Re: 6 API-ish issues

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Gregory Merchan <merchan baton phys lsu edu> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 06:42:23PM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> <snip>
> > I think for the vast majority of users, we will get a lot more mileage 
> > by trying to make CLIPBOARD work really well, and keynav work really
> > well, then trying to optimize for PRIMARY.
> > 
> > I guess it might make sense to add a X-head GtkSetting:
> > 
> >  gtk-select-on-focus-in 
> > 
> > (Defaulting to TRUE). In this case, it would turn off selection on focus-in
> > entirely. If you are a primary-selection-loving lots-of-mousing person,
> > then you probably won't miss it.
> 
> This is unacceptable as it presently stands. When I concured with getting
> people to use CLIPBOARD I believed there was no conflict between that
> method of operation and the PRIMARY method; and there should not be.
> There must either be a way to set focus without selecting, or setting
> focus should not select at all. The vast majority of existing X users
> are almost certainly users and preferrers of PRIMARY methods and a good
> number of them use sloppy focus or PointerRoot focus. If a program is
> setting focus to an entry when the toplevel is focussed and if that takes
> PRIMARY, then the vast majority of users are screwed if they should happen
> pass over such a program's window while seeking to paste PRIMARY in another
> window.

I think there is some misunderstanding; we are talking about focusing
individual widgets ithin the toplevel; something that typically
requires an explicit action from the user.
 
> If using PRIMARY, non-click focus modes, and the mouse is subject to
> ridicule by excessive hyphenation, then they're the fanatics who
> have carried Linux, X, and their associates this far that you are
> ridiculing.

Looks like I violated one of the first rules in email communication
and tried to use humor without a liberal dose of smilies.

While I'm not entirely sure that the primary selection and
middle-button paste are the reason X and Linux have gotten this far,
I'm pretty used to them by now myself.

What I'm trying to say is that it's possible that support for habits
we have developed over the years, may, in some cases, interfere with
the optimum useability for people coming from other platforms or, in
fact that, are new to graphical user interfaces entirely.

In these cases it general makes sense to make the default the
non-Xpert setting, because people who are very used to the way that X
works are likely to be better at finding the way to customize things
to their needs. (This is why click-to-focus is the typical default for
GNOME, even though sloppy focus is presumably a lot more common
prefernece among the coders of GNOME.)
  
Regards,
                                        Owen