Manually select tracking service for parcel

[Kip Warner]

It would be great if the user could right click on a parcel in the list and manually select from a list of the tracking services. The default could be "Auto", and failing that, the user can select "UPS" or whatever they know to be most appropriate in the event that "Auto" fails to guess based on the format of the tracking number.

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

Nice idea, but there's a couple of things to think about.
1. The parcel can be "cross-country", i.e. first it has verbose tracking info from American USPS and then from Russian Post. There should be easy way to select a set of services, not a single one.
2. We already support ~35 services. Selecting them from popup menu can be a problem for any user, and especially on low-resolution screens. It should be a more user-friendly solution.

[Kip Warner (kip)]

Hey Vsevolod,

1. There is a solution to this and that is "Auto". Whenever the user manually selects a specific tracking service, if it goes across border to another service, then it's up to the user to select it manually.

2. This is a very good point. I agree that the number of services presents a challenge for low resolution displays, and, actually, even large ones too. For a right click pop-up menu, they could be grouped under submenus, such as "A-D", "E-H", etc. You could also amalgamate all of the services into a single pop-up menu on larger screens if you choose to as well.

[Kip Warner (kip)]

Hey Vsevolod. Any news or is this pretty low priority?

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

Currently no news, because the first design priority is migration to Qt framework (and it will make possible the desired changes above), however it requires a lot of changes and some time, which I don't possess currently :(

[Kip Warner (kip)]

I understand. Out of curiosity, why migrate from Gtk to Qt?

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

It's just my humble opinion, but while Gtk is perfectly introspectable from different languages, it is pure hell for UI design. Even menu positioning drives me mad, especially in Gtk's Glade tool. The controls , transparency support etc. etc. are very nice for 2005, but even in the simplest design of parcel-tracker I had to fix some background colors for the icons to be rendered properly.
Qt with QML has its own "child" problems, but it is much more convenient anyway.

[Kip Warner (kip)]

Hey Vsevolod. How did the Qt migration come along?

[Vsevolod Velichko (torkvemada)]

I'm still dreaming about it, but still have a little time :(
Probably in a couple of weeks I'll start trying something with it.

[Kip Warner (kip)]

Well good luck and looking forward to testing it.