Gestures implementation (was: Debian defaults (was: Galeon 1.3 comments))

On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 17:11, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 04:49:00PM +0300, Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 15:11, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 02:55:17PM +0300, Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Having gestures enabled by default in the debian package is becoming
> > > > increasingly more annoying.  We tried, with the help of the Gnome
> > > > usability team, to find a reasonable way to have them enabled by default
> > > > without encumbering unsuspecting users, but that just isn't possible.
> > > 
> > > What is the problem with it ? The annoyance with the gestures, as i see
> > > it, is mostly a problem because there seem to be something wrong with
> > > the implementation. The right mouse click behaves in strange an
> > > unpredictable ways, sometimes the menu pops up quickly and sometimes the
> > > menu don't pop up at all.
> > 
> > In short, the context menu must be shown immediately on mouse-down and
> > it must also be available after mouse-up.  Otherwise it'll just confuse
> > the heck out of everyone who has never heard of gestures.
> 
> Sure, if you have to have the menu on the mouse-down event, then there
> is no way around it.

That's the requirement.  That's how every single gtk based application
is behaving, that's what the users expect.  We can't change that.


> What i think is happening right now, correct me if i am wrong, is the
> following :
> 
>   if you press the right menu button, you can either be starting a
>   gesture or calling up the context menu.
> 
>   When you release the button, if the mouse has moved less than a
>   certain amount, then the context menu show up, if not, we have
>   finished a gesture.

This is correct, and as far as I have figured out, the only way to
reliably get gestures done.  The problem with the delay was that under
load it's *very* easy to not recognize the beginning of the gesture and
end up showing the context menu.  It simply wasn't reliable and everyone
ended up hating it.  If you think you can make it work, feel free.

With the current approach, it's at least possible to guarantee a gesture
by holding down the button until the pencil shows up.  With the delay it
was basically pure luck.  But your implementation may vary.


> What makes it worst, is that apparently the first context menu call
> takes longer to appear than the subsequent ones, maybe because the menu
> has to be generated or something such.

I think this affects context menus in general.  Like you said, there's
probably some overhead (bonobo_window_add_popup?) involved in the first
use.  It can probably be minimized by adding all the popups in an idle
loop after creating the window, if you're interested.


-- 
Tommi Komulainen                                 [email protected]
GPG 1024D/68388EE6    6FD6 DD79 EB38 BF6F 3533  09C0 04A8 9871 6838 8EE6

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQA+ixlZBKiYcWg4juYRAiB5AKCL/1m1mvs1lmLE0/Yhs1SFGJcrUwCgiW0r
0Qv8IjCqQ6iHNlcun50YwhM=
=YkSx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----