Re: NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
Re: NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
- Subject: Re: NSLayoutManager vs BBEdit (Was Re: Carbon vs Cocoa arguments)
- From: Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 09:22:27 -0300
>
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 00:38:06 -0700
>
From: Dennis De Mars <email@hidden>
>
>
Yes, the delay is necessary for the reason you cite. The thing that is
>
insane about drag-and-drop editing in OS X (I wouldn't pick the word
>
insane, but obstinately annoying would be close) is that there is no
>
visual feedback indicating when you are switching from "select" mode to
>
"drag" mode.
>
>
In the old days, you would hold down the mouse button until the
>
insertion cursor changed to the arrow cursor, then you could drag. This
>
was a sensible way to do things that permitted the normal selection
>
behavior but also allowed drag-and-drop editing and the visual cue of
>
the cursor changing made it very intuitive and almost effortless.
In a word processor I wrote some years ago, my testing showed that the most intuitive way was to change the cursor to a dragging hand whenever it was over a selected block of text. Then, on a mouse-down inside the selection, I'd change to the insertion cursor until the mouse moved from the mouse-down position, when it would go back to the hand form. Then, as soon as the user had dragged the whole text to the point where the cursor was outside the original selection region, I'd change back to the insertion cursor.
That way the user could drag the text immediately. If he/she/it decided to alter the selection, a single click without moving the cursor would deselect everything and place the insertion point at the click. Later on, the insertion cursor makes it easy to place the dragged text at the right place.
If the user is doing this fast, it works as expected and the cursor changes aren't obtrusive. Doing this slowly also works as expected and the cursor changes show exactly what's going on. I suppose people in the halfway range might get annoyed at the furiously morphing cursor, but I haven't had a single complaint about it :-).
>
I note that there is some animosity about the whole concept of
>
drag-and-drop editing among people who didn't come to OS X via OS 9; it
>
almost leads me to believe in a conspiracy theory, like some of the
>
engineers that came over from Next said "Hey, if these Mac OS guys
>
insist on this drag and drop editing, let's make it as clumsy as
>
possible so everyone can see how stupid the whole concept is!"
After over a year I've gotten used to the click-hold-and-drag delay, but what still gets me nearly every time is the fact that the location of the initial mouse-down is NOT used as the selection start when selecting text. Instead, there's a #$%^& delay which always makes me lose the first few characters. So, I have to click, hold the cursor for what seems like an eternity of half-a-second, and THEN drag to select the rest of the text.
--
Rainer Brockerhoff <email@hidden>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by" (Douglas Adams)
http://www.brockerhoff.net/ now with forums for XRay, Zingg! et al.
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.