From: David A. Scocca (scocca@email.unc.edu)
Date: 11 Mar 01, 01:34 EST
From: "David A. Scocca" <scocca@email.unc.edu> Subject: Re: A few issues... --On Friday, March 9, 2001 11:05 PM -0500 Jon Guyer <jguyer@his.com> wrote: > At 9:12 PM -0500 3/9/01, David A. Scocca wrote: >> (3) Text selection via the cursor keys works unlike every other Mac >> application I've used--when you're holding down shift and moving the >> cursor to extend a selection, some cursor movements cause your original >> starting point to move rather than shrinking the selection a bit. >> (Example: put the cursor after the colon in this sentence, hold shift, >> and press up twice and right three times. In a normal application, the >> selection will begin with the "t" in "selection" and end with the colon; >> in Alpha, the selection will begin with the space after "to" and end with >> the "p" in "put". I was trying to look at the preferences to see if >> there was some way to change this behavior when I ran into item (1) >> above. > Let me put one thing to rest right now. There is nothing "normal" about > the applications you are used to. There is no, No, NO standard for shift > selection behavior on the Macintosh. I checked around and there does seem to be a wider variety than I had thought--it's just that I don't use most of the applications that work like Alpha. To my mind, the way Alpha works violates three logical principles: (1) If you follow the mental model of "put the cursor at one end of the text to be selected, hold down shift, and move the cursor to the other end of the text to be selected", Alpha often requires that you move the cursor in some way other than taking the shortest path. (2) In most contexts, up-arrow followed by down-arrow (or left-arrow followed by right-arrow) restores you to the state you'd be in if you had pressed neither key. When selecting text in Alpha, if you accidentally press an arrow key one more time than you intend, there's no built-in "undo" available through using the opposite arrow key. (3) Keyboard selection is inconsistent with mouse selection--mouse selection cares only about the end points, while keyboard selection cares what direction you go rather than tracking the end points. I think the underlying issue is whether you view the process of selection via the arrow keys as (a) a single, multi-key operation for marking a selection, or (b) a single shift-arrow-key operation that creates a selection, followed by a number of additional shift-arrow-key operations which extend that selection. If you use model (a), logic dictates that the middle operation--"move the cursor from point a to point b"--should be independent of the exact route of the cursor or sequence of keys used. If you use model (b), each keystroke is a separate operation and should be interpreted in turn. As I indicate above, mouse selection clearly implements model (a)--we care about the endpoints but not the route traversed. > All that said, I am not opposed to offering other /non-default/ options > for shift-arrow selection in Alpha. That would be nice (and nicer still if the preference dialogs fit on the screen so you could set it with minimum hassle). >> (5) Undo needs to be smarter about (a) preserving selection and (b) >> knowing exactly what level of command the user issued. > > (a) does not violate the HIG but is explicitly not required. I can't say > when or if it will ever be implemented. > > (b) is a long held wish-list item. No idea when it'll ever happen. When I started using Alpha--probably five or six years ago, at least--I will say that issue (b) scared the sh*t out of me. I had accidentally hit paste instead of copy, I hit cmd-Z for "undo", and my text DIDN'T come back. Not novice-user-friendly. Dave * Dave Scocca SAS for the Macintosh Resource Page * * dave_scocca@unc.edu http://metalab.unc.edu/sasmac/ * _______________________________________________ AlphaTcl-developers mailing list AlphaTcl-developers@lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alphatcl-developers