suggestion: improve GUI tools

[yoshikiobata]

Since most of GUI tools (managed under src/gui ) were designed over 5 years ago, there seems to be several areas that could be improved from the perspective of current standards for settings screens.

• introduce consistent spacing
• align widgets to a layout grid
• increase margins inside widgets
• strengthen visual hierarchy
• introduce left sidebar navigation(replacement of tab)
• etc...

If there are no plans to redesign them, I will consider proposing revisions based on the points above.

[hiroyuki-komatsu]

Hi yoshikiobata,

Thank you for your suggestions. I completely understand where you're coming from.

As redesigning the GUI tools would be a major undertaking for us, we can't commit to adopting your proposals right now.

As a first step, I'd suggest forking the project and building a working version in your own repository so we can see it in action.

Best,

[yoshikiobata]

Hi komatsu-san,

Thank you for your comment.
I understand that this is not an issue that can be easily judged and takes much time.

I've already started customizing the GUI tools in my repository https://github.com/yoshikiobata/mozc
Here is a current WIP example of the config dialog on macOS.

I’ll post comments or screenshots if there’s any further progress.

[yoshikiobata]

@hiroyuki-komatsu Hi komatsu-san,
My improvement for config dialog appearance is almost done though there are still some rough edges(other components are not started yet)
I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at it. Binaries can be downloaded from latest workflow run in my repo.
https://github.com/yoshikiobata/mozc/actions

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[hiroyuki-komatsu]

Thank you for the screenshots. They are very helpful.

While we cannot implement your proposals directly at this time, we want to make our UI more flexible so that it is easier to modify in the future.

Taking your suggestions into account, we are considering making the following items configurable:

• Colors
• Margins
• Tab location (left or top)

As a first step, we will refactor the .ui files while keeping the current design. This refactoring will allow us to support UI customizations with less effort later on.

Thank you!

[yoshikiobata]

Thank you for the feedback.

May I create PRs for just refactoring .ui?
My changes to the screenshot feature will help you to make the margins configurable.

[hiroyuki-komatsu]

Thank you for the offering.

I have refactored the .ui and .cc files.
The Config Dialog now uses the QSS embedded in config_dialog.cc:

https://github.com/google/mozc/blob/master/src/gui/config_dialog/config_dialog.cc#L91

I hope you can create your custom UI by modifying only that QSS (except for the left side tabs).
In the future, I may introduce another customizable method to wrap the QSS.

Could you please confirm if the current QSS is sufficient for your needs?
If there are any missing configurations, please let us know, or feel free to create a PR.

As for the left side tabs, I'd like to make them customizable, but I'm still investigating how to achieve that.

Thank you,

[yoshikiobata]

Thank you for your work.
The QSS seems to be sufficient for my current needs.

But I found that some clipped descender and display error when switching OS appearance while dialog opened.
I'll create PR to fix those later.

descender issue(g and y are clipped)	display error when switching appearance dark to light

[hiroyuki-komatsu]

Thank you for checking it. The screenshots are very helpful for us.

I'm looking forward to your PRs :)