Re: [ jEdit-users ] Text Drag

[Randall R S. <rrs...@cr...>]

Michael,

At 13:00 2002-12-05, Michael Collette (<mailto:me...@me...>) wrote:
>On Thursday 05 December 2002 12:20 pm, ne...@ho... wrote:
> > IMO this is inferior to drag-drop for a number of reasons:
> >
> > 1)  It's not natural to click the destination first, then highlight the
> > source.  By contrast, drag-drop is a common metaphor in user interfaces,
> > so people are generally comfortable with the gesture.
> > 2)  When I want to drag-drop, I don't want a copy, I want a move.
> > 3)  Drag-drop is usually implemented in a visual way such that you can
> > see that you are in the process of dragging something.  If you see that
> > you've grabbed the text accidentally, you can easily abort by releasing
> > the mouse while over the original text (it would also be nice if the
> > 'esc' key aborted drag-drop).  By contrast, the middle-mouse copy just
> > "happens".
>
>All quite true, and I'm willing to give you darn near every point you made.
>Drag and drop is a different approach than what middle click does.

It seems that jEdit's middle-mouse editing thing was done backwards, at 
least by the convention used in the X window system world. There you select 
and middle-mouse to paste.


>The only point I don't quite agree with is #3.  Usually when D&D becomes a
>problem is when what you really meant to do was hi-lite text.  By the time
>you realize you're not hi-liting, but instead dragging, you've most likely
>already moved something around.  I know that when I'm in the thick of things
>the fingers get moving to fast to deal with what the editor has decided I
>meant to do.

This is exactly why it's a problem for me.


>I'm pretty much with Randall on this, in so far as this should be an option
>that can be turned off.  Realistically, it would have to be anyway.  D&D is
>clever to get right due to the timing involved.  How long do you consider
>hi-lited text before it's a candidate to be dragged?  Stuff like that would
>take some time to play around with to get it right.
>
>On the other hand, that whole VI thing... can't quite get into mode based
>editing.  Randall can keep that! :)

It's an old-timer thing. I learned Vi in about 1980 or shortly thereafter 
on PDP-11-based Unix system for which Emacs was not available and probably 
could not be supported. Vi itself required the PDP-11/45's and /70's "split 
I&D" capability (separate 16-bit address spaces for instructions and data) 
just be to be able to compile! Emacs would no doubt have been out of the 
question on such systems.

It also turns out to be a "bicycle" thing--once you lear it, you don't 
forget. I was away from Unix and Vi for years doing Macintosh programming 
with MPW (a great system, by the way) and I was afraid when I came back to 
Unix I'd be unable to use Vi. But I was shocked to find out it was all 
still there and I was as adept as ever with it. They should do some brain 
studies on this--it must be like learning a language 'cause you just think 
about what you want to do and your hands move!


>Later on,
>--
>"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too 
>dark
>to read."
>  - Groucho Marx


Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA