Re: [lmi] wx-2.8.7: long menuitem truncated

[Greg Chicares]

On 2008-03-14 19:24Z, Vaclav Slavik wrote:
> Greg Chicares wrote:
>> I know some applications use large bitmaps on the toolbar. For
>> instance, firefox's are at least 32*32. I don't see that as an
>> advantage myself,

But at least one user strongly disagrees. Some people in my
office use high resolution on fourteen-inch monitors, and
complain that 16*16 toolbar icons were too hard to distinguish
in our legacy application, so lmi's 24*24 icons were a welcome
toolbar improvement from that POV.

So I'd say menus should use 16*16 for msw, so that we don't have
to fight with the OS, but for toolbars we should either use 24*24
or (ideally, and only if it's not too difficult) offer a choice.

>> so I'd be inclined simply to replace today's
>> 24*24 bitmaps with 16*16 everywhere;

s/everywhere/for menus/

>> but do tell me if that
>> seems...um...myopic.
> 
> 16x16 looks rather out of place in GTK+. The common value is 24x24, 
> but it's theme-configurable in theory.

Okay. I'd really like to keep using XRC to the greatest possible
extent. It favors a clean separation of concerns. And, like a
scripting language, it doesn't require hard-core C++ knowledge
to maintain, and changes don't need recompilation. So I read
wx's docs/tech/tn0014.txt again, and it mentions wxArtProvider;
maybe that's the perfect solution. But in this case I think the
smart thing is to ask whether you would pick the best solution
and implement it, because it's beyond my wx expertise.

> As for the menus, the best thing to do under wxGTK is to use standard 
> IDs (LMI alread does, IIRC), not provide icons and let the toolkit 
> assign its standard icons. (I'm yet to test if all of items that 
> currently have icons are covered, though.)

I've tried to use standard IDs where available. This one:
    <object class="wxMenuItem" name="preferences">
is for persistent global preferences; would that map to
wxID_PROPERTIES, or is wxID_PROPERTIES really meant for
properties of a single document?

But some of the most commonly used icons are unique to lmi. A
"census" consists of "cells" grouped into "classes", so we have
    <object class="tool" name="edit_cell">
    <object class="tool" name="edit_class">
    <object class="tool" name="edit_case">
along with analogues like "run_cell" and "print_case". I don't
expect to find standard icons for those in any toolkit.

>> but I think it was a mistake. This has become significant since
>> I've put them in html help files: wxHTML renders X pixmaps in
>> help, but firefox and msie do not, and I'd like to serve the
>> whole user manual as normal web pages as well as via help.
> 
> Another reason to revert to PNG originals is that they are antialiased 
> and aliased icons look out of place in GTK+ (and, I think, MSW too 
> these days).

Indeed. I had never realized that, but I see it clearly now that
you've pointed it out.