[LUNI] RE: One more thing -- KDE

[Martin Maney]

On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 09:35:49PM -0600, scott thomason wrote:
> I would amend your statement to read "The X approach is _usually_ more
> convenient...".

I can't think of an example that doens't involve one or more apps that
don't implement the selection/clipboard thing properly.

> It's a real PITA when you encounter a long text string, like that
> found in a web browser's URL. There, you're stuck between a rock and
> a hard place, depending on your choice of browser. If you're lucky, a
> click in the URL places the cursor, so you can still paste, leaving
> you with the ugly task of deleting the old URL. If you're unlucky, a
> click selects the URL, destroying the selection.

Right, browsers are BADLY DESIGNED.  Everyone just imitates the same
bad design for the location entry/display widget, when all that needs
to be done to fix this stupidity is a little button widget to drop the
text onto to have it replace, instead of be inserted into, the location
widget's text.  I don't think that some mystical key-plus-click would
be a good solution here because... hmmm.  Maybe that behavior *would*
be useful enough in other places.  I suppose it could be handy in any
single-line text entry widget, but it seems unlikely to be a good idea
at all, at all, to provide it for multi-line editors.  I'd still like
the browser to provide a handy special-purpose drop point, though,
because that's a very common operation for me.  :-)

> And don't even talk to me about the supposed Clipboard; not enough
> apps have implemented Edit->Copy yet for that to be much use.

Right, so we should be urging developers to fix the broken apps rather
than adopting - on a hit or miss basis, we can expect - this other way
of doing something that's nt exactly the same.

> Sigh. You know what I have been doing to get around this mess? I use Opera.
> I just click that big ol' "New Window" button which gives me a nice, empty
> URL text box. Prime real estate for middle-button pasting pleasure.

You might want to try that javascript hack.  I *did* post that earlier,
didn't I?  I need to rummage around and see if I can't get it to set a
longer text field...  Anyway, it fills just this gap without opening a
new... did you say window?  I thought Opera was where the application
of tabs to browsers was introduced!

-- 
You arguably have quite a few inalienable rights,
but being taken seriously isn't one of them.
Neither is being respected.  -- Rick Moen  <linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/>