Re: Theory question on desktop and gmc

[Michael ROGERS <M Rogers cs ucl ac uk>]

>> Middle click to "pick up" a selection,
>
>OK, why? Why not just have it work on the active selection, like all other
>selection-type things do? (X, gpm, etc..)

Good point.

>> and middle click
>> again to "drop".
>
>Or, "paste", as old timers will likely call it.

:)

>Here's my Beaut Idea for a middle-mouse drag action. It's kinda weird.. 
>Now, we have "paste" bound to middle-click (release?). But if we *move*
>the mouse before release (a middle-drag) we get a special context menu - a
>"paste as..." list. So, you select a bunch of files, zip over to another
>gmc, and middle drag, which pops up options like "copy", "move", "soft
>link", "hard link" (Yes, I know these are copies of the right-click items,
>but bear with me), maybe "paste filenames to file", or "run a command on
>these filenames in this directory", that kind of thing. If the paste
>target is something like gnumeric, we get "open file", "embed file",
>"paste contents of file", and so forth. 

You could bind the paste menu to right-click; select, move around, 
right-click would have all the same options as select, right-drag. You'd
have to change the mouse pointer to the DnD shaped window thing to indicate 
visually that the context menu you were seeing applied to the selection, not 
to the icon you just right-clicked on.

>> Maybe it should be in the style guide - "make the mouse pointer disappear
>> when it's not being used".
>
>Certainly. I hear all-too-little about this style guide. I know tha Mac
>style guide is quite strict and all-encompassing, and I wish Win95 were
>the same. And GNOME, too, although it's already not too bad.

BTW, I was wrong about wm2 making the pointer disappear - as you said, it was 
just with gnome-terminal.


Michael Rogers