From geoff@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx.xx Thu May 5 10:08:57 2005 Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 15:12:09 +0100 (BST) From: Geoff Battye To: P.J.Briggs Cc: "Morris, C (Chris)" , "Daniel, EJ (Edward)" Subject: RE: CCP4 interface style guide and icon library Hi, It looks like Thursday afternoon is the best time, from your preceding e-mails. I'm happy to join in by phone as you suggest. I've jotted a few notes of my immediate thoughts on the subject. 1. Interface style guide: The greatest single factor influencing this is the technology we use to build the various interfaces. The new Mosflm GUI is built using Tcl/Tk. Since I feel that many of the standard widgets Tk provides are visually poor, certainly on linux and Mac OsX (running under X). I have created my own bespoke widgets using Itcl/Itk. The next release of Tcl/Tk (8.5) is scheduled to include a new theming engine (Tile) that should make it easy to reconfigure your look and feel on demand to match the native platform, or whatever else you like, I believe. I guess decisions we need to make are: a) Should we go for a standard look and feel to the suite, or make it match the native platform. I favour the latter option. Microsoft publish a style guide for developers, and I'm sure Apple must do to. b) If the latter in (a), what shall we do about linux / unix which is does not have a single uniform look and feel for applications. 2. Icon library: I think a suite-wide icon library would be a good thing. As a starting posint, I've listed some of items, operations and components that are probably/possibly used in other CCP4 applications and for which icons (or icon parts) should be developed. a) Files: - image - mtz - summary - log - spot - matrix - session b) Operations: - load/open - save - save as / milestone - add - delete - new - configure - undo - redo c) Components: - history - session Regards, Geoff. On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, P.J.Briggs wrote: > > Hi Chris > > I think I've met Ed briefly in the coffee lounge. > > If you set up a meeting on this then I'm happy to come along - I'm > available on Thursday except that I have a meeting at 10am that will > probably end at 12. > > The other major CCP4 projects with interfaces are CCP4mg and Coot. Mg > uses the CCP4i code for its interface and also has some iconic > representations of different "objects" (reflection data, coordinates > etc) - however Liz has always seemed rather cool on this idea. > > Best wishes > > Pete > > On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Morris, C (Chris) wrote: > > > Hi Peter, > > > > Have you met Ed, > > who started two weeks ago > > as the PIMS UI designer? > > > > I suggest we meet about this, > > and include Geoff Battye by phone. > > If that sounds good to you, > > I can do any time Thursday or Friday. > > > > regards, > > Chris > > ____________________________________________ > > Chris Morris > > C.Morris@xx.xx.xx > > Tel: +44 1925 603689 Fax: +44 1925 603825 > > Mobile: 07921-717915 > > http://www.pims-lims.org/project/ > > Daresbury Lab, Daresbury, Warrington, UK, WA4 4AD > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: P.J.Briggs [mailto:P.J.Briggs@xx.xx.xx] > > > Sent: 04 April 2005 21:39 > > > To: Morris, C (Chris) > > > Cc: Peter Briggs > > > Subject: CCP4 interface style guide and icon library > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Chris > > > > > > I was thinking again about your suggestion of a common style guide and > > > icon library for CCP4. It seemed to me that a good place to > > > start would > > > be to document the defacto standard colours and logos etc that are > > > already used in CCP4i and on the website. > > > > > > I also started to look at making some bitmap icons to represent mtz, > > > pdb, map and mask files - but at that point I started to > > > question what I > > > was doing as for example CCP4i (currently) has no requirement > > > for iconic > > > representations (although it may do in future). > > > > > > So I wondered if you could give me an idea of what you would > > > need from a > > > style guide and icon library. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > Pete > > > > > > -- > > > _____________________________________________________ > > > Peter J Briggs, pjx@xxxx.xx.xx Tel: +44 1925 603826 > > > CCP4, ccp4@xxxx.xx.xx Fax: +44 1925 603825 > > > http://www.ccp4.ac.uk/ > > > Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4AD > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > _____________________________________________________ > Peter J Briggs, xxx@xxxx.xx.xx Tel: +44 1925 603826 > CCP4, ccp4@xxxx.xx.xx Fax: +44 1925 603825 > http://www.ccp4.ac.uk/ > Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4AD > >