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Mailing lists / lazarus / 2010-01

Configure Installed Packages layout

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Juha Manninen

Hi,

Could someone please explain the visual layout of dialog: Packages --> Configure Installed Packages

Normal convention is to have list of available items on left side and list of selected items on right side. When an item gets selected, it moves from left to right. This dialog has it the other way around.

Is it perhaps a layout issue connected to different cultures or spoken languages? With "Right_to_Left" languages like Arabic it could be logical to also reverse the order of lists. Text-edit controls often support bi- directional text, but there is no way to relocate listboxes automatically.

Or, is there some OS / window manager having this convention? Even OK and Cancel buttons have different orders so why not listboxes.

Or is it just a bug without any philosophy behind it?

Regards,
Juha Manninen

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Mattias Gaertner
to Juha Manninen
Show quoted text 8 lines
Hi, Could someone please explain the visual layout of dialog: Packages --> Configure Installed Packages Normal convention is to have list of available items on left side and list of selected items on right side. When an item gets selected, it moves from left to right. This dialog has it the other way around.

It is consistent with the other two side lists, e.g. project options / forms.

I don't think there is a general/normal convention for this style of gui.

[...]

Mattias

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Juha Manninen
to Mattias Gaertner
Mattias Gaertner wrote 5 lines
It is consistent with the other two side lists, e.g. project options / forms. I don't think there is a general/normal convention for this style of gui.

Well, I have seen it only with Available Left -> Selected Right order. It is not a big deal however. Having it consistent inside a program is more important.

Now I found one such GUI in KDE's settings, for keyboard layouts. I remember even Delphi had a template form (or was it an example program) with these 2 listboxes and arrow buttons.
I have seen it in some other Windows programs but don't remember exactly which.

Juha Manninen

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Hans-Peter Diettrich
to Juha Manninen: Could someone please explain the visual layout of dialog: Packages --> Configure…
Show quoted text 6 lines
Could someone please explain the visual layout of dialog: Packages --> Configure Installed Packages Normal convention is to have list of available items on left side and list of selected items on right side. When an item gets selected, it moves from left to right. This dialog has it the other way around.

Many other dialogs (auto created forms, installed packages...) have the actual content on the left, and a list of further available items on the right. The same for Browse buttons, to the right of property value or filename fields...

Real RTL readers should vote for swapping the lists depending on RTL/LTR reading. I'm not sure whether they are pleased by a swapped display, and whether the implementation is worth the related efforts (documentation...!)

Even RTL coders will be used to read and write source code from left to right, so that they may prefer the same orientation in the IDE.

If the decision were so easy, every form (dialog...) could swap its entire layout, depending on an R/L flag. But my idea of writing top down in the Chinese version of my application was not appreciated by Chinese users <g>.

DoDi

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