[Geany] Message window "quirk"

[Nick Treleaven]

On 02/07/06 13:36:17, Alexandre Moreira wrote:
> I made a tiny modifictation to my Geany build, so that the tabs are on
> bottom. But what really bothers me is not the space taken by the
> Message window, since I probably will use them in the left too. The
> problem is that if the user shrinks the window, the tabs go out of
> reach. I think we could set the GTKVPaned (vpaned1) to only allow
> shrinkage to a certain point, so the user could always see the tabs
> (if he didnot want to see them he can always hide MsgWindow)
>> Hi,
>> I think we could add a preference to allow a different position.
>> Personally I prefer the message window tabs on the left because it
>> saves me vertical space (since I need about 6 lines visible anyway)  
>> as
>> messages rarely take up the width of the message window.

Perhaps we could do this, but I think many users would find it annoying  
that they couldn't choose how tall the message window is. I realise  
that there is a usability issue that the user can't click on a hidden  
notebook tab, but it is caused by the user lowering the pane, so it is  
the user's choice. Also it is not a serious usability issue because if  
the user has lowered the messages pane, then they must know what to do  
to raise it again.

At the moment it seems more useful to allow any size pane, but perhaps  
we could limit the minimum height for the case where notebook tabs are  
grouped horizontally. Maybe horizontal tabs should be the default  
behaviour.

What does everyone else feel about this?

Regards,
Nick