[UI] How can targets better track the mouse?

[Bill Schwab]

Jerome,

I suggest options to give your ideas a better chance to get into the
image.  If Pavel's kernel gets into full swing, it might become less
important, but right now, people can toil away at wonderful innovations,
only to be summarily rejected by the community.  Squeak could be
Smalltalk's answer to GCC, but the community seems bent on preventing
it.  I wouldn't care if it didn't have such great potential.

Re MVP, my generic tracker target is certainly yours for the taking, but
it won't be much good w/o a working MVP environment.  You might grab a
copy of the community edition of Dolphin.  You will find help from me
and others on c.l.s.d.  After a short hazing period (everybody finds MVP
hard to learn, up until they get it), you will find it a very nice way
to build GUIs.

Bill



Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bschwab at anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029

>>> peace_the_dreamer at yahoo.com 09/02/07 2:38 PM >>>
[UI] How can targets better track the mouse?

Hi Bill, 
Thanks for your reply.


***
>Bill Schwab BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu 
>Sun Sep 2 13:25:06 UTC 2007 
>
>
>Jerome,
>
>Sounds reasonable to me, though I have never been a
fan of the hand
>anyway.  I could be wrong, but it strikes me as
something that was done
>as a hack before halos were available, and then
simply never removed.  I
>can hear the panicked call now: "the menu is stuck to
the mouse!" :) 
>
>Is there a way to hide the details of your changes in
a policy?

Hadn't got that far in my thinking. The more recent
enhancements are all additions which someone would
have to use before things work different. 

>Even if
>it is only globally applied (e.g. DragPolicyInelastic
beCurrent), it
>would offer the option. 

What is gained from this? I am not a big fan of having
multiple choices for interfaces. Usually a language
(even one of gestures) is better off if everyone is on
the same page and shares a good way of doing things
commonly.
Also as I go along with my fixes I have begun to
realize that a general weighing of movement and
position would give the most flexibility. Allowing the
mouse to be interpreted according to need. For example
when drawing "slowing" the mouse down can really
improve the quality of the drawing, while for just
pointing one just wants to get to where you are going
quickly.

>If you will forgive a little Dolphin bigotry,

Surely, I've had blinders on for just squeak stuff for
years now. Good to be introduced to another way of
looking at things.

>this is something that MVP (interactors), and Dolphin
specifically,
>handles quite well.  There is no hand because one
simply instantiates
>and connects an interactor (aka MouseTracker in
Dolphin) to handle the
>specifics for that one drag operation.  The code can
be re-used quite
>easily, but the resulting flexibility is obvious the
first time one
>needs to do something weird with constraints.

Hmmm.
>
>I created a generic MouseTrackerTarget class in
Dolphin that you might
>want to keep in mind if we ever take a run at MVP.

Where would I look to find out how that worked? Better
would be some Squeak port of the Class or code so that
it could be used, adapted or adopted here.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace



<snipped>


       
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