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

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 08:09:46PM +0300, Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> 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.

A, ok, that is the reason behind it. I guess that the new scheduler in
the 2.5.x kernel will make this more feasible, maybe it would be
worthwile to test this again when the 2.6 kernels are released.

> 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.

What about begining creating the context menu as soon as you press the
button ? There is a little delay between button press/button release,
and it should be enough to generate the menu most of the time, isn't it
?

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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