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Posts: 356 | Thanked: 172 times | Joined on Jan 2010 @ Canada
#31
Originally Posted by epage View Post
Any feedback on the new interface for Gonvert (1.0.0 or 1.1.0)?
A couple of quick observations:

- it doesn't seem to be auto-enabling Fn for number fields

- the numbers in the selected unit remain at zero after a conversion, which is a bit confusing.

For example, I'll select Length, then Meter, and enter a value of 1.0 at the top. The rest of the fields will become populated with the conversion results, but 'meter' in the list will remain at 0.0. A small quibble, but it's a bit odd as you scroll through the list.

- it seems to lag quite a bit more than I remember

Otherwise it's a staggeringly useful conversion app -- thanks very much for all the work you've done
 
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#32
Out of curiousity, was this 1.0 or 1.1? I'm curious what people think of the new view I added (for lack of a better name, Condensed View)

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
- it doesn't seem to be auto-enabling Fn for number fields
Yeah. I told QT that I prefer numbers which I assume would enable Fn. I'm unsure on this one.

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
- the numbers in the selected unit remain at zero after a conversion, which is a bit confusing.

For example, I'll select Length, then Meter, and enter a value of 1.0 at the top. The rest of the fields will become populated with the conversion results, but 'meter' in the list will remain at 0.0. A small quibble, but it's a bit odd as you scroll through the list.
Yeah, I didn't entirely think through a difference between the GTK version and the QT version. I've fixed this locally and will be in the next verson

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
- it seems to lag quite a bit more than I remember
Old Gonvert lagged a bit, new one does a bit more. Favorites being enabled makes it even worse. Condensed view does not have any noticeable lag though.

Something I've noticed is editing favorites is a bit finicky on Maemo 5. Sadly I don't have control over it. I might try implementing the favorites editor in a different fashion to see if that helps.
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#33
Originally Posted by epage View Post
Out of curiousity, was this 1.0 or 1.1? I'm curious what people think of the new view I added (for lack of a better name, Condensed View)
I'm fairly certain it was 1.1 because Gonvert has updated a couple of times recently on my phone.

I'll try to take a look at condensed view a little later on and give some feedback on that -- none of the other points I mentioned stop this from being incredibly useful, but I think I did have favourites enabled, so I'll try playing with that to see if it speeds things up for me.
 
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#34
Ok.. turns out I was using 1.0.1-2 in my previous post, so I've upgraded to 1.1 now and played around with it a bit.

Some observations:



The non-condensed (expanded?) view doesn't seem to be displaying the unit list correctly anymore -- as you can see, items are being clipped by the calculated values to the right of them. I've tried switching themes and rebooting, and neither seems to make a difference, so I'm guessing this is something to do with the app


As far as condensed view goes, it's quite cool in principle, but in practice I'm seeing a couple of problems:



The first thing I notice can be seen in the screenshot above -- in situations where certain units can have multiple types (Point Postscript/Dido/Pica in this example), there is no indication given as to which version is being converted.

The other issue I noticed is that when scrolling through the lists, once a selection has been made, the list will always 'jump' to that selection each time you begin scrolling again, making it effectively impossible to simply scroll up/down in the list in order to find a new category/unit..

Instead one must make an arbitrary selection in order to give the list a new position to 'jump' to, scrolling a bit, making another arbitrary selection, scrolling, etc. until you eventually reach the item you're looking for.. I hope that makes sense.. it's a bit tricky to describe.


It's got potential, and I suppose some might find it more intuitive, but I actually much prefer the directness of the original view
 
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#35
Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post


The non-condensed (expanded?) view doesn't seem to be displaying the unit list correctly anymore -- as you can see, items are being clipped by the calculated values to the right of them. I've tried switching themes and rebooting, and neither seems to make a difference, so I'm guessing this is something to do with the app
I added the clipping because in some cases converted numbers were going off the screen. Sadly for some reason it wasn't doing the "..." on it, unsure why. I should probably give it some more space

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
As far as condensed view goes, it's quite cool in principle, but in practice I'm seeing a couple of problems:



The first thing I notice can be seen in the screenshot above -- in situations where certain units can have multiple types (Point Postscript/Dido/Pica in this example), there is no indication given as to which version is being converted.
I guess I could display the full name and let it show the ellipsis all it wants. I originally only showed units for space but not everything has a unit. So I fell back to if not unit then name.

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
The other issue I noticed is that when scrolling through the lists, once a selection has been made, the list will always 'jump' to that selection each time you begin scrolling again, making it effectively impossible to simply scroll up/down in the list in order to find a new category/unit..

Instead one must make an arbitrary selection in order to give the list a new position to 'jump' to, scrolling a bit, making another arbitrary selection, scrolling, etc. until you eventually reach the item you're looking for.. I hope that makes sense.. it's a bit tricky to describe.
I found this issue the other night and know the exact cause. I'm just trying to decide the cleanest approach to fixing it.
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#36
Originally Posted by epage View Post
I added the clipping because in some cases converted numbers were going off the screen. Sadly for some reason it wasn't doing the "..." on it, unsure why. I should probably give it some more space
I see.. I hadn't ever seen that happen, but you're bound to have spent a lot more time with the app than me, so I'll take your word for it

In at least one iteration, the screen was capable of being dragged left/right as well as up/down, which I thought was a perfect way of seeing large numbers which were going off screen..

TBH, my favourite version of this app was the one where you'd simply select the unit you want to start with, enter an amount in a field immediately next to it and see the rest of the conversions populate. It was simple, direct, and totally intuitive once you'd found the unit you want.

Just my opinion, of course.


I guess I could display the full name and let it show the ellipsis all it wants. I originally only showed units for space but not everything has a unit. So I fell back to if not unit then name.
I can definitely see the dilemma there. Still.. they are different units, so there should be some indication as to the particular standard they're representing..

Two ideas come to mind at the moment:

1 - display the full name of the selected units at the top of the screen.. possibly in a line above the results
(ie: "From: Unit A | To: Unit B").

2 - move to two columns rather than three.. the user chooses a Category first, and then gets to a screen with the "TO" and "FROM" columns.. obviously that's a step back to something resembling the 'standard' mode, but I've never needed to access more than a single Category per use of Gonvert, so maybe it doesn't matter much..

Again, this is me speaking as a fan of the old, so feel free to completely ignore my input here


I found this issue the other night and know the exact cause. I'm just trying to decide the cleanest approach to fixing it.
It took me a while to figure out WTH was going on -- glad to know you're working on it!
 
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#37
Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
I see.. I hadn't ever seen that happen, but you're bound to have spent a lot more time with the app than me, so I'll take your word for it

In at least one iteration, the screen was capable of being dragged left/right as well as up/down, which I thought was a perfect way of seeing large numbers which were going off screen..

TBH, my favourite version of this app was the one where you'd simply select the unit you want to start with, enter an amount in a field immediately next to it and see the rest of the conversions populate. It was simple, direct, and totally intuitive once you'd found the unit you want.
To me, having to drag the main screen around is for an app like this is a sign of lack of polish. It gets cumbersome to always be playing with it. I will try to look into cleaning up this issue though.

Hopefully we'll see some improvements to the traditional view to make it smoother to work with.

Originally Posted by Bingley Joe View Post
I can definitely see the dilemma there. Still.. they are different units, so there should be some indication as to the particular standard they're representing..

Two ideas come to mind at the moment:

1 - display the full name of the selected units at the top of the screen.. possibly in a line above the results
(ie: "From: Unit A | To: Unit B").

2 - move to two columns rather than three.. the user chooses a Category first, and then gets to a screen with the "TO" and "FROM" columns.. obviously that's a step back to something resembling the 'standard' mode, but I've never needed to access more than a single Category per use of Gonvert, so maybe it doesn't matter much..

Again, this is me speaking as a fan of the old, so feel free to completely ignore my input here
I implemented the new view in part due to requests from people for and in part because I knew it wouldn't have the performance issues of the traditional view. Even the old gonvert had a bit of lag at times in the traditional view. I'll look at showing full names but I think I'll leave categories per the original requests.
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#38
I'm uploading 1.1.1 to the auto builder
  • Switching Condensed View's output to be editable also
  • Fixed scrolling on Maemo
  • On the traditional view, fixed an issue setting a value on the unit being converted
  • Increased the name column size in the traditional view
  • Switching Favorites to checkboxes from selection
  • Attempting some optimizations
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#39
If you ever plan on doing another release, do you think you could add apothecary equivalents?

http://www.tostepharmd.net/pharm/cli...asurement.html

Thanks Ed!
 
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#40
Originally Posted by Addison View Post
If you ever plan on doing another release, do you think you could add apothecary equivalents?

http://www.tostepharmd.net/pharm/cli...asurement.html

Thanks Ed!
It should have fluid drams, drams, and scruples already under the volume (liquid) and mass categories.
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