[ nedit-Bugs-580009 ] list widgets too high for screen

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Mon Mar 5 18:51:29 CET 2007


Bugs item #580009, was opened at 2002-07-11 11:07
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by yooden
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Category: Program
Group: release
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Joor Loohuis (joor)
Assigned to: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Summary: list widgets too high for screen

Initial Comment:
When certain dropdown list widgets contain many items,
the last items may fall off the bottom of the screen,
making them unselectable. I personally see this with
the 'Highlight Style' widget in the Patterns dialog,
but it looks like all widgets of this type are
potentially affected. Of course the problem is worse
for low resolution screens.


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>Comment By: Thorsten Haude (yooden)
Date: 2007-03-05 18:51

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Ok, I misunderstood you first comment, so let's leave this open for now.

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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2007-03-05 16:24

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The fix is just an example of what we could do.  A real fix would be
something that was automatic and didn't need to be configured by users.  No
time to code that now...

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Comment By: Thorsten Haude (yooden)
Date: 2007-03-05 01:15

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(Is anybody listening?)

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Comment By: Thorsten Haude (yooden)
Date: 2005-02-07 15:34

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Scott, does the fix you mention still apply?

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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2003-05-25 16:29

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I think we can automate this for the user, by setting the 
columns to something 1+(total menu height/screen height).


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Comment By: Joor Loohuis (joor)
Date: 2003-05-25 07:37

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This works great. I remember messing with these resources
some time ago, but for some reason it never worked. I
probably didn't assign them to the right widgets. If this
works for all *tifs then this bug can probably be closed.

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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2003-05-24 21:38

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I see.  You are clearly in the #2 case.  Thanks for clearing that 
up.

Okay, for those of you with long lists, try these X resources to 
see what I mean:

  *languageModes.packing:         XmPACK_COLUMN
  *languageModes.numColumns:      2
  *highlightStyles.packing:       XmPACK_COLUMN
  *highlightStyles.numColumns:    2

Tweak the number of columns as you like.  (A real 
implementation would choose the number of columns 
dynamically, depending on a number of factors like screen size.)




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Comment By: Joor Loohuis (joor)
Date: 2003-05-24 19:02

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I don't have many language modes, so I can't speak for that
particular menu, but I do have a long list of highlight
styles. In the patterns dialog, pressing the menu button for
the style pops a long list, which starts at the top of the
screen, and runs off the bottom. I can blindly select the
items which disappear below the bottom, so they are there.

I'm running Gnome2 with toolbars at the top and bottom of my
screen, but hiding these has no effect on the menu dropping
off the bottom. The window manager is metacity.

For completeness, my current NEdit is
NEdit release of Oct 17, 2002

     Built on: Linux, 386, GNU C
     Built at: Mar 18 2003, 08:59:09
   With Motif: 2.1.30 [@(#)Motif Version 2.1.30]
Running Motif: 2.1
       Server: Mandrake Linux (XFree86 4.2.1, patch level
3mdk) 40201000
       Visual: Id 0x23 TrueColor 16 bit (Default)


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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2003-05-24 18:10

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Okay.  I think I've at least broken down the problem a bit:

Case 1) You have enough language modes to fit on the screen 
in one large column.  In this case, simply positioning it at the 
correct spot on the screen would make them all visible.  This 
_almost_ works.  The only glitch I found was that if you have a 
"taskbar" on the bottom of screen, it's possible that the last 1
or 
2 items are posted behind the taskbar, since it's "always on
top".  
I think Motif's menu positioning algortitm is not smart to take 
account of this.  If you don't run a taskbar, then you are not likely 
to ever see this bug.

Case 2) You have more language modes than can fit on the 
screen in column, regardless of taskbar.  In this case I believe 
they will run off the screen.

The solution to #1 is probably to use a better positioning 
algorithm that knows how to consider the taskbar as nonusable 
space.  Since Motif does this by default, it may be tricky to hook it.

The solution to #2, is to go to some multi-column, nested, or 
scrolling (ick!) menu structure.  This structure should require no 
manual configuration to get it to be on screen.

I suspect #1 is likely because of the number of languages we 
ship by default and many new users use KDE-like enivronments 
with taskbars.  #2 is less likely, but can happen if some users 
add a lot of language modes.

As a very cheap and low-risk workaround, simply going to a 
two-column menu structure is a single X resource setting that 
probably solves 95% of the cases.  A fancier implementation 
would look at the entire height, the position requested, number of 
items, item height, etc., etc., to come up with a particular column 
count.



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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2003-05-24 17:51

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Need some more information about the system you are running 
on and window manager.  I've seen this problem myself, but now 
that I go to work on it, it appears Motif is positioning the menu 
properly such that the items don't fall off-screen.  I'm wondering if 
the window manager has anything to do with it.



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Comment By: Scott Tringali (tringali)
Date: 2003-05-24 16:31

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I think I have a fix that is fairly low-risk.


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