NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
- Subject: NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 02:42:53 +0000
>
Huh? How so?
>
>
10.2 replaced the sensible double click editing of the past in
Cocoa
>
applications with the non-standard and total productivity
destroying
>
stuff that is expected in Mac OS :-)... what more do you need?
>
OK, clearly I should have been more specific, but my original
email was rather long as it was.
First let me say I don't have 10.2, I'm still using 10.1.5. Also my
G4 broke so I'm not in a very good position to compile anything,
but if my question is answered I'll diligantly save the information
for future use.
I don't think double-click has anything to do with the issue and I
actually liked how Cocoa apps used double-click or double-
click-drag to select a word at a time. If 10.2 fixed the issues I'm
talking about then I'm sure you'll inform me.
There are basically two issues I have with NSLayoutManager:
1) I consider the text selection behavior inferior and extremely
annoying.
When I se
lect te
xt I nearly NEVER want the trailing linefeed. In the rarest
of cases tha
t I do I will usually opt to press the 'return' key after pasting.
Th
e
selection behavior in NSLayoutManager in OS X 10.1.5 is infur
iating because it makes it diffic
u
lt to avoid the trailing linefeed especially when selecting down on
the right side (assuming we're using a western language). When I
do this I have to locate the area after the last line I want selecte
d then move the
c
ursor into that small area.
On Carbon apps if I don't want the tra
iling linefeed I select down on the right, if I do want it
I select down on the left. On Cocoa apps selecting down on the left
or right has no difference. Thus I find the C
o
coa behavior inferior.
The only way to avoid this is selec
t
ing up which behaves the same for both APIs. Since I read from le
ft to righ
t
and up to down this is the way my brain prefers to select text.
Thus I find the Cocoa behavior inconsistent.
2) The default click-wai
t gesture is inane.
I don't mind having a global option to t
urn drag+drop text off, but the delay-click (or click-wait) gesture t
o drag a selection is completely insane. It ends up pissing
everybody off. It pisses off people who don't want drag+drop
text, it pisses off people who do, and it uses a gesture whic
h would more logically be used for a contextual popu
p
menu! It is nearly impossible to screw it up worse than it is
in OS X 10.1.5.
People who don't understand the utility of dra
g+drop text may not mind if the cursor would change to
a hand to signify that the object is draggable. I wil
l
only add that I love drag+drop text becaus
e
I can cut or copy and paste with only one m
o
use button and gesture instead of using the clipboard. I even fi
nd this gesture a lot faster than X11-style pasting which requires
at least one more button press.
The above problems multiply if you
try to select text for the purpose of dragging. I never want t
he trailing linefeed when dragging paragraphs for example! I
usually just drag from the end of the last line to the end of the
paragraph, then I can drag it to the
end of another paragraph. Again, to do this with a Cocoa app I
have to select up which is counter-intuitive given the direc
tion I read.
So the question is how may I change the behavio
r of NSLayoutManager to change the behavior of selection, drag fro
m within selection, and click-wait?
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