a "limited asset of coding resources" so better to not waste efforts, to concentrate on "non functional" things
More often than not this is not really a valid argument because I don't think the people who would work on this would otherwise work on for example TNP, same for the other rather complex stuff you mentioned, these are parallel efforts, they do not need to be done sequentially and people with different skills can work on different things.
Jee-Bee wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 4:38 pm My previous laptop had 1280 x 800(13") and that one is from 2008.
The one I mentioned was 2017 at most, budget laptops don't come with high res displays.
For your company screen i recommended this:
https://assets.amuniversal.com/b229db90 ... 41dd5b.gif
:lol: I don't really need the high res since I'm not doing CAD or anything like that in my current day job, boring stuff.
I'm not completly agree on that. Because of bigger screens all icons, letters etc scale too. Maybe not as hard as the screen size but it scales...
Sorry, I should have said "everybody has high resolution screens now argument", if your screen is big but your resolution low then I don't see why you would advocate for forgetting low res, if on the other your screen is big and has high res but your icons still look too big you probably have a improperly configured scaling factor, I suggest reducing that. Anyways I agree that screen real state is important, I just don't agree with the idea of FreeCAD implementing it's own window titlebar and cramming a bunch of stuff there or at the very least it should not put the tabs there.
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by onekk »

Jee-Bee wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 4:38 pm
onekk wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:38 pm Over all other consideration FC has a "limited asset of coding resources" so better to not waste efforts, to concentrate on "non functional" things, as ....
I don't think this is a fair reaction. The initial proposal is to move the tabs to increase screen space, what is a valid question.
Yes from there it shifted( and yes i did that too by talking about a number of duplicate buttons etc..)
If there is spoken about a not to big screen size in a way it is huge... sorry than i'm free to respond on that
I apologize if my post could seems a "not fair reaction", it was not my intention.

Despite being cited in the "credits", probably because of some comments and little piece of code in some discussions, I'm not involved in FC development.
I'm only bothering some developer or "skilled user" when I have problems, and usually they are so kind to answer me and don't blame too much. :D

Being in "Open discussion" probably I have taken the "open" in a too broad sense.

Returning to the proper topic, I've tried to point out my "vision" about FC and the different requirement for the UI.

When I'm speaking of FC I use FC on two machines, both with OpenBox as a "Window Manager" and with no DE and part for "file manager", that for a "decent integration" will force you to have some DE in my case XFCE as I'm using Thunar.

But as In Linux world there are many DE and WM and window decoration like titlebar are usually managed by "window decorator" and not by the "software" you are using, the point is that it is not possible in most case to do assumptions that what work on a DE or WM will work on some other.

Not counting the fact that in Linux there are also "Compositor" that could "step in the game", so the number of variants are so high that putting something in "the titlebar" has not a "unique way" of doing things.

Leaving out Windows and MacOS, as I know very little about the way they work.

Speaking of Qt, it is not everytime simple to "make Qt do what you want, in a reliable way", as some thing are quite complicated and managed in different levels and depend on how the UI is composed.

I've scratched only the surface of Qt programming in Python (C++ is more documented, but it is not more easy to manage).

About screen resolution, i could agree with @adrianinsaval consideration, about the competition with "Pro" CADs and user base, he surely know better than me these sort of things.

For other consideration, probably as (as usual) @adrianinsaval as replied to me some post above there are other things to be aware of, and for what it count, he has more in deep knowledge of "how FC is developed" so as a "simple user" i have to be confident about this fact.

Thanks, for the politeness of the replies and sorry for every misunderstanding, or maybe "too rude posts", take in account that English is not my mother language and that I'm Italian so we are know to be more passionate than other people in the world.

To be more OT this will remind me some English school book when I was studying at middle school, where Englishman are described as people who:

- drive a Mini
- eat "fish and chips"
- are very polite and hypocritical (whatever it means, I was not following very well thew lesson that day)

Same text will describe Italians as people who:

- drive a Ferrari (sadly this is not true)
- eat spaghetti (this is somewhat true, but our cuisine is not so limited)
- some other things, that now I don't remember.

:D

Best Regards

Carlo D.
Last edited by onekk on Thu Jul 21, 2022 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by onekk »

adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 5:05 pm ...
See above post about some comments, to save space I prefer to not copy and paste.

Thanks and Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by Jee-Bee »

adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 5:05 pm While I understand the curiosity I believe this is not relevant for FreeCAD since we are not trying to compete with them, so for FreeCAD a "Pro" user with a top of the line PC and monitor is not more valuable than an amateur with a shitty old laptop, the amateur could even end up being more valuable if he starts contributing to the project!
I partly agree on that... But not get the next discussion about what is shitty and what is just cheap and acceptable i leave it
What i say now is more or less my own question about what i have seen last i think 2 versions. 0.18 was download 4xxMB(install around 1GB) current version is download 9XXMB (Install over 2GB).
For some reason we accept shitty old laptops / computers with screen size, processors (sometimes even mentioning of Rasperry Pi) but disc space and download size is kind of ignored...


As sidenote: the system requirements of blender: https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by adrianinsaval »

My shitty laptop had 500GB storage and it was trivial to add more if I wanted to so never really worried about that, having said that the freecad package I get from my repo for arch linux is 57mb download and 270mb installed so IMO freecad is not doing as bad as it may seem regarding disk usage (not counting dependencies obviously but those are shared with other programas too so i's not always fair to count those). For the bundles I don't know what can really be done to keep the size down? remaining with old libraries is not a sustainable solution. Plus I haven't seen anyone complaining about the size, storage is cheap.
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Re: [UI improvement] Put wb selector, menubar and doc tabs in 'Top bar''

Post by onekk »

Jee-Bee wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:50 pm For some reason we accept shitty old laptops / computers with screen size, processors (sometimes even mentioning of Rasperry Pi) but disc space and download size is kind of ignored...
Being in open discussion, it is not strange to have a "discussion" so this is a good thing, different opinions are usually what that create ideas and "new things".

So to add my personal experience to the quote above.

I'm using a "conda install" and this is consuming some GB 3 or 4 at least, but this is my choice, as this way the isolation and the libraries incompatibility are reduced.

As usual in Linux probably is a matter of "freedom of choice", I have rarely seen a laptop were you could not install a decent Linux distribution due to "disk space problems".

This is not true for other OS, sadly.

The point is about to "maximize screen real estate" for FC, and this is somewhat a problem of "chicken and egg", more space for the UI less space for the "drawing window".

The point is that some "customization" are deoending on the ability of the "window manager" (let make things simple) and usually "window titlebar" is not something that is customizable in term of adding things and heavily depend on the OS and WM you are using.

Not to criticize, but to make things clear as many people know one OS and only this and think that "this is the normality", I think that this is not your case, but as said to some developers, "we should think also for future users that reads the post". (see my first sentence to avoid any misunderstanding"


Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
- Learning how to model with scripting.
- Various other stuffs.

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