Re: global default for NSLayoutManager selection threshold?
Re: global default for NSLayoutManager selection threshold?
- Subject: Re: global default for NSLayoutManager selection threshold?
- From: Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 13:54:59 -0300
At 00:55 -0700 on 08/10/2001, James DiPalma wrote:
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>I noticed I'm making less [sic] drag errors in 10.1, so for me I got better.
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With 10.1 I accidently drag&drop up to 100 times a day; I've slowed down by religiously avoiding selected text (not what I consider ideal considering that PB selects any compile warnings/errors). Apple, by default, makes text dragging (potential data corruption) easier than selecting text.
On previous Mac OS versions I've gotten used to selecting some text and then immediately dragging it away, without pausing the cursor. I'm trying to teach myself to make a pause before dragging, but even so I still reselect text many times before slowing down enough... so _my_ impression is that Apple made selecting easier than dragging :-)
I remember when 10.0 came out, many people complained on the lists that there was no text dragging at all in Cocoa, I thought so myself and never considered inserting a pause in my gesture.
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>In previous Mac OS versions, if you held Option down _either_ when starting the drag or when stopping, it would mean "copy".
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And in previous versions of Mac OS there was no visual indication that a drag would copy instead of move. Has Apple made progress?
Seems not. In my own word processor I changed the cursor to a variation of the dragging "hand" whenever it was over a selection, to indicate that it would be dragged... users liked that more than the standard behaviour.
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>I checked and you're right - this seems to be a Cocoa-introduced thing.
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>Carbon applications on Mac OS X apparently still do it that way - it's only Cocoa applications which have the new behaviour.
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Check Finder on OS X; it is a carbon application that uses the Cocoa-introduced behavior.
I couldn't find a single place in the Finder which lets you drag text at all...
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>Well, it's just a question of being accostumed - for many years - to do things in a certain way; muscle memory, and all that sort of thing. Millions of "Classic" Mac users are accostumed to hold option down _before_ starting a drag, to mean "copy"
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Please don't ignore the 40% of Apple customers that have never used a mac. Please don't ignore the windows users that are considering buying macs. And please don't rely on the must-cling-to-our-past leverage because its simple ignorance. Apple can't improve anything without making at least small changes to the past.
No doubt. But as the saying goes, there are two ways of going wrong : one that says "this is old, and therefore good", and another that says "this is new, and therefore better". As I said, in 10.0 text dragging suddenly worked differently in a way that made many people think there was none at all - and no documentation mentioned this AFAIK.
So, changing this sort of thing needs care: a user preference to go back to the "old" behavior, a cursor change to call attention to the "new" behaviour, documentation in an easy-to-find place. In this case, none of these were done.
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I'll ask the simple questions I ask when millions of classic mac users are lost: if you bought a new car and it had a door handle that differed from the car you drove every day for years, would you be able to open the door? turn the lights on? windshield wipers?
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All of us would fumble around for maybe a week, but we could all find something useful about our new car; like dragging in Finder:
You have a point, but if they interchanged the brake and accelerator, many people would understand this intellectually immediately but in an emergency tromp on the wrong pedal <slightly exaggerating here for effect> :-)
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>Now, I also must admit that I found this ability to decide later if the drag will be a copy or a move useful for dragging things around in the Finder (took me by surprise the first time!). But for text, I don't need that.
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You would prefer different dragging semantics for dragging in Finder and dragging text?
Of course not... but I don't think changing your mind is important. In a pinch, I'd rather not have the new "drop" behaviour at all.
--
Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"Originality is the art of concealing your sources."
http://www.brockerhoff.net/ (updated Oct. 2001)