the system settings grid shouldn't use a fixed geometry

Thank you for your bug report, that's an known upstream issue, see:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657560

Considering that this kind of thing is a simply poor decision on the part of a programmer/developer, I believe it should be fixed for 12.04 LTS.

Most GUI systems I have used default to full control of the widget window. I believe that this and similar sins of omission such as the same problem with alacarte should be assigned to someone as an urgent ongoing problem. This affects everyone who, like me, has difficulty with the tiny default font sizes. It is a fairly simple thing for me to increase my font size, but not very helpful if the widgets are insensitive to this issue.

On the internationalization front, this kind of thing must be very bad for users whose languges are more verbose than English.

Please pass this to the upstream developers. I think this is just a matter of carelessness, and they need to become more aware of the user community. The idea of casting pearls before swine is becoming endemic.

> Considering that this kind of thing is a simply poor decision on the part of a programmer/developer, I believe it should be fixed for 12.04 LTS.

Right, we consider it should be fixed as well, as thousand of others bug in launchpad ... help is welcome ;-)

> Please pass this to the upstream developers. I think this is just a matter of carelessness, and they need to become more aware of the user community. The idea of casting pearls before swine is becoming endemic.

They got enough feedback, I think they know it's an issue, it mostly gets down to manpower and number of weeks in a cycle though

Thanks, Seb. I do understand the point about software cycles.

I sometimes think that fixed software cycles are rules made to be broken. I also understand the dearth of good developers.

I am sorry to say that I've been retired from programming now for nearly 25 years. I haven't written any "real" code since then so I am thoroughly out of date. I do, however, insist that the stuff I get should have at least been passed though a more thorough quality assurance than I've been seeing on 11.10.

As an aside, I've given up on the Unity desktop. It is a matter of personal preference, but I am now running xfce. I am not much oriented to unexplained mysterious icons that jump into my face.

John, the window is not user resizable, but it does use layout containers. (It's really hard not to with Gtk). If you change the font size in the Universal Access panel, the window should scale to fit all of its controls. After changing the font size, are you seeing cut off widgets? Can you point out where they are in particular?

John,

How right you are. I encounter these problems too. I am trying for years to get rid of these unnecessary and weird behaviour issues for the disabled. See e.g. my bug report on the same issue https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/886812 (November 2011) which is in the mean time marked as a duplicate.

Concerning alacarte I produced two years ago a bug report for this problem. A fix was made but never implemented in the upstream channel. Trying to reactivate the item had no results thus far.

Dylan,

See my bug report which I mentioned above.

Dylan, jgv:

I suggest, Dylan, you just try it and see what the effects are. They are rather retarted, IMHO.

As a matter of interest, yesterday I pulled in all the necessary software and tried the very first item in the Getting Started section of GTK+ 3 reference manual. It runs without a hitch, producing the default widget form which is both resizable, and in general what a window should be.

Frankly, I don't understand why developers go out of their way to turn some of these controls off. I've discovered another frog in alarmclock, an app that I rather depend on to keep me going through the day. In this version, while adding a new alarm, the text box for adding dialog to the static popup doesn't appear to be enabled. I am going to report this as a separate bug after I have nailed it down a little better.

I suggest that whoever is writing these specifications needs to shake his head. There is a distinct trend in this version of Ubuntu (11.10) to over-restrict some apps that were not previously so poor. This is definitely a retreat from quality.

I attach a screenshot of the problem.

I filed an upsteram bug and linked it here.

As per resizing of the window, it is a "by design" so I unduplicate other bugs solely about resizing the GNOME Control centre

On second thought, the duplicates are several separate issue:

1) bug 886812 is a genuine duplicate of "larger font breaks GCC"

2) bug 929585 is about different languages/fonts break GCC

3) bug 908650 is actually about resizing the window but is a bit confused overall

4) bug 962593 and bug 994093 complain about GCC not accomodating a different set of icons(=applications)

5) bug 993791 is specifically about the keyboard view and so is not likely a duplicate at all

I deduplicated 5). 3) is confused so I will disregard it. 1) and 2) are probably the same issue, but I am not sure whether 4) is as well? If somebody more knowledgable know better, she should deduplicate 4) and open a new upstream bug.

One tends to wonder if "invalid" is simply a way of getting rid of this problem without a statement that it has been addressed. I am currently running the 12.10 Beta2 in test mode, and will have to examine this to see if it is fixed or ameliorated in any way. It most certainly wasn't in 12.04 LTS.

The windows do NOT resise if you change the font size. Either put the controls back to default (all on) or fix the programs.

Something I've also noticed, is that some programs get overhauled on the basis of a new release when it probably is not necessary. If it is not broken, don't fix it.

More care needs to be taken with the desktops to maintain compatibility with apps, especially apps written by the client base. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get management to agree to migrate to a new version when all the in-house apps not only have to be tested, but in all likelihood entered into a repair cycle for which there is no allowance in a very busy development shop?

Lack of resources on your part must not cause a problem on my part. A little more care and QA is needed.

Hi John,

This bug is marked as affecting two projects: Ubuntu and the gnome-control-center project (upstream) in GNOME:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675503

The one that was changed to Invalid is the GNOME bug. That bug report was marked as a duplicate of another, deeper bug. Unfortunately, this remains unfixed in Ubuntu 12.10. Quantal is sticking with gnome-control-center 3.4, anyway, so there will be pretty well no changes on our end until Ubuntu 13.04.

By the way, I think my earlier confusion is because I was looking at settings panels and kind of ignoring the main page — and I thought you were specifically talking about how the main window is not resizable. I agree, the way it is right now pretty broken. With a text scaling factor of 1.5 or above, the settings panel becomes very difficult to understand, and unnavigable for someone who doesn't look at it all the time :(

Thanks for taking a second look at this, Dylan.

This carelessness with respect to the controls is like telling your corporate receptionist that she is irrelevant to the business and is just a pretty face. The settings panel and all the sub-pages are the opening shot when a new users or one who is upgrading gets his first impression of the software.

I've been a programmer for over 50 years and I think this kind of thing is unforgivable. I wouldn't do it, and there is no reason somebody who wasn't even a twinkle in his grandpa's eye when I started out should do it. I am pretty sure Ada Lovelace wouldn't do it either.

If slight changes in the user interface in the system invalidates everything, it is time to talk about stability in the product. New version of the desktops [sic] is not an excuse to revisit the source code of every component under the sun (and under the moon too). If you can't get better programmers, I may have to come out of retirement.

John C. Winterton, CCP,
Professor - Computer Science (retired).

Another real life issue caused by fixed size: I wanted to redirect audio to another pc using pulseaudio. Right-click on volume applet, select sound settings. Sound settings has a list of audio outputs, but they do not fit into the list horizontally so i can't tell which one is the one i want to choose. Naturally i tried to resize the window but it's not possible.

I did the same again, but now for some reason the layout is different - the list is stretched so that the output names are fully visible BUT right side of the window (balance slider, test button etc) do not fit in the layout and are cropped.
I could file another bug about the sound settings page but the root cause is window geometry being fixed.

I'm marking this Fixed for Ubuntu 13.04. I opened Universal Access and set Large Text to On.

The overview and the rest of System Settings now seems to reflow and display correctly. Please open a new bug if a specific part isn't displaying right with Large Text.

I look forward to testing 13.04. Hard to believe that a few windows properties settings can be such a pain, but I do understand that the man-power shortage can cause problems.

I think a lot of it can be solved by doing a more assiduous QA inside the heads of the programmers. They seem to be an uncaring lot. Wastn't true of them when I was running a programming shop. The rule should be "Think what you are doing to users other than yourselves."

This is how it looks in 13.04 currently - see screenshot attached. Note: I've used Faenza Icons, too.

Rainer Rohde:

Can you produce this screenshot using text scaling factor 3? This because that size should solve the most problems for me.
Can this display change been backported to i.e 12.04 LTS?

> Can this display change been backported to i.e 12.04 LTS?

it could maybe, it will require somebody to look at how that got fixed in 3.6 and if the fix depends of GTK improvements as well or not

@jgv: I am not sure as to how to do that. I will once I get a procedure. Thanks.

@Rainer Rohde:
1. with ubuntu-tweak: display - font size - set text scaling factor to 3
or
2. with gnome-tweak-tool, almost the same
or
3. with dconf-editor: set text scaling factor to 3 in org.gnome.desktop.interface

@jgv -- see screenshot attached; scaling at 3.

That is NOT fixed. Please reopen the bug report. I have no idea why I can't.

Still not fixed.

Well, here we are in 13.04 and this is not only not fixed but it also affects the tweak tool. There seems to be some universal widget window in use, and this is still unacceptable performance when some junior programmer decided to see what would happen if he turned off the variable geometry for some basic widget.

This is behaving like a virus because it seems to get into anything regarding the system settings.

I am currently using the GNOME fallback desktop and I just set my font factor to 2.0. I got these results for my trouble (see attached screenshot).

Someone is dragging its feet. This problem has been present for at least five releases and not fixed yet it is simple to do, and most annoying.

Just installed trusty (14.04) and this upstream problem is still present. Someone should send a message upstream that the system is for the end user. This has been present for several releases and as a programmer myself, I know this is a simple fix.

This issue is especially apparent when you use Unity's scaling features in Ubuntu 14.04:
http://neartalk.com/ss/2014-08-12_001_850x1010.png

My eyes like everything bigger, but it doesn't play well with this setting window. Additionally, you cannot resize this window or maximize it.

Since 2012 I waited for this issue to be solved in Ubuntu (see my comments). At last I have given up and therefore I swiched to Linux Mint Cinnamon. No such problems with scaling at all.

I'm marking this fixed. gnome-control-center 3.26 available in Ubuntu 17.10 (which will be released later this month) has a new layout which shouldn't be affected by this bug.

If you still have problems after upgrading to this version, please file a new detailed bug.