On 2022-09-27 06:51, Ray Andrews wrote:
For example: Preferences > General ... why the two tabs, Startup and Miscellaneous (Which itself has a Miscellaneous sub-category)? Forget the tabs, just throw it all onto one page to save us from having to make so many clicks hunting for stuff -- just show it to us.
I wasn't sure what you were getting at for a while, but it is becoming clearer to me.
Believe the thinking from the old days is that scrolling is to be avoided when it can be. I generally agree, so we might split the pane into notebook tabs when they get too cluttered. When there are a few tab panes it is fine of course, but keybindings would have so many we there'd be two dozen tabs! That changes the balance to prefer a scrolling list, in that case.
Additionally there is the "spatial" idea from the original Macintosh OS, think System 6 and 7, etc. That is, you learn your way around the filesystem directionally, each folder has a window and you can size and move it to a position and it remembers, so you can find your way back like rooms in a building, like consulting a map.
In geany prefs terms, this would be go down three "floors" and make a right at the hallway and go to the end. You'll remember better over time.
This stuff has gone out of style somewhat because we have 10x things to look at in modern workstations vs the mid-80s. So searchable lists are used more often. But the original models are still useful when there's not too many items or organize.
As you can see, this stuff is an art as well as science. So, not sure I fully agree, but yes both ways may be useful in certain circumstances. (I personally prefer 90s-era-style UI's, though not their artwork, haha.)
...
Getting back to the original issue, which I think can be fixed easily. Almost every other top-level widget in geany has a menu-item toggle in the View menu. But the Status Bar is conspicuously absent for no particular reason? Add it and the long journey thru the prefs would be avoided in the first place.
This would be a lot cheaper than substantially reorganizing the prefs window.
-Mike