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- Subject: My bits of a few days ago
- Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1994 10:05:46 +0200 (MDT)
- From: Annius.Groenink@cwi.nl (Annius Groenink)
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-
-
-
- Peter Missel:
-
- pm> MultiTOS cycles applications by Alt-Control-TAB. I suggest Control-TAB
- pm> should cycle an app's windows. (That's the same shortcut as in Micr*soft
- pm> Windows, btw.)
-
- And it is already supported in Edith (btw, I didn't know about
- Microsoft but it seemed reasonable because of MTOS and Mag!X).
-
- pm> I prefer the "cursor equals block" concept. The (inserting) cursor is a
- pm> zero length block, anything typed replaces the block's contents. In this
- pm> concept, an overwrite mode cursor would mark the one char under it as a
- pm> block, anything typed or inserted replaces the block. Similarly, any
- pm> marked block will be replaced by typed or inserted stuff.
-
- I have one simple description for methods of the like: this is too much
- thinking from the perspective of the programmer. Programmers should
- care about what the USER thinks. Even while a user can learn to
- *understand* the windows/mac idea, s/he will still keep making mistakes
- when using this system.
-
- -----
-
- I don't understand the fuss about Control G and Goto. In both the
- German and English standards, Control L is used for Goto Line.
-
- -----
-
- Andre:
-
- aw> Hmm, how about suggesting the use of Alt-I, Alt-B, Alt-U, etc for Italic,
- aw> Bold, Underline etc. That way, application-specific things like this won't
- aw> get in the way of general stuff.
-
- No. Please no alternate combinations. Those should be reserved for
- buttons in dialog windows. Although, admittedly, that argument does
- not really apply for text windows, and the options will be greyed out
- when a dialog window is active.
-
- A major reason to reject alternate is that a set of Control and a set of
- Control + Shift combinations is complicated enough. Three sets of
- modifier combinations is too much, I think.
-
- -----
-
- Ofir (in reaction to my previous post)
-
- og> >Finally, can anyone give me an example of frequent use of 'append to
- og> >clipboard'? Is it worth a general shortcut? It should at least be
- og>
- og> What's the diff between Append and Add? At any rate, I will find this
- og> command very useful. Again, if you don't want to you don't have to
- og> implement this, if you do, please use Shift+CTRL+C.
-
- If you have a desktop publishing or drawing package, and you copy a few
- frames, you'd want to *ADD* them to the clipboard. The term
- 'Append' only makes sense in applications that handle LINEAR
- (one-dimensional) data. So a general proposal should use the word add,
- not append.
-
- -----
-
- Someone writes
-
- > >> Ctrl-A = Deselect marked (all), i.e. "Abandon" selection
-
- WOW! That makes three (four?) actions which all have the name "Abandon"!
-
- -----
-
- Chris Taylor Oates about Mac selection paradigm:
-
- ct> I do that many times in Atariworks, as
- ct> well as selecting areas and simply hitting backspace to delete them.
-
- Hm. If the Mac system were really as orthogonal as people on the list
- claim, hitting backspace should remove the block PLUS the character
- right before the block; for that's what is does when the block is size
- 0 (the cursor). Similar for Delete.
-
- -----
-
- Evan Langlois (in his article "5 things I hate") must have had a bad day.
-
- el> 2 - Hacking Key Repeat is also pretty stupid!
-
- I agree. But text editors that scroll twice as far as you want because
- MultiTOS is so slow and it keeps storing stuff in the keyboard buffer is
- much more annoying than using a pretty stupid program that works fine.
-
- el> 4 - As to MultiTOS being slower than TOS 1.0, first, I think you are wrong.
- el> As for thins not redrawing properly, this is a problem is the application.
- el> Don't tell me its a "legal" application.
-
- It's: MINIWIN for example. That should be legal. Of course,
- everybody knows Eric Smith really prefers a text screen and doesn't
- really want to bother writing proper GEM based applications. That's
- also one of the reasons MTOS hasn't brought us any really bright new GUI
- ideas.
-
- el> MultiTOS will be faster soon.
-
- You mean 'real soon'? I'm impressed. At the current pace, that will be
- in couple of years. I think that by that time my home machine will be
- an SGI.
-
- el> 5 - This crap about the "!!" is useless. Anything other than 0 is TRUE.
- el> I guess if you wanted to do math with the 1 then you might be able to work
- el> with it, but there is a difference between a value, and a flag. So,
-
- It can be useful, though. TRUE and TRUE are normally incomparable
- through ==. The !! hack fixes this.
-
- el> if (condition)
- el> var = 1;
- el>
- el> is actually more readable
-
- Speaking from a software engineering point of view the !! is more elegant,
- I should think.
-
- -----
-
- Ofir:
-
- og> The W and U options have been discussed at length. A possible
- og> option would be to add:
- og>
- og> CTRL Tab Cycle Windows
- og> Shift CTRL Tab Reverse Cycle Windows
- og> CTRL ESC Close Top Window
- og> Shift CTRL Tab Close All Windows
-
- I take it the last line should read 'Shift CTRL ESC'. I think this is a
- great idea. Let's then leave W and U completely undefined, so
- applications can freely choose what they want to do with those.
-
- og> CTRL BS Delete word to left
- og> CTRL Del Delete word to right
- og> Shift+CTRL Del Delete to end of line ***
- og> Shift+CTRL BS Delete from start of line ***
-
- I can live with this (although from my point of view, the whole
- discussion is just to fix unsafe applications, which shouldn't be
- written in 1994). Let's also add
-
- Shift Backspace: Same as Backspace
-
- -----
-
- Michael Nolte:
-
- mn> This time Apple was wrong. BTW: What is all this "Apple did it, so it's
- mn> gotta be good" crap about anyway. Next thing you know you're goning to
- mn> want the Mac fiel system, or what?
-
- Many of us agreed that the Mac SELECTION system wasn't good at all.
- BTW, the Mac file system *is* far superior to the CP/M or MiNT stuff in
- the ST... :-) [especially the resource stuff!]
-
- -----
-
- Tim Miller:
-
- tm> Oh, and people need to make the code READABLE! I've seen people write C
- tm> code that was so far removed from the normal formatting that I simply
- tm> could not read it. And a comment for every line is nothing but
- tm> distracting, while no comments can actually be worse. But we'll cover
- tm> this later.
-
- Oh please, let's not `cover' this at all!
-
- -----
-
- Warwick about abandoning abandon:
-
- WHAT ABOUT:
-
- close window =
- if (changed)
- { switch (ask_user)
- { case Cancel
- : do noting
- ; case Abandon
- : close
- ; case Reload
- : reload
- ; case Save
- : save, close
- ; case Save As...
- : save as, close
- ; } }
- else
- close
-
- -----
-
- Vicent Lefevre:
-
- vf> OK. Let's add a `Go Back' feature (and a shortcut). Mark shortcuts should
- vf> also be added, if supported. I suggest:
- vf> CTRL-0 - go back
- vf> CTRL-1 to CTRL-9 - go to mark 1 - 9
- vf> SHIFT-CTRL-1 to SHIFT-CTRL-9 - put a mark
-
- I would like to mention the solution Edith adopts:
-
- Shift Control F9: Push Position
- Control F9: Pop Position
-
- (of course, the F9 is rather arbirary and wouldn't fit in our
- proposal).
-
- This only takes two shortcuts and is far more intuitive than having to
- remember numbers. The Edith stack stores up to 4 positions which 'pop
- position' cycles through. The 'go back' function is for free! (it
- coincides with 'pop position')
-
- -----
-
- Ofir about Control I/Control ?:
-
- og> I'm not sure about this one since it is non standard on the ST. Maybe we
- og> should put things like that to a separate vote.
-
- I think Control I isn't extremely standard either. and Control + ?
- definitely makes more sense!
-
- So I'd say:
-
- Control I: italics
- Control (Shift) ?: show info. (can even be set in NEWDESK)
-
- -----
-
- Ralf Allison:
-
- wa> Undo - Undo Last op
- wa> Shift Undo - Redo last op
- wa> CTRL Undo - Revert (abandon all changes and reload)
- wa>
- wa> Just hope the user remembers whether to use shift or control (esp. if the
- wa> Revert doesn't validate).
-
- Hm. Good point. BTW, it should probably read
-
- CTRL Undo... Revert AFTER CONFIRMATION
-
- (note the ellipsis)
-
- -----
-
-
- --
- Annius V. Groenink | E-mail: avg@cwi.nl | Private & ZFC: (e-mail soon)
- CWI, Kruislaan 413 | Room: M233 | P.O. Box 12079
- 1098 SJ Amsterdam | Ext: 4077 | NL 1100 AB Amsterdam
- Netherland | Phone: +31 20 592 4077 | Phone: +31 20 695 9901
-