Why was Preference emptyDragStartsASelection removed for 3.2?

Scott Wallace scott.wallace at squeakland.org
Wed Apr 24 18:43:03 UTC 2002


At 9:47 AM -0700 4/24/02, Ned Konz wrote:
>I note in the recent 3.2 changes that the Preference
>emptyDragStartsASelection has been removed.
>
>Why was this removed? I rather liked it...

When I was straightening up preferences for 3.2g I found that 
#emptyDragStartsASelection had no senders, and when I checked even as 
far back as an image from 18 months ago, I found that the preference 
was present in the Preferences panel but had no senders.

So clearly this was a dead preference that had not been in use for a 
very long time -- and a full-source search for it didn't even reveal 
any commented-out code that mentioned it.  So I felt safe in removing 
it.

But your query about this preference today made me curious enough to 
track down the history here:

It turns out that this preference got added in update 2660, but got 
unhooked from any actual *use* in update 2664 -- and since both of 
those updates were issued in same batch -- on 26 September 2000 -- 
there has never been a Squeak version in which the preference was 
honored.


This is from the preamble for update 2660SelectionTweaksPlus-di, 
dated 19 September 2000:

Introduces the Preference: #emptyDragStartsASelection which 
determines whether selection shall be initiated by drag in the 
background (default) or by world/pasteUp menu (if disabled).


This is from the preamble for update 2664SelectionTweaksMinus-di, 
dated 21 September 2000, i.e. *two days later*:

Changes the convention for area selection once again, owing to 
conflicts with other uses of mouseDown in PasteUpMorph.  Now 
shift-drag does selection both in the world and in playfields, and 
there is no preference for disabling this.

   -- Scott
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