Palimpsest GUI impossible to use on small screen

Adding screengrab to illustrate the problem better

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

Added upstream bug at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594088

This should probably at least be confirmed? Apologies if I'm doing this wrong.

This issue does not only affect small screens. Using a 24' wide screen with bigger fonts (>100 dpi) a simular affect is noticable. Window is totally out of control. A screenprint is attached. Should this be a separate bug?

I'm having a similar issue on a 1366x768 screen. The lower part of the window falls outside the screen, and when I click to close the window, it jumps up and hides the titlebar, so I have to use keyboard shortcut to close it. Very annoying.

I'm also seeing this on a 1024x600 screen. Shouldn't there just be a GtkScrolledWindow so that we get scrollbars?

The application refuses to maximise if a disk is selected (is okay if the root or disk controller is selected). I believe the problem is that the sizers are not appropriately configured and / or no scrollable window is used for the expandable area for the disk display.

Same issue here! My netbook has 1366x768. Hope this get solved soon.

so I picked this patch from meego's bug tracker. it adds a scrollbar if needed.

ok it seems the same patch is attached to the upstream bug too. but there has been no activity anywhere. the patch works fine as apparently its fixed in Meego. http://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2422

Changing tag as the patch was sent upstream.

this bug should be fixed in Lucid and also in Maverick.

bumping up the priority as its a bigger problem.

Omer,
What should I do here? Should I review the patch or ?

the patch works fine. you could make a sponser request I guess.

On 7/24/10, Bilal Akhtar <email address hidden> wrote:
> Omer,
> What should I do here? Should I review the patch or ?
>
> --
> Palimpsest GUI impossible to use on small screen
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/414107
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in gnome-disk-utility: New
> Status in “gnome-disk-utility” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> Palimpsest has reported SMART errors on my internal flash disk (do they even
> have SMART?) However the issue is that the GUI is larger than the small
> screen on my netbook (800x480).
>
> Clicking any of the buttons in the GUI, or attempting to resize the
> left/right panes just flicks the entire interface from left to right. If I
> repeatedly click in random places, I might hit on a button when it's
> shifting from side-to-side but it's effectively unusable. The entire window
> is shifting from half-off-screen to the left, then half-off-screen to the
> right.
>
> I've not seen this behaviour on any other app within Ubuntu Karmic Alpha, so
> assume it's specific to Palimpsest. Hopefully this can be resolved so I can
> run further tests on my disk :)
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-disk-utility/+bug/414107/+subscribe
>

ok

Thanks for the patch, whoever has made it.

This bug needs to be forwarded to Debian, as this package has no Ubuntu changes as of now.
Forwarding with patch.

Could any of you gentle guys deploy a ppa with this palimpsest plus this patch?

That would be just so nice!

It appears that the Debian maintainer is ignoring the patch and so are many other DDs. I shall get this patch into Ubuntu in the meantime.
Work for tomorrow.

Un-assigning myself, as sponsors don't look at assigned bugs. Linked branch fixes bug.

Since patch has been reviewed, un-assigning reviewers.

Is there an automated way of producing a .deb out of your branch?

Leo,
Yes, but for that you will need to have bzr-builddeb package installed and then just type
bzr builddeb -- -us -uc
inside the branch. However, this will generate a deb than can be used ONLY in maverick.

I am now trying to get this into Lucid through an SRU.

> However, this will generate a deb than can be used ONLY in maverick.

Why? It has dependencies on package versions more recent than those of
Lucid?

> I am now trying to get this into Lucid through an SRU.

If an SRU is not possible, please at least a -backports, or -proposed, or
otherwise a ppa. Please :-)

ok, I agree. I am pushing it to my PPA (ppa:bilalakhtar/stage) . Actually I am not a MOTU or a core-dev, so whether it gets into proposed or backports or anything, I need sponsorship which will involve a wait.

Pushing package to PPA and at the same time

Yes, the package will run fine in lucid, I just tested.

Okay, so the above diff is the debdiff for getting it into lucid-proposed. I have subscribed sponsors for getting this debdiff into lucid-proposed while the attached branch gets this fix into maverick.

Leo,
The package is now going to build in my PPA. I have uploaded it. Once built, you can just use my ppa or download the debs and install.

PPA is at https://edge.launchpad.net/~bilalakhtar/+archive/stage

Okay, Martin Pitt recommended that this bug is not appropriate for an SRU. Well, it will go into maverick straight away!

I updated the patch and committed it upstream: http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/commit/?id=dcfdaad239372516a4f4826349afe4e613aaedec

I'll put it into Debian now, upload, and sync.

Committed to Debian git as well; I coordinate the upload with Michael Biebl now.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-disk-utility - 2.30.1-2

---------------
gnome-disk-utility (2.30.1-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Add 00git-palimpsest-small-screens.patch: Add scrollbars to the right pane
    if the window is smaller than the contents. This makes palimpsest working
    on small screens. (Closes: #589502, LP: #414107, GNOME #594088)
  * debian/control: Bump Standards-Version to 3.9.1 (no changes necessary).
  * Convert source package to "3.0 (quilt)" format.
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:55:27 +0200

Wow, now at least I can use it. That changes my life.

Thanks!!!

Still there is something that could easily be improved:
When I select a filesystem mounted on the top of a luks-mapped device, since the device name is like 10 times bigger than /dev/sdc2, it makes the second column far too wide. The problem is that the first column automatically gets the same width, which is pointless. See attached screenshot.

I can confirm what Leo is saying. The windows is still jumpy in the sense that clicking on a disk will make the window grow in size. I feel that the window size should be static. Although this is not exactly the same symptom it deals with optimizing disk utility for smaller screens.

Leo,
It would be better if you comment about that artifact upstream.

So why can't this be applied to Lucid?

I have taken a look and I wouldn't consider adding scroll bars to the interface as Fix to the problem but simply a quick workaround. The interface should allow to not be full screen and the window to be moved around on small screens. This is still not possible in maverick.

This is still an issue with certain parts of the UI (sorry for adding here, bug reporting seems disabled).
The text string for disk failure warning doesn't break lines and forces the dialog to be (estimated) 1500px wide (on a 1280px screen).