GtkComboBox: can't limit height or make scroll speed fast enough for long lists
Submitted by Nick Bowler
Link to original bug (#609335)
Description
I am working on a project with a potentially large GtkTreeStore, and the user can make several selections from this tree using combo boxes. Unfortunately, the interface falls flat on its face for several reasons:
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The popup when the combo box is expanded goes all the way from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen -- it's so tall that it is impossible to keep the entire thing in visual focus at once. Its height should probably be limited to 10-15cm or so.
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The mouse interface for scrolling is extremely slow. To select the 500th entry in the list, the user moves the pointer to the bottom of the screen and twiddles her thumbs for about 15 seconds for it to get there. If she falls asleep during that time, she'll have to spend yet more time scrolling back up. Perhaps it should scroll faster when a mouse button is depressed. Alternately, if there was screen space above (or below) the list, moving the pointer further up (or down) could cause faster scrolling.
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After waiting 15 seconds to scroll to the 500th entry, when the user subsequently wants to select the 600th entry she must wait 15 seconds to scroll to where she was before, then another few seconds to scroll to the 600th.
Keyboard navigation doesn't suffer from the second problem.
Resolving bug 59579 and bug 590276 would go a long way towards mitigating the scrolling problems.