[UI] More feel observations

[Gary Chambers]

Thanks for feedback, I'll make some comments...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ui-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> [mailto:ui-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Bill Schwab
> Sent: 05 December 2007 2:11 AM
> To: ui at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: [UI] More feel observations
>
>
> Gary,
>
> I did some more "real" programming today (working on a port of my
> home-grown file backup system), and am starting to find that one of my
> larger complaints (which I consider to be a sign of progress) is the
> apparent lack of support for virtual keys - the home and end in
> particular - in the unix VM.  My searching so far has not turned up
> anything specifically useful, so I will probably submit a question to
> Squeak-dev soon.

Yes, virtual keys... my main gripe is lack of support for function keys.
As for home/end what's the problem with those? Or do you mean just on the
numeric keypad? (only just noticed now you mention it... ok in Windows
though :-) ).

>
> Vistary, at least on my hardware, is slow enough that I can easily type
> faster than it can keep up.  Soft squeak is much harder to outrun on the
> same hardware.  Note that I still cannot fully clobber it due to the
> virtual key hassles.  Part of my input speed comes from
> home/tab/past/space/etc/end, sometimes with shift depressed to make
> selections. Some of this stuff is so engrained I don't even realize I do
> it until it doesn't work.

Been a while since I noticed any keyboard lag from Squeak...
SoftSqueak is certainly the most responsive theme, more than StandardSqueak.
Vistary, due to translucency, is only expected to work well on modern
hardware (is fine on my 1.73 GHz Centrino laptop). What's your hardware?

>
> One thing that is in our general area is mouse interaction.  It will be
> difficult to catch this in the act, but there is pretty clearly
> something to it.  Have some code in plain sight; now try to drag-select
> it, quickly.  I get unpredictable results; sometimes it selects what I
> want, usually it does not.  When I have had similar problems in other
> systems, it suggests that the code is picking up current mouse
> coordinates when it should be using event coordinates.

Not noticed any problems like this... of course, a slower system might
highlight such issues.

> Re #mouseClickForKeyboardFocus, it appears to be selectively necessary.
> AFAICT, with other changes you have made, it is somewhat redundant.  The
> message name browser is horribly broken without it.  A few times, I have
> found that when adding methods, I get into a situation where the input
> focus is undefined, or not where I want it anyway, making it necessary
> to click in the code pane of the system browser.  The weird thing is
> that in that situation, the cursor needs to be in the code pane for it
> to get focus.  I have #mouseClickForKeyboardFocus set to true.

Best to set #mouseOverForKeyboardFocus to false when
#mouseClickForKeyboardFocus is enabled (see
PluggableTextMorph>>mouseLeave:). I'll probably rework that method since it
is now the only sender of #mouseOverForKeyboardFocus (PluggableListMorph
used to release the keyboard focus regardless!). Or, possibly, make changes
to properly honour the #mouseOverForKeyboardFocus pref in the usual morphs
(lists, text etc.).

>
> Sorry for the incomplete observations and guesswork, but it is hopefully
> better to write down what I can remember.
>
> Bill