Preferences dialog

[jecaro]

Here is my take for a basic preference dialog #82

I did not spend much time trying to make the dialog looks good. I've focused on making the feature works.

I was confused to see the settings related to the current font in tmStateFontDesc and in tmStateConfig/options/fontConfig. It is not clear to me why it needs to be that way.

Anyway, so when the user validates the dialog, I decided to update the information at both places. Note that it is not the case when the font size is changed using the menu. In this case only tmStateFontDesc seems to be updated.

I'm quite happy how it went, tell me what you think about it.

[cdepillabout]

@jecaro This is really great. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

It'll probably take me a week or so to really review this, sorry for the delay.

[jecaro]

You're welcome @cdepillabout and no problem for the delay.

[cdepillabout]

@jecaro I added some small commits with minor cleanup.

2dbe69d just removes whitespace on the ends of lines. ab916db changes the format of some of the code to be more consistent with the surrounding code.

c0b6bab simplifies a few functions. Could you review this commit? Once you sign off on this, it should be good to merge in.

[cdepillabout]

Let me try to answer the one question you had as well.

I was confused to see the settings related to the current font in tmStateFontDesc and in tmStateConfig/options/fontConfig. It is not clear to me why it needs to be that way.

The difference here is that most of the things in the TMState data type are meant to be GTK types, or other values created at runtime:

termonad/src/Termonad/Types.hs

Lines 103 to 109 in 4543140

	data TMState' = TMState
	{ tmStateApp :: !Application
	, tmStateAppWin :: !ApplicationWindow
	, tmStateNotebook :: !TMNotebook
	, tmStateFontDesc :: !FontDescription
	, tmStateConfig :: !TMConfig
	}

FontDescription is a good example of this :

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gi-pango-1.0.22/docs/GI-Pango-Structs-FontDescription.html

However, the stuff in ConfigOptions are meant to be simple data types, easily serializable:

termonad/src/Termonad/Types.hs

Lines 363 to 389 in 4543140

	data ConfigOptions = ConfigOptions
	{ fontConfig :: !FontConfig
	-- ^ Specific options for fonts.
	, showScrollbar :: !ShowScrollbar
	-- ^ When to show the scroll bar.
	, scrollbackLen :: !Integer
	-- ^ The number of lines to keep in the scroll back history for each terminal.
	, confirmExit :: !Bool
	-- ^ Whether or not to ask you for confirmation when closing individual
	-- terminals or Termonad itself. It is generally safer to keep this as
	-- 'True'.
	, wordCharExceptions :: !Text
	-- ^ When double-clicking on text in the terminal with the mouse, Termonad
	-- will use this value to determine what to highlight. The individual
	-- characters in this list will be counted as part of a word.
	--
	-- For instance if 'wordCharExceptions' is @""@, then when you double-click
	-- on the text @http://@, only the @http@ portion will be highlighted. If
	-- 'wordCharExceptions' is @":"@, then the @http:@ portion will be
	-- highlighted.
	, showMenu :: !Bool
	-- ^ Whether or not to show the @File@ @Edit@ etc menu.
	, showTabBar :: !ShowTabBar
	-- ^ When to show the tab bar.
	, cursorBlinkMode :: !CursorBlinkMode
	-- ^ How to handle cursor blink.
	} deriving (Eq, Show)

I made this split so that ConfigOptions could be easily serialized to disk when this preferences dialog was written (maybe in a simple YAML format or something?). Then a user could potentially use and configure Termonad without having to know Haskell.

At some point I'd like to send a PR actually doing this. Or if you're interested, you could have a go at this.

[jecaro]

Ok. It makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

I think a plain config file is a good idea as well. Before I learned Haskell, I've tried a few times to use xmonad, but the config file in Haskell was a huge pain for me. I had no clue about what was trying to tell me the compiler. So yes, using a plain file would ease the adoption of termonad for the non-haskeller.

This is the kind of work I could do. I was thinking about working on #12 now. So maybe after it ? I'll see how it goes.

[cdepillabout]

This is the kind of work I could do. I was thinking about working on #12 now. So maybe after it ? I'll see how it goes.

That would be a really big help! Thanks!

I created an issue about loading and saving preferences to a file: #133