Dash elipsizes file and application names too soon, making them unreadable (catchall bug)

Didier could you have a look to this issue? Thanks.

IIRC, that has been discussed few weeks ago with the design team and that's by design. Looking with the dx team now.

Discussed this with Ivanka and she asked me to add a couple of screenshots, so the Design team could discuss this. Attaching one of the Applications Place and one of the Files Place.

unity-apps-place.png
I'm highlighting the Netbook Banshee Media Player icon and that name is shortened to "Netbook B...edia Player" Would a new user really know what the heck that is? I think the OpenOffice.org apps are similarly cryptic, though one could probably glean what they are.

unity-files-place.png
This is admittedly not great for demonstrating the point, but at least demonstrates the behaviour for the Design team to evaluate. I think the longer the file name the worse this will get.

3 rows is just wasteful, consider it ruled out. Instead, we should focus
our consideration of the problem around better ellipsis, better titles,
and a 2-row option.

Mark

Marking as incomplete pending some design exploration of different tile styles

@Neil
         Anyway to get this to at least 2 rows in 10.10 release. Right now it is impossible to read many shortcut & file labels.

Happy to try 2 rows if this is a manageable change in Maverick.

Mark

Putting the bug back into the maverick backlog for consideration once Gord can empty his priority bug list.
@gordallott: the change would be to have 2 rows of text for program labels, instead of one

If we do this, please make sure that ellipsis happens as follows:

 - avoid ellipsis at the end of the top line, try to break naturally after the first 1 or 2 words
 - elide the start of the second line, so the final part of the name is intact

We'll need to be aware of the potential for name collisions, and be sure that we always give people some basis for telling which file is which. MPT has documented a patter for ellipsis over a single line, that will need updating for a rigorous view of multi-line ellipsis.

Mark

It would solve bug #617483 I think.

Showing the entire name on mouse-over would make those few file and app names that were more than two lines still readable.

Showing a tool tip with the full name not also solve the problem.

The initial plan is to support 2-line names. We will not do tooltips,
but we might expand the name on hover. We'll do a quick prototype and
test it, then update this bug.

Mark

(Copied over from dup). Quite often if the surrounding whitespace is taken account of, then there is no require to ellipse the name; a long name surrounded on the left-and-right by short names still has plenty of space if it is not constrained to the same grid as the icons are aligned to.

(Longer worked examples of the equivalent issue occuring in the Launchpad milestones graph are on bug #668435.)

Was there testing on this? Is the plan for 2 lines with a break as mark suggests?

Yes, 2-line with ellipsis is the plan, Florian and John will prototype
it this week at Millbank.

Mark

because we don't have places up and running, but do have a potential fix for this in the codebase, i'll post a screenshot of the text eplipsizing in action (ignoring the theming, this is a test not how it will "look" in unity, but rather to show how the text will work)

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 3.2.16-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (3.2.16-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - Add the Launcher BaseWindow to the a11y component only if a11y was
      initialized (LP: #705442)
    - Enable _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_UTILITY windows (like gimp toolbox) to hide
      the Launcher (LP: #706109)
    - Fix the defaul indicators size, making them inconsistent (LP: #705803)
    - Always have the indicator session to the top right (LP: #705697)
    - Show launcher when places are activated (LP: #705948)
    - Fix memory leaks in dash (LP: #705705)
    - Support i18n (LP: #697166)
    - Enabling double click on the launcher to restore a maximized window
      (LP: #661049)
    - Update the title bar on tab change (LP: #691651)
    - Hide the launcher instantanly on key press or dash if we have already
      waited the launcher trigger time (LP: #705805)
    - Make sure keypad keys also work in the search entry (LP: #599902)
    - Dash elipsizes file and application names too soon, making them unreadable
      (LP: #632526)
    - Implement Places Group View (LP: #704493)
  * debian/control:
    - ensure we have latest bamf and nux
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:43:29 +0100

need to add support for 2 line descriptions in dash, currently just one line

I have an experimental, pure QML implementation that works on Qt 4.7.2 but cannot show the ellipsis for multiple lines.
On the other hand the Qt developers implemented the feature properly in a more recent Qt version: http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-12305

I will see if the patch can be safely backported.

The patch to Qt is quite intrusive and not trivial to backport to 4.7.2. Let's stick with the workaround for now.

Marking oem-priority bug task 'Fix Released' because it's 'Fix Released' in all other affected bug tasks.