[GNC] survey: unifying the appearance in different options dialogs

[Adrien Monteleone]

Di Mang,

I have no preference for either top or left-side tabs, as long as they are consistent across the application. However, I can see that changing the main app preferences to top tabs might be cumbersome as there are so many. Therefore, if a delineation were made that ‘preference panes’ use left-side tabs, and ‘report-options’ used top-tabs, I think that would help to maintain functional consistency. App and file (book) preferences are something changed less often. Report Options might be adjusted frequently to generate different views of the same data.

The only other change visually I would think in order would be to style the report-options similar to the application preferences, by reversing the colors. (the main content area should be lighter colored, the tabs, darker) The styling change would make all preference/option dialogs consistent and easier to focus. With the present scheme, the tabs grab the user’s attention more than the options themselves. (I understand this wouldn’t hold up with any particular alternative gtk theme, but the default should look proper)

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jul 14, 2018, at 5:12 PM, Di Mang <di.mang.freetime at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello gnucash user,
> 
> ​​
> during a comparison of the english and german versions of GnuCash, I
> ​have ​
> noticed that the dialog "Book Options" looks different
> ​ly​
> in both languages:
> * in english version this dialog has four tabs, which are arranged at the
> top (horizontally)
> * in the
> ​german version there are five tabs (one tab more for tax data), which are
> arranged on the left side (verticaly).
> 
> To fix this different appearance in both language, I have increased the
> global value MAX_TAB_COUNT from 4 to 5 (see my PR:
> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/382). This should make the
> appearance of the "Book Options" dialog the same in both languages.
> 
> As noted by the jralls, it is a global setting and this change also affects
> the appearance of the other reports' option dialogs with 5 tabs.
> 
> ​​
> It affect
> ​s​
> only
> ​the following reports - the appearance of the tabs will change from left
> side to the top:
> * reports/Transaction Report (5 tabs)
> * reports/Reconciliation Report (5 tabs)
> * reports/Assets & Liabilities/Balance sheet using eguile-gnc (5 tabs)
> * reports/Assets & Liabilities/General Ledger (5 tabs)
> * reports/Business/Receipt (5 tabs)
> * reports/Income & Expense/Equity Statement (5 tabs)
> * reports/Income & Expense/Income Statement (5 tabs)
> * reports/Income & Expense/Income and GST Statement (5 tabs)
> * reports/Income & Expense/Profit & Loss (5 tabs)
> 
> ​​
> The following reports have 6 tabs and will be
> ​​
> not affected from this change - tabs appears
> ​ furthermore​
> on the left side:
> * reports/Business/Australian Tax Invoice (6 tabs)
> * reports/Business/Tax Invoice (6 tabs)
> * reports/Income & Expense/Trial Balance (6 tabs)
> 
> In my opinion, this change leads to a consistent look of option dialogs in
> reports and other preference dialogs. If we increase MAX_TAB_COUNT to 6,
> the remaining three reports (see above) will get the same look too.
> 
> What do you think about it? Does this change have any disadvantages?
> 
> --
> ​​
> best regards,
> dimang
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