Opposites Are Attractive.

[Ralph Corderoy <ralph inputplus demon co uk>]

Hi all,

I've some suggestions for extra UI features that I feel would give
GTK even more of an edge over other, commercial, systems.  I've been
hovering on the outskirts of GTK for a couple of months now, on and
off, reading the documentation, etc., but haven't the time to put my
code where my mouth is so I thought it would be better to float the
ideas so others might take them up.

The general idea is to make use of the `third' mouse button.  A simple
example is a scrollbar comprising of up and down arrows, a thumb that
can be dragged, and a trough that the thumb moves up and down in.
Clicking with B1 (button 1) on the up arrow would move the thumb up
one unit.  I'm pushing for a click with B3 to move the thumb in the
opposite direction.  Similarly, paging the thumb up by clicking above
it in the trough with B1 would turn into paging down if B3 was used.

This helps a lot in saving the user having the move the mouse from
the up arrow to the down arrow and back again.  They hold down over
the up arrow, go a little to far and backtrack with B3.

When two scrollbars are used, one in the X axis and one in the Y,
dragging the thumb with B3 moves both thumbs at the same time;  an
instant `panner'.  No longer do you have to drag the horizontal one,
then move to the vertical, then finely adjust the horizontal again.

That's scrollbars.  The concept extends to menu items.  Take the Gimp.
I wanted to bring up all the various dialogues under the File->Dialogs
menu.  For each one I had to traverse the File->Dialogs->xxx hierarchy.
Yawn.  Instead, selecting a menu item with B3 would activate the menu
item but leave the menu posted when possible.  This would have meant a
B3 click on File followed by B3 clicks on Brushes..., Patterns..., etc.

Next I was mucking around with Xtns->Script-Fu->Utils->Font Map.
Every time I clicked on OK the dialogue disappeared leaving me to
bring it up all over again.  If only I could have selected OK with
B3 telling the dialogue not to disappear.  The only alternative is
a yucky `Apply' button on each and every dialogue.

In case you're thinking that these are all my fancy-notions and
wouldn't work well in practice you'd be wrong.  They are shamelessly
stolen from the Acorn RISC OS used by a small (several tens of
thousands) group of users mainly in the U.K.  They work extremely well.
It is a pain to live without them.

I'm after persuading those that hack GTK that this is worth doing;
that assuming the user can use another digit reaps big benefits.
So all your comments and feedback are welcome.  Changes to some of
the simpler things, like scrollbar arrows, for quick user-feedback
would be even more welcome.

Thanks for getting this far,


Ralph Corderoy.