Minutes of the Design Hangout: 2016-03-18

[Jan Holesovsky]

* Present: Akshay, Heiko, Jay, Kendy, Samuel, Xaviju

* UI changes integrated the last week:

    + Shortcuts improvements (Jay)
    + Allow multiple status bar functions at the same time (Dennis)
    + Various gtk3 fixes (Caolan)
    + Message missing from blank properties tab (Fabio)
    + Don't close the spellchecker when finished (Samuel)
    + Resize media and OLE objects proportionally by default (Samuel)
    + Track icon changes in the new menus (Maxim)
    + Galaxy anchor markers can be dragged again (Regina)
    + Mail merge workflow rework - new toolbar, removed some wizard steps (Kendy, Miklos)

* GSoC

    + https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GSoC/Ideas

    + students appearing, good!
    + important to get a non-trivial Easy Hack done! (Kendy)
        + plus points for easy hacks in the areas the students are applying for (Kendy)

* Bring back the legacy Save toolbar button as customization option? (Heiko)

    + Due to accessibility Ctrl+S is not enough, and the split option confuses sometimes (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98730)
    + Save as known from the main menu is not available in the customization
    + How to name this function to make the difference to the new Save clear (Ideas: "Just save", "Save directly", "Legacy Save", "Save Document")

    + the single button was changed from normal buttton to split button (Jay)
        + not possible to have the same command as split and non-split in the toolbar (Kendy)
        + but possible to have an additional button for 'normal' save (Kendy)

    + not sure I understand the core of the issue here though? (Kendy)
        + comment 10
        + sounds like a very special use case (Samuel)

    + the initial proposal was to have a new .uno: command for the split button (Jay)
        + but in the end, it was implemented as an extension of .uno:Save (Jay)

    + conclusion: Let's create a separate bug report for this & easy-hackize it
        + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98745
        + in there, .uno:Save would be non-split, and there will be an additional .uno:SaveExt that will have the split
            + maybe it's possible to use the command alias by Maxim (Samuel)
            + will try it (Jay)
                + with the alias, the alias will probably be the non-split variant - .uno:SaveLegacy or so (Jay/Kendy)
        + concern about the naming for the customization dialog (Heiko / Jay)

* Sidebar survey

    + first results (Heiko)
        + https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/SidebarUsage

    + users want freedom
    + and prefer static interfaces

    + needs more detailed analysis still (Heiko)
    + lots of free text too (Heiko)
        + can see the raw data? (Jay)
        + yes, attached there too (Heiko)

    + will finish the Draw survey first, then this (Heiko)
        + not urgent now, but good to have the data (Heiko)

* Removal of the properties dialog in template mangager (Jay)

    + Akshay submited a patch to remove it as has no benefit
      https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/23339/
      
    + apparently it shares Impress code some way (good) (Kendy)
        + but a bad way (bad) (Kendy)
        + you can modify it, have a toolbar there, etc.

    + there is a proposal for additional rework (Jay)
    + problems with the current one: toolbar that appears and disappears (Heiko)
        + would be better to not have the Properties, and instead the additional info
          in the sidebar or something (Heiko)
        + concern about tabs (Heiko)
            + they are gone in the proposal (Jay)

    + conclusion: Heiko and Jay will initiate a Design session to finalize the proposal
        + and then it's ready for implementation :-)
        + will subscribe to the Design ML (Akshay)

* Google and OneDrive CMIS functionality (Jay)

    + discussed this in the ESC, Cloph is on this (Kendy)

* Single Toolbar Mode (Jay/Samuel)

    + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92218
    + https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/22818

    + the concern was a specialized button to hide some toolbars, and show other (Samuel)
        + the mechanism was more about providing more kind of views - switch from
          toolbar-centric view to sidebar-centric (Jay)
        + some configurable way to have a 'sidebar mode', and 'toolbar mode'; and potentially
          'single toolbar mode' - ideally with saving the previous state (Jay)
            + this goes nicely with
              https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GSoC/Ideas#Infrastructure_for_defining_toolbars_via_.ui_.28Glade.29_files (Kendy)

    + how the customization would be handled? (Heiko)
        + for the GSoC, we can do switching widgets on and off, but moving would be hard (Kendy)
        + possibility to use glade though (Kendy)

    + concern about the switching between the modes - is it useful for the user? (Heiko)
        + like, when they cannot customize it fully, will they appreaciate only switching? (Heiko)
        + hard to get it during this year's GSoC (Kendy)
            + not impossible, but...
        + but based on this, sidebar is a problem too (Samuel)