Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup menu of the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore this feature. Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so. So the issue is rather the default behavior; I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click, since that is how things work in all OSes I know of. (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...) What do you think about that? Hans signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:49, hansfba...@googlemail.com wrote: This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup menu of the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore this feature. Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so. So the issue is rather the default behavior; I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click, since that is how things work in all OSes I know of. (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...) This might make sense if you are in using the Windows or Mac interface styles, but I don't really like it. Having the main menu a single click away without having to move the mouse is a good design from the point of view of usability. A menu that appears where the mouse is beats both a menu attached to the window and a menu attached to the screen in Fitts' Law terms. The difference on OS X is that most views tend to have some kind of context menu, while most in GNUstep apps don't. David -- Sent from my STANTEC-ZEBRA ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:55, David Chisnall wrote: On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:49, hansfba...@googlemail.com wrote: This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup menu of the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore this feature. Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so. So the issue is rather the default behavior; I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click, since that is how things work in all OSes I know of. (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...) This might make sense if you are in using the Windows or Mac interface styles, but I don't really like it. I think only in windows style ... since the GNUstep behavior is already the same as on a Mac. Having the main menu a single click away without having to move the mouse is a good design from the point of view of usability. A menu that appears where the mouse is beats both a menu attached to the window and a menu attached to the screen in Fitts' Law terms. Yes, the current behavior is a good thing. I actually wouldn't want it to change even when using the windows interface style, since I can see no benefit to *not* providing any action in response to a right mouse click. The difference on OS X is that most views tend to have some kind of context menu, while most in GNUstep apps don't. Yes ... it's up to the app programmer. ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
On Nov 12, 2009, at 12:00 PM, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote: On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:55, David Chisnall wrote: On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:49, hansfba...@googlemail.com wrote: This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup menu of the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore this feature. Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so. So the issue is rather the default behavior; I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click, since that is how things work in all OSes I know of. (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...) This might make sense if you are in using the Windows or Mac interface styles, but I don't really like it. I think only in windows style ... since the GNUstep behavior is already the same as on a Mac. Having the main menu a single click away without having to move the mouse is a good design from the point of view of usability. A menu that appears where the mouse is beats both a menu attached to the window and a menu attached to the screen in Fitts' Law terms. Yes, the current behavior is a good thing. I actually wouldn't want it to change even when using the windows interface style, since I can see no benefit to *not* providing any action in response to a right mouse click. I would also point out that it is frustrating when the context menu on an OS X application doesn't also contain all of the actions that make sense in that context, such as not providing a 'Services' menu item. There's nothing more frustrating than right-clicking and not finding the action you intended to use, then having to navigate to the menu bar to find it, especially on a large screen (or in my case, multi- screen) setup. A corollary is that it is frustrating to find an action *only* in the context menu, which I have seen as well. If all actions are available somewhere on the main menu or from an Inspector panel reachable from there, providing the main menu as a default makes perfect sense, and a custom context menu just becomes an optimization of that. The difference on OS X is that most views tend to have some kind of context menu, while most in GNUstep apps don't. Yes ... it's up to the app programmer. ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:55 AM, David Chisnall thera...@sucs.org wrote: Having the main menu a single click away without having to move the mouse is a good design from the point of view of usability. A menu that appears where the mouse is beats both a menu attached to the window and a menu attached to the screen in Fitts' Law terms. hmm, I'm not sure I entirely agree with this in regard to the GNUstep implementation. on OPENSTEP the menu would appear even if you clicked outside of the window there fullfilling what you say above, but under GNUstep the menu only pops up when right clicking inside of the window, meaning that it only works in Fitts' Law terms if the cursor is over a window. I can't remember the behavior of OPENSTEP when right clicking over a window for an app which is not the current active application, I would assume that it would make sense to activate the other application and display its menuForEvent: ? in the window manager i was writing, it would forward right mouse click events from the root window to the to the currently focused window, which with some modification to GNUstep i could get it to pop up the main menu, but I could never really get the mouse tracking to work, and don't really remember the details. Anyhow OPENSTEP had much more girth to the amount of space on screen where you could get the menu immediately under the mouse. I could dig up the code if anyone is interested ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
Hi, Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so. So the issue is rather the default behavior; I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click, since that is how things work in all OSes I know of. (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...) What do you think about that? Just because others do it wrong... There is also a difference in the way the interface is done. In the OpenStep style the menu is always visible, but it can be very convenient to have it right under your mouse! Especially with large monitors or for example when working with a trackpad or other pointing devices. ALso an application can choose to supply the default menu, but use the context menu only in certain areas, where it is mostly needed. This also leads to another consideration: contextual menus are exceedingly abused. In many modern applications I notice more and more that some actions are available only as a contextual menu or as a toolbar, while every action should be available and always visible (at most, greyed out) in the main menus. This is a matter of coherent application design. Contextual menus should only be a convenient shortcut. I can imagine for example an application like a vector drawing application what allows for quick inspection of the tools, or a spreadsheet the cell. However, this is application design. Usually an OpenStep application will not need it, providing an inspector palette for example. So, I'd leave things as they are. If someone needs the behaviour he can implement it. I can imagine that for example when porting an application without really wanting to adapt the interface, one can need this feature massively. Maybe we can yet another default parameter like (hide app menu con right click), but is it really worth the complication? I love to dare to be different! Also, not everything is/was windows. For example I imagine that Amiga-users will remember clicking on the workspace for a menu... Riccardo ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
Hans Baier schrieb:
Apart from that, one thing about GNUstep annoys me very much:
The absence of context menus. I don't know currently how OS X handles that,
but often I would find myself right-clicking on something, but the
application menu pops up.
The behaviour you describe is the one you find in most GNUstep
applications, but this is because the application programmers decided to
do so.
In NSView you will find the following method:
- (void) rightMouseDown: (NSEvent *) theEvent
{
NSMenu *m;
m = [self menuForEvent: theEvent];
if (m)
{
[NSMenu popUpContextMenu: m
withEvent: theEvent
forView: self];
}
else
{
[super rightMouseDown: theEvent];
}
}
This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup menu of
the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore this
feature.
Fred
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Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
GNUstep has lacked and continues to lack good PR, consistent development of applications. But for the core itself I think the following points would help us a lot (in no particular order) I think the design Website is - in its current state - a bit outdated: It still appeals to the NeXT era kind of look and feel, but now the most exciting stuff seems to be going on in OS X. Also navigating the website, it could use more simplicity and structure. The following sites have excellent design: http://cocoadevcentral.com/ (try one of the tutorials) http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/11/creating-iphone-and-mac-icons-using.html and - last but not least the apple website. But more important the Top most two reasons which prevent me from using GNUstep for more than hobby hacking are those: *. Look and feel. Althought Qt is an excellent development environment, I ditched it together with KDE, because it is so cluttered and grossly inconsistent in its look and feel. Icons play an extremely important role there, and the KDE icons look childish. But consistency plays the most important role in look at feel. Here, the default GNUstep theme, though outdated, is pretty good. The master in this category here is OS X, but I dumped it for the following reaon. *. Usability: Having a fast, simple way of doing everyday work. For me, keyboard support is the most important, since my day job is that of a software developer. This is why I dumped OS X and ended up installing Debian on my $4000k Mac in the past: The weird keyboard layout, mostly missing keyboard shortcuts for even the essential things (like maximizing / minimizing windows), no keyboard configurability made OS X a nice toy, but nothing serious I could use for day-to-day work. It seems to have improved since 10.3, but for today I am put off by Apples restrictive licensing, and the fact that I was forced to spend EUR 150 for a new OS version, just to be able to run Java 1.5. GNOME is the desktop of choice for me ATM, because it has modern look and feel, is very consistent, and has a keyboard way of doing things (like incremental search in the Alt-F2-Dialog and lists, TAB-completion in the File Dialog, configurable Keyboard shortcuts, being able to use the cursor arrows for GUI element focus navigation), without enforcing it on the user. Look and feel as well as keyboard usability are my main issues with GNUstep ATM. Hopefully with the Gtk+-Theme I am developing ATM, this will be fixed soon (If I have time). Interestingly, since the Gtk+-Theme goes much deeper than alternate pixmaps, it shows how GSTheme could be extended in the future (especially where I have to use Categories to override widget drawing functions). Apart from that, one thing about GNUstep annoys me very much: The absence of context menus. I don't know currently how OS X handles that, but often I would find myself right-clicking on something, but the application menu pops up. Lastly about the GNUstep community: My main problem when I started contributing (writing pbxbuild in two weeks of vacation), was that I did get no feedback. I therefore felt that no one really was using it / or cared about it and that extinguished my motivation at that point and my interest therefore changed to other things. The GNUstep community, tough, is pretty friendly and tolerant to mistakes, and today I still remember Fred Kiefers kind reactions when I messed up things in the cairo backend or broke something in GNUstep gui. I spent most of the my open source time in Ardour during the last two years. It has a very lively community (especially in IRC). There are lots of users coming in on IRC giving lots of feedback. That kept me motivated for a long time. (But I currently don't use it much...) Lastly about funding: I was very glad to read the news from the Linux Fund, and since I also watched the project since 1996, I am glad someone pays attention to it that way. I didn't quite understand whether the $1000-$5000 figure was per month or one-time sums from the mails, and I will be glad to see it used to help GNUstep advance. Cheers to the linux fund for that. Kind regards, Hans Baier ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]
As for successful open source projects, I found the following reading very valuable: http://producingoss.com/ Kind regards, Hans ___ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
