Re: [gtk-list] Re: vi bindings for text widgets

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Wed, Jul 08, 1998 at 04:52:09PM +0100, Steve Hosgood wrote:
> > It's one thing to offer people keybindings to start-of-line and delete-word -
> > but Vi's modal state is something quite difficult to implement, and I'm not
> > sure it has it's place in the "lowest common denominator" editor widget
> > that has it's place in GUIs.

I'm not so sure it will be hard to add the state ... it's basically adding
one flag ... I did this once fro a different project and adding vi support
was TOO simple the more code will be the part where it configures form an rc
file

> There must be a sensible balance to be found amongst all of this. I'm sure
> we *don't* want to use GTK to help turn unix into Windoze, but at the same
> time there are some advantages to the very "samey" look and feel you get
> from Windoze:

this is what defaults are for .. in your enviroment if you install a new
app it will run with default ... so if you learned those ... you are there

> I picked up a copy of Gimp to play with, I had *no idea* how to get it to
> do *anything* useful! Indeed - I still can't. I've never seen such a baroque

hmm weird ... I never had trouble figuring out how gimp work ...
and I've never read it's manual ... and I've never used photoshop ...
I thought is user interface was very self explanatory

> This is where my other comments about a lack of style guide came from. I find
> it difficult to believe that encouraging excessive user-configurability
> either helps to keep the code small or helps make programs easier to
> learn. Nor will it help encourage new users towards GTK applications.

just because configurability is there doesn't mean all people use it ... 
motif is pretty standard right ... and on most systems it will look and
work the same .. it can however be drastically configured through
resources ... even to a point of breaking the application ... yes I don't
see people going around complaining about it ...

90% of people don't care about configurability and will use defaults .. the
10% will be unhappy in defaultas and will configure their own ... then instead
of having 90% of people happy you have 100% of people happy ...

> Do any of you harbour a secret desire to "configure" the pedals on your cars
> away from the standard (clutch, brake, accelerator)? :-)

ok to counter you previous argument with similiar logic ... I might want to
customize my shift stick (the shape) .. I will set my seat up ... I will
adjust the steering wheel and I will adjust the mirror ... I might even tune
the engine to my preferences ... now it will be harder for someone else to
driove my car with those settings ... but it's my car ... unfortunately
I can't set up a new user on the car and have him have his own settings ...
I can on unix ... so there configurability is endless ...

George

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
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