[Lazarus] Merge setup dialog and options dialog?

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 19-8-2012 14:37, Juha Manninen wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Reinier Olislagers
> <reinierolislagers at gmail.com <mailto:reinierolislagers at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Please see screenshot attached for an idea of how this could look.
> 
Hi Juha,

Thanks for your quick comments.

> Your basic idea of merging the dialogs MAY be good (?) but I don't like
> your way of implementing it. Sorry.
No need to apologize. I didn't say the screenshot is the way it should
be done: I did say "an idea"..."could work"... ;)
I did want to send a screenshot so it is immediately clear what concepts
we're talking about.

> The dialogs should merge in a more clever way, reusing the existing GUI
> controls.
> Now everything is just copy-pasted into one big form with partly
> duplicate information, making the result look messy.
Totally agreed.

> What a new user will think when he opens Lazarus for the first time and
> gets a form like that? Uhh!
> The options dialog is already very crowded even for experienced users. I
> don't see why it should get a new pane with confusing and duplicate texts.
Yes.

What about something like:
- don't add the setup part to the left; bascially keep the existing
options dialog
- use the red icon (next to Lazarus top leftin the shot), put it next to
the relevant item in the treeview (would be Environment/Files), and
expand the treeview so it shows the (first) problem area
- use that same icon to the left of the "Lazarus directory (default for
all projects)"
- draw the background colour of that control red instead of white, with
yellow letters instead of black
- Move the error/status message ("Error: directory not found", on the
bottom left now) to top right, next to the filter control, and make it
wide and as high as the filter control.
Move the other controls ("max recent files etc") down and separate the
two sections by a line or whatever.