Re: Highly annoying icon behavoiur

[Geir Torstein Kristiansen <gtk linux online no>]

Warren Young wrote:
> 
> Geir Torstein Kristiansen wrote:
> >
> > 1. I doubleclick any icon on my gnome desktop
> > 2. The icon does whatever it is supposed to do
> > 3. The icon I just clicked is still marked w/ chess pattern
> > 4. I have to click outside the icon (anywhere on the desktop) to unmark
> > it
> >
> > Why is this? I find it highly annoying.
> 
> It's not just your system.  GNOME does this on all systems.

I know, and it doesn't make it any less annoying even if it is the
default behaviour. I cannot possibly imagine that I am the only one who
feels this way?

> 
> > Is there anyway I can turn this (having to manually unmark) behaviour
> > off?
> >
> > If I recall correctly, neither win*, mac, or kde behaves like this.
> 
> Windows behaves similarly, but with one difference.  In Windows,
> highlights follow the system's input focus, so that when the app comes
> up, the desktop no longer has focus, so the highlight goes away.  If you
> then close the app and click once on the desktop (giving it focus again)
> the highlight comes back.  Click once more and the highlight goes away
> because you're telling Windows to "select nothing".
> 
> I don't know how easy it would be to emulate this behavior in X, because
> in case you hadn't noticed, "focus" is implemented quite differently in
> X.  :)
> 
> I'm not sure I'd want that feature of Windows emulated or not.  There's
> a lot to be said for the concept that the desktop cannot accept focus.
> It keeps the desktop from taking over focus from other apps.

Im not sure if I want the whole "desktop takes focus" thing emulated
either, I just want the icon to *not* be highlighted after I have double
clicked it. The way I see it, having the icon highlighted _after_ it has
been double clicked serves no purpose at all, and it is only highly
annoying. What is _really_ the usefullness of having it still be
highlighted?... I mean, the icon did what it was supposed to do (launch
an app or something)

It is as if someone meant to emulate the whole scheme you mentioned
above, but never actually got around to making sure that the icon
actually looses the highlight after it has done what it supposed do to.
Can we drop this halfly emulated behavoiur, it serves no purpose?

It's not like the icon implementation does not have other problems too,
but I can live with them (as opposed to this "icons do not loose
highlight problem, which drives me nuts :-]). Like the "Tidy Icons"
option behaves sub-optimal. And if you mark several icons and drag them,
you will only see one icon being dragged at a time (while dragging).

> 
> > One last question: What will provide the desktop icons when nautilus is
> > finished, and what will happen with gmc?
> 
> I do know that gmc is scheduled to die completely, so I highly suspect
> Nautilus will be taking over the desktop icon feature.

I look forward to nautilus, I tried the preview release and very much
likes how it feels.

Cheers
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 \_, /\__/_/\_\  Geir Torstein Kristiansen
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