[Unison-hackers] Mac GUI

[Trevor Jim]

On Apr 2, 2006, at 3:28 AM, Ben Willmore wrote:

> I have:
> * added a toolbar to perform common functions
> * added a GUI for diffing files with help from Jerome
> * added coloured indicators for the state of the reconItems
> * fixed numerous GUI glitches
>
> I have tried not to be inventive; I've just copied across all the
> things that I missed from the GTK2 GUI.  So hopefully none of this
> will cause any problems.

All the changes have been positive.  Thanks for your work!

> The only issue I am aware of is: I have always found the GTK2 GUI
> confusing

I agree with Benli, it's fine to diverge the guis.  That's the only way
to improve things, it's a bit much to ask that any improvement be
applied to all guis, no one would want to hack.

Here's something that I don't like about the current gui.
I mention it because maybe it is not worth hacking around to
deal with following/scrolling to see the sync activity.

The main display now is used for two things:

(1) looking at/changing the action to be taken for each file, and
(2) giving the status of each file during/after syncing.

I think it's a mistake to have the main display handle both of
these functions.  For example, it is hard to see from the display
whether a sync has taken place -- just a "done" in one column.
If you miss this, you might think that you can still change the
action of a file.  For example if you start a sync and then walk
away from your machine and then come back an hour later you might
not remember you had started the sync -- it's confusing.

I think it would be better to separate things: use the existing
main display to choose the actions.  Once you say "go" that display
goes away and you see that various files are being synced.  You
get a progress bar and a cancel button only.  Once the sync is done
you get another display that tells you what happened, but it does
not look like the current main display.  It should always be evident
what mode you are in.

We could probably learn something from iSync here.

-Trevor