Re: Patch for Delete key behavior (for dia-0.96.1)

["Michael Ross" <michael e ross gmail com>]

On 9/25/07, Hans Breuer <hans breuer org> wrote:

>>> Those are just minor nuisances, but fixing the delete key behavior makes
>>> working with Dia much more comfortable.
>
> I believe there are far too many users who would agree with this statement.
>
I don't wanna believe, I wanna know ;)

My vote is the current function for Delete when in the mode of editing text is the most irritating thing about Dia. 

I must admit, I am incredulous.  Who knew there was a way to delete the letter to the right?

In no other program that I use does the delete key remove an entire text group when I am just trying to pull back the next entry to the right of my cursor?  I think that is very unexpected behavior.

What is this about Ctrl-Delete?  I had no expectation until reading this conversation that Ctrl-Delete was a shortcut for anything.  I have been using Dia for several years now and never knew about that.  And how was I supposed to gain that knowledge?  From the Help files?

I figured it couldn't be fixed.  Why would anyone leave it like that if it could be fixed was my thinking?  So just live with it.  I have to learn bizarre programing changes regularly.  Excellent programs get changed for the worse all the time (usually to shoehorn them into Windows) - maybe it isWindows fault Dia doesn't work right, I thought.

Any GUI for any program should take into account common usage, IMO.  When I edit a text entity and my cursor is between two letters I expect the Delete key to remove the letter to the right.  I am aware of no other program that diverges from that method.

Let me list those that I use regularly:  OpenOffice, GanttProject, LabVIEW, Google, Google Docs, Inkscape, Gimp, Filezilla, MathCad, Solidworks, ProEngineer, MasterCam, EasyPlot, Lotus123, Borland QuattroPro, all the various programming interfaces Borland C, Visual Basic, also MySQL and various query browsers and php GUI's, Mozilla Firefox, Forte Agent, Thunderbird, MS Office products, Wordpad, Notepad, WIKI.

The DOS command prompt console, for Pete's sake, doesn't make me backspace over text anymore.

Everyone of these programs maps the delete key the same way.  In any of them that have a special text block that gets edited (Solidworks for example) when my cursor is between letters Delete acts in the expected manner.  If I have merely activated the text block, but not put the cursor at some location in the text, the Delete key does delete the block.  That's how it is commonly done in my experience.

Dia is the ONLY program I use that diverges from this behavior.

Meanwhile, thanks for the tip about Ctrl-Delete. I had to go check that out immediately.  Imagine using Dia and not know about that, eh?   If you all are going to be hard-headed about this, then I am glad to know how it is done.  I was tired of backspacing.

Mike

-- 
Michael Ross
=================================
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