[matplotlib-devel] [ 1530104 ] Slider should grab mouse

[Bill B. <wb...@gm...>]

I submitted an enhancement request to the Sourceforge bug list about
grabbing behavior in the GUI-independent widgets.
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1530104&group_id=80706&atid=560720

I went ahead and implemented this yesterday on a long plane flight.
The changed files (backend_bases.py,  and widgets.py) are attached to
the above tracker entry.  Also I changed backend_wx.py to grab the
mouse generally when you click on the graphs, so that panning and such
continues to track even when you go outside the window.  Similar
changes should probably also be made to the other backends too.

I also added get_value methods to the CheckButtons and RadioButtons,
because it didn't seem like there was any good way to get that info.

Finally I don't really get what the deal is with the Slider's
"closedmin"/"closedmax" options.   These don't seem very useful to me
(namely the =False variety).  If it meant the max was actually
max-[machine epsilon] then ok, but it's implemented as "don't set the
value if it would get set to the max" i.e. how close you get to the
max/min depends on how patient you are carefully moving the mouse to
the end of the slider.  Which is just frustrating to me.  It's hard to
make it go "as high as it will go".

Please let me know if there's a better way/place to submit patches.

--bb