The trigger area is distracting. should go

[seanh]

I think Scribes' trigger area should be removed. I understand that the aim of having the trigger area is to make the interface more minimalist and less distracting, but I think the trigger area actually achieves the opposite:

1. The trigger area is really distracting, this brightly colored quarter-circle permanently occupying one corner of the editor, distracting me from the text, taking up part of the editing area. It's bright red for me by default, I had to go into the preferences and set it to a colour much more similar to my theme's background colour. A Scribes window without the trigger area is pure distraction-free bliss. In Scribes 0.3 I could have such a completely distraction-free editor window by hiding the toolbar with a keyboard shortcut. In the current version I can't get that because the trigger area is always there.

2. The trigger area is confusing and difficult to use. If I do want to get to something in the toolbar I first have to mouse into this small target in the corner of the window, then across to the toolbar item I want,

The trigger area seems to have developed out of a desire (inspired by Google Chrome's minimal interface) for Scribes to both have a toolbar and not have a toolbar at the same time. It began with the toolbar being hidden by default and showing itself when the mouse moved, but that was too distracting, so we ended up with the trigger area.

Personally I think Scribes 0.3's approach achieved the aim better. IIRC the toolbar would be shown by default at first, but I could hide it with a keyboard shortcut, and my preference would be remembered when opening a new window or quitting Scribes. Simple, perfect. And this is actually pretty close to what Google Chrome does with its bookmarks bar: Shift+Ctrl+b shows or hides it, and the preference is remembered. There's also a menu item for showing/hiding the chrome bookmarks bar, I'd suggest adding a Show/hide toolbar item to Scribes' context menu.

At the very least, do something about the colour of the trigger area, make it much closer to the theme's background colour by default.

[Mystilleef (mystilleef)]

Interesting, this is the first time anyone has noted the
trigger area as a distraction.

1) There could be a keyboard shortcut to hide/show the
trigger area.

2) You can press ctrl+alt+m to show the toolbar. Another
solution could be to make all the corners of the editing
area a trigger area. However, using the mouse to select text
around the corners would become difficult.

The color of the trigger area has to stand out. It can't
match the color of the theme because doing that would make
it invisible or hard to see. The color is configurable so
this doesn't bother me much. Color is a subjective
preference. You can change it to whatever makes you happy.

One more thing, Scribes inspired Chrome, not the other way
round. :-) Remember, I had been advocating for removing
menus in applications for a long time. Well, I was happy
when Chrome did that. Scribes decided to do away with the
toolbar in 0.4. Chrome and Firefox "experimentally" followed
suit. Although to get this feature in Chrome and Firefox you
have to enable hidden configuration preferences and they
don't even work well.

Giving the significant screen real estate gains in 0.4, I
doubt anyone wants to go back to the 0.3 days where 35% -
40% of the UI was consumed by the toolbar and statusbar. So
returning the UI back to the 0.3 era is clearly out of the
question.

[seanh (seanh)]

I suggest a much simpler solution, the same thing that Chrome does with its bookmarks bar:

1. The toolbar will be shown at first when opening a file for the first time with Scribes (or when opening a new, unnamed file).

2. When you start editing the file, the toolbar automatically hides and stays hidden.

3. You can use a keyboard shortcut to bring the toolbar back, and to hide it again. Whether or not the toolbar is shown is remembered on a per-file basis.

This seems much simpler and less elaborate than the trigger area,, and it'll allow me to have a Scribes editor window as undistracting as I could in Scribes 0.3, i.e. with no toolbar and no trigger area (although there will still be the problem of the new-style status bar sometimes covering over the text you're trying to edit). It'll also mean you can get rid of the trigger area colour option, further simplifying the UI.

[Mystilleef (mystilleef)]

1) The toolbar floats over and blocks the topmost lines of
the editing area. So your first proposal is not feasible.

2). Requiring new users to learn a new keyboard shortcut to
show the toolbar is not good usability. Especially since new
users are most likely to use the toolbar. Keyboard shortcuts
are great for advance and experienced users.

3). See point 1.

If you find the trigger area distracting hiding it is the
simplest and best option. I can provide a keyboard shortcut
for that, or you can just disable the trigger area plugin
so it doesn't load.

[seanh (seanh)]

How do I disable the trigger area plugin? I'd like to do that

Can't the toolbar just push the lines of text down when it appears (and pull them back up when it disappears)? I'm sure that's what it did in Scribes 0.3, and that's what other GTK widgets I've seen do. For example in Scribes when you add the first bookmark to a file the vertical line numbers/bookmark bar on the left-hand side gets wider but it doesn't cover up the first column of text, it pushes all the text to the right. Remove all the bookmarks and the text is pulled to the left again as the column gets thinner.

My suggestion doesn't require new users to learn a new keyboard shortcut to use the toolbar. The toolbar should be shown initially whenever opening a file, there for new users to see it, where they expect to see it. If the user hides the toolbar then that preference will be remembered (per file). So new users see the toolbar, experienced users can hide it. Hiding the toolbar is like going into a minimal or distraction-free mode.

The trigger area is still driving me crazy. I set it to the same colour as my background to make it invisible, but since the background colour of the current line is different the trigger area still shows up whenever the cursor is on the first line. Worse, the trigger are permanently (!) covers up any text that happens to be in the top-right corner of the file. See the attached screenshot where the letter t is completely hidden by the trigger area. If I set the trigger area to one of its larger sizes then it can actually permanently hide several words, I attached a second screenshot just to show how ludicrous this is.

It's hard to imagine any feature that could be further from Scribes philosophy of distraction-free editing. This thing distracts me so much that I want to stop using Scribes for my text editing all together.

I know that there may be a transparent widgets feature currently in the works (my desktop doesn't support it), but even a transparent trigger area over the top-right corner of my text is going to be distracting.

[seanh (seanh)]

> > 2. When you start editing the file, the toolbar automatically hides and stays hidden.
>
> My suggestion doesn't require new users to learn a new keyboard shortcut to use
> the toolbar. The toolbar should be shown initially whenever opening a file, there
> for new users to see it, where they expect to see it. If the user hides the toolbar then
> that preference will be remembered (per file). So new users see the toolbar,
> experienced users can hide it. Hiding the toolbar is like going into a minimal or
> distraction-free mode.

Oh wait, I contradicted myself. Ok then, I think it should just go back to (what I remember from ) Scribes 0.3 behaviour. Toolbar is shown by default for each new (or first time opened with Scribes file) and stays shown, does not automatically hide. Great for new users. Advanced users can use a button or keyboard shortcut to hide the toolbar and it will stay hidden until they use the same button or shortcut to show it again. Whether or not it's hidden is remembered on a per-file basis. If they want it to be hidden for new files, maybe they could do that by opening a new file, hiding the toolbar, then closing the file without editing it (the same thing you do if you want Scribes to remember the screen position and shape for new files).

[Mystilleef (mystilleef)]

The size of the trigger area in your screenshot is very
large. Have you considered using the smallest size? Large
trigger areas are only useful for very high resolution
screens.

To disable the trigger area, as __root__, open the following
file.

/usr/lib/scribes/GenericPlugins/PluginTriggerArea.py

Change the "autoload" variable on line 4 from "True" to "False".

Restart Scribes.

Like I said earlier, I am not returning to the toolbar
behavior in version 0.3.