[openbox] HCI-based suggestions for minor feature additions and behaviour updates

Dana Jansens danakj at orodu.net
Fri Feb 1 13:28:55 EST 2008


On Fri, Feb 1, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Clay Barnes <clay at hci-matters.com> wrote:
>  I'd be careful about moving the cursor---remember there are absolute
>  positioning pointing devices (like the tablet I use) that generally do
>  strange things when moved around, jumping back and forth and so on.
>  Also, remember that you have to be very careful not to leave any
>  changes in mouse position after operations finish---otherwise users
>  will get frustrated quickly.

I've given some thought to the restoring the pointer thing too.
Should it go back where it was, or should its final position change
relative to how far you moved/resized the window?  That way it stays
in the same position within the window more or less..

>  > Rather than this being a "while you hold down the modifier" thing, I
>  > would prefer this to simple flash a little line on screen for a second
>  > that is unrelated to modifiers.  (Keyboard grabbing should be avoided
>  > at all costs in general..)  This could be really prettified by a
>  > composite manager too. :)
>
>  Well, how is the current system handled?  I know that when I hold down
>  the Meta4 key and use my vim keys to move around, the current window
>  is stays selected until I release my Meta4 key.  That was the system I
>  imagined expanding to cover this situation, too.

That's called an "interactive" action in openbox, and does require an
active keyboard grab.  The focus cycling actions, and the "Move" and
"Resize" actions are about the only interactive action, that I can
think of right now.  The rest are just one-time "do this and done"
type actions.  This type does not require any active keyboard
grabbing, and is preferable as there is no issues with focus moving
and applications not seeing it.  So, in other words.. the "MoveToEdge"
type actions are not interactive and I don't want to make them so,
they have nice behaviour the way they are.  So, having the bar flash
rather than stay until you release a key lets their behaviour stay the
same, and would work fine for the more interactive "Move" and "Resize"
actions as well.


dana



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