Re: Proposed change to Pipmak's grabbing

[Christian W. <cwa...@gm...>]

Aidan Gauland wrote:
> I have writtien a patch for Pipmak that changes the way it grabs the
> window-manager input
> ...
> 
> I wrote this patch, because I always found the auto-grabbing a bit akward, and
> I would like some feedback from the other Pipmak users on this.

I have tried this patch, and it appears to work as intended. However, I 
dislike the intention, because I think it decreases usability.

My main objection is that it makes the user aware of the grabbing and 
requires him to think about it and understand the concept. The grabbing 
should be an implementation detail, something that happens in the 
background without the user noticing. Since you say you found it 
awkward, it appears that this has not been the case for you? Perhaps 
there's a way of fixing that, instead of trying to cover up the 
symptoms? As it is, my impression is that you made things much more 
awkward than before. It worked (mostly) nicely for me on Mac OS X 
before, if it didn't for you on Linux, can you explain how?

Also, being able to ungrab while in direct mouse mode is confusing.

Technical note: There was a reason why we also grab in joystick mode, 
where it wouldn't normally be necessary. That hasn't always been like 
that. I don't remember exactly (would have to consult the SVN log), but 
I think it was that otherwise I didn't manage to always get seamless 
transitions between joystick and direct mode, without jumps of the 
cursor. Ideally that is something that should be fixed in SDL, but I 
didn't succeed on Mac OS X at the time, and gave up when I noticed that 
things weren't any better on Windows and X11.

  -Christian