MySQL Bugs: #12427: query_text GtkTextView in workarea.glade too small to be useful

Bug #12427	query_text GtkTextView in workarea.glade too small to be useful
Submitted:	8 Aug 2005 6:10	Modified:	15 Jan 2009 12:45
Reporter:	Daniel Kasak (Candidate Quality Contributor)	Email Updates:
Status:	Unsupported	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Workbench	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	1.1.18	OS:	Any (All)
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
The query_text GtkTextView in the main workarea.glade file is too small. It can only accept a couple of rows of text, but I often work on queries that have *many*, *many* lines of text, and in these cases, I can't see all the query at once. This is the most important section of the window, whereas the results, which are of secondary importance, take up most of the screen.

How to repeat:
Open QB. Paste a large query into the query_text text view.

Suggested fix:
I'm attaching a patch that adds a vertical pane to the workarea.glade file, separating the workarea into 2 ... basically the SQL section and the results section. The user can then choose their own size for each.

*** NOTE ***

I haven't used the GtkVPaned widget in Glade before, and it shows ...

When you open the glade file, the top half of the window is invisible, as it's hiding up in the top half of the GtkVPaned. I have no idea how to set an initial size for different sections of the GtkVPaned. Sorry. I assume it's trivial to do, but a brief look at it turns up nothing.

When you open the window in Glade or from the QB app, use the pane's scrollbar 'thingy' to enlarge the top half of the pane - it's right at the top of the screen. Clearly someone will have to fix this. I would if I could, but I can't ...

Also keep in mind that I am a Perl programmer, hence I haven't bothered making the slightest attempt to see if these changes will affect something that the code wants to do with the window. Having said that, I've given just about everything a quick test, and it looks alright to me ... except for the initial sizing thing.

NEW workarea.glade file

Attachment: workarea.glade (application/x-glade, text), 124.52 KiB.

Patch was smaller than the glade file itself ( and also above the maximum file size allowed for uploads ), so I've attached the new workarea.glade file.

*larger*
whatever ...

I'm attaching 2 new, alternative glade files for the workarea.

The 1st one is very similar to the original - I've added a GtkVPaned to allow the query_toolbar to be vertically resized. This one works a *lot* better than my original attempt.

The 2nd one is a slightly more radical change - I've move all the buttons in the query toolbar to the left-hand side of the window. To me, it makes more sense to have these buttons down the side, as it's more space-efficient ( when you resize the query toolbar anyway ).

Both of these glade files have been tested extensively and work flawlessly for me. They are drop-in replacements for the original. Copy them to:

/usr/share/mysql-gui/query-browser/workarea.glade ( back up your original first ) and restart mysql-query-browser to see the changes.

It would be *trivial* to add an option in query-browser to select between alternative glade files ... if people insist on keeping the original. To be honest, though, I can't see how people can get any work done with the original - you simply can't see the query!

What do people think?

A very similar glade file to the original

Attachment: workarea_similar.glade (application/x-glade, text), 120.50 KiB.

A slightly more radical change - buttons down left-hand side

Attachment: workarea_more_radical.glade (application/x-glade, text), 118.00 KiB.

Many thanks for writing a feature request. The full functionality of MySQL Query Browser will be implemented into our new product; Workbench. So we won't fix your reported issue anymore.

Because you send us a patch, we will check your patch and will look what we will be able to do here.

We have reimplemented Workbench from scratch after release this preview edition earlier on. The problem is no longer present in the current version of WB. Please download it from here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/5.1.html