Initial size of palette dialog on Ubuntu too small

[Joachim R.]

Since Ubuntu 11.04 update (I have 11.10 now), Inkscape has no more palette.
Menu "affichage" -> "palette" shows only a small hook in palette dock (first screenshot)
Grabing separators to grow "palette" shows notinhg more than a big red X with white background (2nd screenshot).

Expected : the "palette"
Actual : a big red X with no palette.

inkscape:
  Installé : 0.48.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidat : 0.48.2-0ubuntu1
 Table de version :
 *** 0.48.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Joachim R. (jro)]

Low ?? Sorry but no palette in Inkscape means you're unable to do anything. It's a show stopper.

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

Hi Joachim, I have marked it as "medium" in Inkscape... "high" normally means things like crashes.

I think you're looking at the "low" importance I set for the context of the entire Ubuntu OS.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> shows only a small hook in palette dock (first screenshot)

The initial size (screenshot 1) seems related to the custom scroll bar overlay in recent Ubuntu distributions (see also bug #884368 and bug #902054). Not reproduced with Inkscape 0.48.2 and 0.48+devel r10795 on Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard and OS X 10.7.2 Lion.

> Actual : a big red X with no palette.

In screenshot 2, it looks as if you have selected the 'Auto' palette in the 'Swatches…' dialog - as long as you don't have defined custom swatches in the current document, the 'Auto' palette only shows the default swatch to remove a fill (or stroke) color. This is not a bug, but expected behavior [1]. Please click on the small triangle in the upper right corner of the 'Swatches…' dialog and select one of the predefined palettes (e.g. 'Inkscape default'). Do you still see no other colors?

[1] Please read the documentation about custom swatches here:
<http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.48#Custom_Swatches>
<http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Attributes-Fill-Stroke.html#Attributes-CustomSwatches>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> Sorry but no palette in Inkscape means you're unable to do anything.

There is still the main palette right below the canvas area (unless you intentionally hide it - menu 'View > Show/Hide > Palette'). I do not see this as a show stopper in any way: the swatches dialog allows to use a second palette in addition to the default one shown below the canvas area, and Fill&Stroke still does allow to set and modify any fill and stroke colors.

The importance of this report should be reversed IMHO: 'Medium' for Ubuntu and 'Low' for Inkscape, since AFAICT it is triggered by a custom modification of Gtk+ on Ubuntu (initial height of the dialog too small).

The "big red X with no palette" is not a bug but a question about usage of the 'Auto' palette feature.

[Joachim R. (jro)]

Ok thx for all, so it's not a show stopper but an ugly UX regression.
It's not high priority now, but it shouldn't be too difficult to restore the old behavior ?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> but it shouldn't be too difficult to restore the old behavior

On Ubuntu, it should be possible to revert (globally) to the old-style scroll bars (that's not an Inkscape issue). I don't know whether the scroll bars can be reverted to the default gtk scroll bar style for individual apps only.

Otherwise - for Inkscape itself - patches are welcome (e.g. make the minimal size of certain (docked) dialogs and widgets not depend (among probably other things) on the minimal height of the scroll bar widgets (visibility of arrow buttons aka stepper, fixed or minimal slider length, etc.)). AFAIU Inkscape's dialogs and widgets intentionally do not have hard-coded initial or minimal dimensions in screen pixels, and this has not caused issues so far on other platforms and distributions which don't replace the default gtk scroll bars with a custom overlay.

[John Smith (john-smithi)]

Committed to trunk (r11559) a minimum size for the swatches dialog, should be roughly same size as currently on Windows.

>> Actual : a big red X with no palette.
> This is not a bug, but expected behavior [1].

If having the 'Auto' palette as the default is the correct behavior, i assume we can close this bug.

Perhaps changing the tiny little triangle menu into a dropdown list (dockable Swatch dialog only) would make it more obvious to users which palette is selected and how to change it ?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

The current fixed minimal height doesn't look nice without Ubuntu's custom overlay scrollbars (see attached screenshot). The overlap depends on the gtk theme settings defined the size of the arrows and the slider (which various between different themes).

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Same effect can be seen on Ubuntu if launching Inkscape without overlay scroolbar support:
$ LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 inkscape