Re: [patch] provde better feedback to users during transforms

On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 15:56 -0400, Douglas Burke wrote:
> The attached patch makes several changes to improve the user-experience
> when calling the Export menu:
> 
>  - the cursor is set to "busy" during an actual transform; the dialog is
>    now destroyed before the transform (partly due to issues in finding the
>    windows to set the busy cursor in).
Ideally we'd launch a separate thread for the export, to avoid blocking
the main UI thread.  We'd have to take a clone of the input document
first (in case you start changing it!).

>  - when docbook transforms are finished (at least for HTML and XSL:FO), an
>    informational window is displayed letting the user know they succeeded
Good idea - although ideally I think we should have a progress dialog
that becomes the "job complete" dialog (with a "Cancel" button that
becomes a "Close" button).

>  - clean up to some error dialogs; added an error dialog for the case
>    when the DocBook stylesheet can not be resolved (presumably due to a
>    catalog error/inconsistency)
OK

> 
> The changes hopefully make a docbook-exporters life a bit easier, since
> there's more feedback on what is/isn't happening. However, I think we
> really need a more visible means of tracking the progress of a transform
> (and, in an ideal world, aborting a transform). The "export to PDF" option
> kind of does this, so should we be using this technique for all
> time-intensive processes?
Yes - some kind of job in progress dialog that becomes the job complete
dialog.  Or maybe just display a progress bar in the application's
status area?


> 
> The patch also includes a commented-out piece of code in which I was
> going to list the attributes sent to a stylesheet when telling the user
> there was a failure applying the stylesheet (look for the string
> SILLY_IDEA). Although I think it may be useful information to include in
> an error report, I came to the conclusion my approach wasn't the way to do
> it.
OK

I committed the patch to CVS, since although it's not perfect yet, it's
a definite improvement on what we had.  Thanks.

Dave