Re: 6 API-ish issues

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Owen Taylor wrote:

> There are certainly cases where PRIMARY does provide an easier
> interface... e.g., highlight URL in emacs, middle paste into
> anywhere in a mozilla window. But considering that the worst
> that happens with CLIPBOARD is that you need a few more keystrokes,
> while with PRIMARY, you sometimes need a lot of gymnastics or
> advanced planning, I think we need to favour CLIPBOARD where
> there is a conflict.

i do not think we should favour CLIPBOARD if that renders
PRIMARY unusable which is now the case as soon as there's
a Gtk+2.0 app on the desktop.

> > I have not understood how PRIMARY can still work as Cut&Paste system
> > for a widget if it takes PRIMARY on getting focus; maybe somebody can
> > enlighten me ?
> > If I have two entries, and want to append some text of one into the other,
> > how would that work ( assuming that positioning the cursor requires
> > having focus ) ?
> 
> Clicking on an entry to focus it doesn't select the contents, just tab
> in, or hitting a mnemonic to focus it.

and upon opening new windows, which basically means that people
who are used to PRIMARY (and there're lots of them out there,
X11 didn't introduce that yesterday) need to be very carefull
when tabbing through the fields of an application (you're actually
forced to use the mouse if you want to focus another non-entry
widget and an entry is in the intermediate focus chain), and they
are forced to reselect contents after opening new windows
with entries.

what makes this hassle so painfull is that if you're used
PRIMARY for a long time (i.e. years), you're not going to
change behaviour quickly, you might not even want to.
i guess the chances to get people to change that are as high
as getting them to switch to a different editor ;)

> > Because if is does not, one could keep the paste-feature, silently,
> > and do the highlighting without touching the selection...
> 
> I hope everybody agrees that if you have a highlighted-but-not-PRIMARY
> state, it has to be visually distinct from the PRIMARY state. 

yep, either that (i.e. not claiming PRIMARY with auto-selection),
or give the users the ability to "fix" gtk's PRIMARY greediness
with an auto-select-entries-on-focus rc-file property.

> Plus, I think users that don't know about PRIMARY would be rather confused
> when highlighted text was sometimes one color, sometimes another for
> no apparent reason.

i think users that do know about PRIMARY and constantly loose
their selection for no aparent reason are also confused (and
even frustrated to some extend). it's certainly worth it to
pay attention to new (unexperienced) users where apropriate,
but that shouldn't be taken to extremes where it disgruntles
experienced users. (if we were striving for the lowest common
denominator in our user base, we should hack on a speech interface,
not a toolkit ;)

> 
> Regards,
>                                         Owen

---
ciaoTJ