0032. Dialog buttons are the title bar's size: patina::dialog

Date: 2026-11-09

Status

Accepted. The user found the buttons in the Patina desktop's dialogs (the polkit password dialog, Files' confirmations, the power menu's question) too small and not like a desktop's, showed the title bar's buttons as the size they should be, and said this is a rule for Patina apps: put it in develop.

Context

ADR-0022 made 24 px the least a clickable thing is, and ADR-0028 sized the title bar's buttons as Photograph's: 10 px of padding either side of the text, 5 above and below, 24 px high. Both are applied only where Patina draws, inside TitleBar. Outside it, a dialog's buttons are egui's: 18 px high with 4 by 1 px of padding, so a Cancel in a dialog is a smaller target than a Save in the title bar of the same app, and looks like a toolkit's default, not a desktop's. Each app that noticed fixed it with its own copy of the same four lines (three in the desktop alone).

Putting it in Skin::apply, the style every widget draws from, would change every widget in every app at once: the tabs and the markdown editor's cells size themselves from interact_size too (ADR-0028 left the left side of the bar alone for that reason), and apps with dense panels would reflow without being asked.

Decision

• patina::dialog::buttons(ui) sizes the buttons of the ui it's called in as the title bar's: BUTTON_PADDING (10 by 5), at least BUTTON_HEIGHT (24) high, BUTTON_GAP (8) apart. It is called first inside a row's layout, so only the row changes. The title bar's own buttons use the same constants.
• patina::dialog::primary(ui, text) is the button Enter presses, filled in the skin's accent (its selection colours); the others are plain.
• A row of buttons in a dialog, panel or popup is right-aligned, primary rightmost, as other desktops have it. The rule is in docs/design.md and the patina-app skill.
• It's a call apps make, not a change to the global style.

Consequences

• Apps' dialogs match their title bars with two lines, and can drop their own copies.
• A button outside a row that calls buttons is egui's size still; an app that wants all its buttons that size sets the same spacing on its style itself. That's a possible follow-up once the apps' dense panels have been looked at.
• buttons raises the ui's interact_size.y for everything after it, so it belongs in the row's layout or a scope of its own.