[Qgis-developer] Toolbar size

[Steven Bell]

Some of the discussion about menus and toolbars got me thinking about the
toolbar setup in QGIS.
My screen size is 1024x768 - on the small end these days, but pretty
common.  I have toolbars across the top and down the right side, and I still
don't have room for all of the buttons.  My map canvas is roughly 620x530.
I started thinking and comparing this to the OpenOffice.org interface, which
manages to fit even more buttons and information, while leaving a larger
area for work.
There are several places the GUI could save some space:
-Toolbar and menu size.  OOo fits the menu and 2 toolbars into 85 pixels,
where QGIS takes 105.
-Legend/Layer list.  It appears that its minimum size has been increased
from v0.8.
-Canvas.  It appears that the canvas is on a tabbed panel, with the tab
title of "Map View".  Are there other views that were intended to go here?
The way it currently is, removing the tabs and reducing the padding could
save ~50px.
-Bottom information.  OOo's bottom info bar is 22 px tall, while QGIS's is
48 px when you count the surrounding padding space.

I don't have much experience with QT GUI design, but it seems like these
would be moderately simple changes which would greatly improve the usability
of the interface.
How difficult would this really be to implement?  Is this worth doing?  I
would be willing to work on this if there's interest and it isn't too hard.
Steven
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