Improve some details of the main window interface

[soc]

Issues:

• toolbar background seems to "end" in the middle of the window
• panes are missing margins, widgets are rendered too close to each other
• there are four ways to show package properties
  1. click "properties" button
  2. hit Alt+Return
  3. enable "show package properties in main window" in the preferences
  4. click the "properties" menu item in the "settings" menu bar

Changes:

• fixed the missing margin between the left pane and the right pane
• fixed the missing margin between the package list pane and the detail pane
• moved buttons which operate on the package listing to the right ("properties", "search")
• general operations ("update", "upgrade", "apply") are kept on the left
• if the "show package properties in main window" setting is enabled, the "properties" button is hidden, reducing the amount of different ways package properties are be displayed

[soc]

Hi @mvo5, here are a few screenshots:

Before:

After:

Things I'd like to sort out in a follow-up PR:

• the handle between panes needs to be hidden (the handles are the two extra lines that get rendered between the various panes)
• overhaul "quick filter" search bar (it wasn't removed in this path, it's just not shown because I made the screenshots when I had Synaptic compiled without libept first)

Please let me know what you think!

[trebmuh]

I like the visual display of the last screenshot. :+1:

[soc]

Current progress:

[soc]

I'm currently trying to sort out this double free: https://gist.github.com/soc/3b6531cb3e4ae68a52f4c671184e0021

I happens on startup if the setting showWelcomeDialog does not exist in synaptic.conf or is set to "1". Help appreciated!

[mvo5]

Hey @soc! First, great that you work on improving synaptic! Due to real-life (busyness on my side) it did not get enough love from me. So your help is super appreciated. Feel free to hop on irc as well, I'm usually around at european hours in the #synaptic channel on freenode.

[edit clarify who is busy :)]

[mvo5]

@soc about the double free - I checked the gist and this PR and I can't reproduce it here on my 18.04 ubuntu system. However the following diff http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/6wDj7pC3sk/ (against this PR) may helper. It just switches filename to use a c++ string which removes the need to explicitly free things.

[soc]

@mvo5 I investigated further, and it seems that the crash only appears when showWelcomeDialog is set to "1" or doesn't exist otherwise everything is fine. Basically if Synaptic decides to show the welcome dialog, it crashes ... I'll try your patch, but it feels like there is some corruption somewhere else.

[soc]

@mvo5: Here is the crash with your patch applied:

(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/soc/code/synaptic/gtk/synaptic 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
[Detaching after fork from child process 13682]
[Detaching after fork from child process 13684]
[New Thread 0x7fffee16f700 (LWP 13686)]
[New Thread 0x7fffed96e700 (LWP 13687)]
[New Thread 0x7fffed16d700 (LWP 13688)]
[Detaching after fork from child process 13689]
[Detaching after fork from child process 13690]
[Detaching after fork from child process 13691]
[Thread 0x7fffed16d700 (LWP 13688) exited]

Thread 1 "synaptic" received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff750cd78 in g_type_check_instance_cast ()
   from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff750cd78 in g_type_check_instance_cast ()
    at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#1  0x00005555555ab140 in RGGtkBuilderUserDialog::init(char const*)
    (this=0x7fffffffe030, name=0x5555555eb637 "welcome") at rguserdialog.cc:261
#2  0x00005555555ab28f in RGGtkBuilderUserDialog::run(char const*, bool)
    (this=this@entry=0x7fffffffe030, name=name@entry=0x5555555eb637 "welcome", return_gtk_response=return_gtk_response@entry=false) at rguserdialog.cc:282
#3  0x0000555555579330 in welcome_dialog(RGMainWindow*) (mainWindow=0x555555737a00)
    at gsynaptic.cc:165
#4  0x0000555555576e87 in main(int, char**) (argc=<optimized out>, argv=<optimized out>)
    at gsynaptic.cc:600

[soc]

This is enough to trigger the crash for me:

Synaptic "" {
  showWelcomeDialog "1";
};

[soc]

I might need to back out of the primary-toolbar changes in the .ui file, it appears as if it fixes issues in some themes, but breaks things in other themes ...

[soc]

@mvo5 I think this patch is largely good to go (modulo the primary-toolbar thing), I just realized that the crash also happens on the main branch without any of my changes. :-(

[soc]

For some reason the GtkDialog doesn't like to be cast to a GtkWindow ... maybe I'm misunderstanding something but that seems weird.

[soc]

I think this should be good to go. I found the reason for the crashes and added a second commit fixing it: https://github.com/mvo5/synaptic/pull/30/commits/cafafca8f816a01f2ed51ab478828fcfcb268a5c

With this change the crashes are gone.

This is how it looks now:

• There is still an additional border around the GtkNotebook in Greybird, fix pending.
• I couldn't manage to replace the GtkTable with GtkGrid (bottom-left buttons) – the buttons became unclickable after the migration – so I didn't do that. Hints appreciated!

As shown in the screenshots, I also did a few minor things like enabling rubber banding in the package list, so it's possible to select multiple packages by pressing and dragging the mouse.

[soc]

@mvo5 Hey Michael, is there anything else that needs to be done?

[mvo5]

Hey @soc - sorry for the delay. My day job kept me quite busy. I think this is great I did some testing and it looks good. I will go over the glade diff in detail and then this can be merged.

Synaptic would benefit greatly from more help so feel free to improve other aspects of the app :-D Lots of users will appreciate it and I'm more than happy (and hopefully also more responsive) to help.

[mvo5]

@soc Also, if you want to be credited with a name other than "soc" in the changelog, please do let me know what name I should write there.

[soc]

@mvo5 No problem! You can use "Simon Ochsenreither" for the changelog if you want!

[Skif-off]

@soc

moved buttons which operate on the package listing to the right ("properties", "search")

Why? It's not very convenient: all control is concentrated on the left side: main menu, toolbar and filters buttons (checkboxes too :)). Is this due to this change if the "show package properties in main window" setting is enabled, the "properties" button is hidden, reducing the amount of different ways package properties are be displayed ? Maybe just swap: "update", "upgrade", "apply", "search", "properties"?

[soc]

@Skif-off I tried many different combinations, and most looked really "unbalanced", especially when this additional input field that filters the listing also gets added to the toolbar.

(As far as I remember, the filter is centered, so when you put everything on the left of it, it starts looking horribly except when you make the window very wide.)

So there is some precedent of having the search on the right side, and I went with this, because it was the least bad option of the ones I tried.

I think it would be really nice to have either the filter input, or the search dialog, but I think I cannot decide this (and I also lack good ideas how the UI should work conceptually after such a change change).

[Skif-off]

Sorry, I forgot and did not use this email box some time.

especially when this additional input field that filters the listing also gets added to the toolbar.

How did you add quick filter to the toolbar? I did not see it long time ago, I tried and as I understood this filter was dropped. New quick filter shows and works when just press buttons on keyboard and now it's small input box below list of packages, not on toolbar (Xubuntu 18.04, Debian 9). I thought filter was gone and it would not hindrance :)