nemesis wrote:

> waiting for the "Blender sucks" daily povray newsgroups bash tomorrow.

Diff'rent strokes... For me personally, I quickly get irritated whenever I 
have to do something in XP (like use Moray - I simply can't get it going 
well under wine) and I have to leave the happy cocoon of KDE 4 for a few 
moments.

XP, 7 or Vista feels dated and slow. Granted, that is in standard "as 
installed" versions, with no tweaks or additional apps. I find KDE much 
better and faster on Fedora 11. 
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> I quickly get irritated whenever I have to do something in XP 

I just had to replace my monitor today. I got a nice new widescreen thingie 
to work with, etc.  And I discovered something interesting.

I'm annoyed by bad design, not by the difficulty of accomplishing a task.

It annoyed me that the connector for the old monitor took 3 minutes to get 
disconnected because it was screwed down and the designer of the connector 
put an unmovable flange a quarter inch over the screw.

It didn't annoy me at all that the new connector wouldn't fit thru the hole 
in the desk I'd drilled and it took me half an hour of work with a file to 
enlarge it the 2mm it took to slide the connector through.

It doesn't bother me that it takes an hour to back up the laptop. It bothers 
me that opening "my computer" takes 30 seconds because all the drives for 
the developers are shared over the same internet connection they're 
streaming sample video over to hundreds of testers.

I knew I got pissed easily at pretty trivially annoying stuff, but I never 
realized it was trivial *needlessly* annoying stuff that did it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
>> I quickly get irritated whenever I have to do something in XP
> 
> I just had to replace my monitor today. I got a nice new widescreen
> thingie
> to work with, etc.  And I discovered something interesting.
> 
> I'm annoyed by bad design, not by the difficulty of accomplishing a task.
> 
> It annoyed me that the connector for the old monitor took 3 minutes to get
> disconnected because it was screwed down and the designer of the connector
> put an unmovable flange a quarter inch over the screw.
> 
> It didn't annoy me at all that the new connector wouldn't fit thru the
> hole in the desk I'd drilled and it took me half an hour of work with a
> file to enlarge it the 2mm it took to slide the connector through.
> 
> It doesn't bother me that it takes an hour to back up the laptop. It
> bothers me that opening "my computer" takes 30 seconds because all the
> drives for the developers are shared over the same internet connection
> they're streaming sample video over to hundreds of testers.
> 
> I knew I got pissed easily at pretty trivially annoying stuff, but I never
> realized it was trivial *needlessly* annoying stuff that did it.
 
I feel much the same. "My" equivalent irritation with Linux that I can admit 
to though is - erm... I don't have a name for the phenomenon. 

Whenever I'm at work, and for some reason the internet connection goes down, 
for no reason I can fathom, MySQL control center starts taking a minute 
(literally - 60 seconds, I've timed it!) to open any MySQL table on the 
machine. Conversely, emacs takes up to two minutes to start.

I've done /sbin/ifconfigs as a test once, and I can't see that -anything- 
passes over the ethernet connection that is relevant. I've not etherealed 
yet, probably need to.

However, the moment connectivity is back (I can ping something, anything on 
the internet) my MySQL control center starts working at "instant" speed 
again, and emacs starts instantly as well.

I've searched the hell out this, but nobody I've so far been able to find 
that responded to posts, or nobody else I could google about, have ever 
experienced this phenomenon.

I only use direct IP's no symbol resolution is required by either emacs or 
MySQL control center. MySQL control center is setup to connect to the local 
127.0.0.1 port, emacs is only used to edit files in the local home folder 
(so no network pauses or anything seem to be involved.)

Obviously it MUST have something to do with DNS then? But I can find no 
literature or mention of -WHY- this happens with my desktop.

It irritates the hell out of me, but apparently -only- my machine, with my 
kernel (2.6.18.1) experiences this.

If it IS, in fact, DNS, I've not been able to find how to turn that kind of 
timeout delay (which I think it must be) off somehow, without my system 
refusing to do DNS queries entirely.

Mostly Linux has chosen to be friendly with me (the old "UNIX is picky whom 
it makes friends with") but this is one thing that clouds the waters of our 
relationship.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> The scroll-wheel-switches-desktops thingie Warp is so fond of I find 
> actually quite annoying, can't think of how anyone might like it - as it 
> has the scroll wheel change functionality dramatically depending on what 
> the mouse cursor is currently hovering over.

  On the contrary, I find Windows' behavior with the mouse wheel absolutely
irritating.

  *Of course* the mouse wheel behavior should depend on where the cursor
is currently, exactly in the same way as *clicking*. I'm accustomed to use
the mouse wheel in the exact same way as I use the other mouse buttons:
I point where I want the scrolling to happen, and roll the wheel, and I
expect that thing I'm pointing at to scroll, in the exact same way that
if I point to something and left-click, I expect that thing to be selected,
or if I right-click for a context menu for the pointed thing to pop up.

  When Windows refuses to do this, it's extremely irritating. I constantly
find miself scrolling something else than what I want to scroll because
Windows refuses to scroll what I'm pointing at.

  Having to click on something before you can scroll it with the wheel is
not only useless, but also can cause unwanted behavior because none of the
mouse buttons simply *selects* the window you click on. If you click on an
active element, that element will also be *activated*, possibly performing
an unwanted operation by mistake. And no, I don't want to have to click on
the title bar of a window before I can scroll it with the mouse wheel.

  Thus it's not surprising that I find switching desktops with the mouse
wheel quite natural: If I "scroll" the desktop background, it jumps to the
virtual desktop in that direction.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Having to click on something before you can scroll it with the wheel is
> not only useless, but also can cause unwanted behavior because none of the
> mouse buttons simply *selects* the window you click on. If you click on an
> active element, that element will also be *activated*, possibly performing
> an unwanted operation by mistake. And no, I don't want to have to click on
> the title bar of a window before I can scroll it with the mouse wheel.

On Mac, clicking on an inactive window brings it to the front without 
sending the click to the application code, so it won't activate elements.

On some apps.

Some other apps override that behavior, making it useless, since you're 
never sure if a click will activate an element or not (depends on whether 
that app overrode the click-through behavior or not).

Why does Apple get *almost* everything right? The details they get wrong are 
usually *very* annoying.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> On Mac, clicking on an inactive window brings it to the front without 
> sending the click to the application code, so it won't activate elements.

That bugs the crap out of me when Mac programs run on Windows. Indeed, I 
can't imagine why you'd want it to work that way.

I looked at 3 or 4 "scroll what I'm pointing at already!" programs when I 
moved to Vista, and none of them work right.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> > On Mac, clicking on an inactive window brings it to the front without 
> > sending the click to the application code, so it won't activate elements.

> That bugs the crap out of me when Mac programs run on Windows. Indeed, I 
> can't imagine why you'd want it to work that way.

> I looked at 3 or 4 "scroll what I'm pointing at already!" programs when I 
> moved to Vista, and none of them work right.

  What really irritates me is Windows Explorer in this regard. For example,
if I select a directory from the folder view on the left, and the directory
contents then open on the right, if I try to scroll the file listing, it
just scrolls the folder view on the left. And the other way around. In this
case there isn't even any "title bar" to click in order to select the
proper scrollable view. You have to click *on* the view, and be careful
to not to click on something you don't want to.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

> Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task bar 
> should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!

Actually, it's not clicking twice hat triggers this - it's clicking on 
an item that has the focus. So if an item already has the focus, 
double-clicking will just minimize and restore, effectively doing nothing.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible schrieb:

> Maybe I'm biased because on my ancient PC, minimising and maximising 
> windows is quite a slow operation... But, in general, I never minimize 
> windows at all. (Except to reach the desktop.)

... and they have even a dedicated shortcut in the taskbar for that.

So yes, minimizing windows is more of a nuisance, typically.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:

> I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.
> 
> If you pick something up to drag-and-drop it, then move diagonally over 
> the corner of a window, it peels the window down like you're curling 
> down the page of a book so you can see what's behind it and drop your 
> thing there. You could do drag-and-drop between multiple full-screen 
> windows that way.

That'd be cool, indeed.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:
> clipka wrote:
>> Another thing bothering me about KDE4 is its standard of 
>> single-clicking a highlighted item to activate it, but they can't be 
>> blamed for me being so accustomed to the Windows Way, 
> 
> That really hasn't been the "Windows Way" since they came out with 
> Active Desktop 10+ years ago. If you want that behavior on Windows, you 
> can turn it on too. (I thought it had been the default at least since 
> 2000 or XP.)

It used to be the default when they first introduced it, but I can't 
remember having seen it actually used by anyone anywhere, so I'm pretty 
sure they quickly changed it back. (Can't say from my own installations; 
maybe they ask and I just choose double-clicking as a subconscious 
reflex reaction, maybe they default to double-clicking without asking; 
what I can tell for sure though is that they don't just default to 
single-clicking. Vista and 7 may be yet different though.)


>> Ah well, and did I mention that KDE4 uses a totally different font 
>> size in a XDMCP login than it does when logged in locally?
> 
> Don't fonts always come from the local machine? Or did they fix this in 
> X by now?

I have no idea. I just noticed that old Debian "Etch" 4.0r5 Gnome got it 
right without me intervening, while openSUSE KDE4 messes up.


>> And my, this one-click-to-activate thing is more addictive than I 
>> thought... I guess I'll turn it back on again...
> 
> any explorer window: Tools->Folder Options->General...  in Windows.
> And yes, it's much more handy, especially if there's easily found areas 
> of the screen where clicking does *not* select anything.

KDE4 (at least the Dolphin file manager does it right by giving 
somewhere on the icons to click on in order to select instead of 
activate. Not sure whether I really want it on in Windows, due to a lack 
of such sugar.

Post a reply to this message

nemesis schrieb:
> waiting for the "Blender sucks" daily povray newsgroups bash tomorrow.

Can't say anything about that, 'cause I'll possibly never ever give it a 
chance again :-P

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:

> I knew I got pissed easily at pretty trivially annoying stuff, but I 
> never realized it was trivial *needlessly* annoying stuff that did it.

Yeah, same here I guess.

Post a reply to this message

Warp schrieb:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> The scroll-wheel-switches-desktops thingie Warp is so fond of I find 
>> actually quite annoying, can't think of how anyone might like it - as it 
>> has the scroll wheel change functionality dramatically depending on what 
>> the mouse cursor is currently hovering over.
> 
>   On the contrary, I find Windows' behavior with the mouse wheel absolutely
> irritating.
> 
>   *Of course* the mouse wheel behavior should depend on where the cursor
> is currently, exactly in the same way as *clicking*. I'm accustomed to use
> the mouse wheel in the exact same way as I use the other mouse buttons:
> I point where I want the scrolling to happen, and roll the wheel, and I
> expect that thing I'm pointing at to scroll, in the exact same way that
> if I point to something and left-click, I expect that thing to be selected,
> or if I right-click for a context menu for the pointed thing to pop up.

Mind you, what I find rritating is not the fact that the mouse wheel 
events are routed to the application that happens to be pointed at right 
now - I do see the logic, and could get used to it. What I find 
irritating is the functionality it has when routed to the desktop. First 
because the functionality is pretty much different, and secondly because 
it may also affect what actually /is/ under the mouse cursor, as the 
next turn of the wheel will bring up a different desktop with different 
windows at different places. So that if for instance I scroll one 
desktop too far, I may not be able to instantly scroll back, and may 
have to find some empty desktop space first.

>   Thus it's not surprising that I find switching desktops with the mouse
> wheel quite natural: If I "scroll" the desktop background, it jumps to the
> virtual desktop in that direction.

Yes, but normally just turning the wheel the other direction without 
moving the mouse an inch will scroll the same control right back.

With the desktop, you may be in for a surprise there.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> Invisible schrieb:
> 
>> Maybe I'm biased because on my ancient PC, minimising and maximising 
>> windows is quite a slow operation... But, in general, I never minimize 
>> windows at all. (Except to reach the desktop.)
> 
> .... and they have even a dedicated shortcut in the taskbar for that.
> 
> So yes, minimizing windows is more of a nuisance, typically.

I find “Win Logo” + m quite handy, actually.

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Ah, while we're ranting anyway...

Why the **** does /no/ graphical user interface provide a way to 
rearrange the running programs in taskbar?! I mean, that shouldn't be 
/too/ difficult to implement, right?

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> nemesis schrieb:
>> waiting for the "Blender sucks" daily povray newsgroups bash tomorrow.
> 
> Can't say anything about that, 'cause I'll possibly never ever give it a 
> chance again :-P

whew, that's a relief.  Hope you don't use the Gimp either. ;)

Post a reply to this message

On 11/17/09 18:16, Warp wrote:
>    What really irritates me is Windows Explorer in this regard. For example,
> if I select a directory from the folder view on the left, and the directory

	Windows Explorer tends to irritate me in all regards.<G>

	How I missed Norton Commander. Linux saved me with its spinoff midnight 
commander.

-- 
I didn't know my husband drank until one day he came home sober.

Post a reply to this message

On 11/17/09 23:16, clipka wrote:
> Ah, while we're ranting anyway...
>
> Why the **** does /no/ graphical user interface provide a way to
> rearrange the running programs in taskbar?! I mean, that shouldn't be
> /too/ difficult to implement, right?

	After having used my current WM for over 5 years now, I have to ask: 
Why do y'all need a taskbar anyway?

	Seriously.

	I have many windows open, I don't need the taskbar. My Alt-Tab behavior 
is good and fast enough (and with virtual desktops, I rarely have more 
than 2 windows open in the same desktop - unless I'm doing image 
processing or something).

	When I minimize, I get a nice mini-screenshot of the window at the 
bottom of the screen. Makes it really easy to select it. With my current 
settings, I can't move them around. I could enable a setting that lets 
me move the minimized icon anywhere on the screen, so in principle I 
could rearrange (roughly infinite degrees of freedom).

	Of course, this whole minimized icon relies on the fact that I have no 
icons on my desktop. Which brings me to the next question:

	Why do people have icons on their desktop? I guess if you want to have 
access to some file *really* fast, it's convenient. However, if I go 
down that road, the whole desktop is full inside of one month. I've been 
doing fine with an iconless desktop for all these years now.

-- 
I didn't know my husband drank until one day he came home sober.

Post a reply to this message

nemesis schrieb:

> whew, that's a relief.  Hope you don't use the Gimp either. ;)

Not yet :-P

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan schrieb:

>     Of course, this whole minimized icon relies on the fact that I have 
> no icons on my desktop. Which brings me to the next question:
> 
>     Why do people have icons on their desktop? I guess if you want to 
> have access to some file *really* fast, it's convenient. However, if I 
> go down that road, the whole desktop is full inside of one month. I've 
> been doing fine with an iconless desktop for all these years now.

Simple reason: Tradition. It was the first concept how to replace the 
Windows 3.1 program manager.

Post a reply to this message

> I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.

What I really miss in Windows which was the norm on the Acorn GUI was to be 
able to drag-n-drop to *save* a file from an application.  Quite often I 
find myself having the explorer window open of some folder deep on our 
network drive and I want to save my document in there.  On the Acorn you 
could just click save and drag the file icon to the explorer window, but on 
Windows you have to navigate in the save dialog to the folder, copy&paste 
the path name into the save box, or save to the desktop and then move it in 
explorer.

Post a reply to this message

>> Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task 
>> bar should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!
> 
> Actually, it's not clicking twice hat triggers this - it's clicking on 
> an item that has the focus.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant.

You have a row of items, and if you happen to click the one that's 
already current, Windows busts a gut trying to minimise it...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> What I really miss in Windows which was the norm on the Acorn GUI was to 
> be able to drag-n-drop to *save* a file from an application.  Quite 
> often I find myself having the explorer window open of some folder deep 
> on our network drive and I want to save my document in there.  On the 
> Acorn you could just click save and drag the file icon to the explorer 
> window, but on Windows you have to navigate in the save dialog to the 
> folder, copy&paste the path name into the save box, or save to the 
> desktop and then move it in explorer.

Mmm, that would, in fact, be rather useful...

Post a reply to this message

"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.
>
> What I really miss in Windows which was the norm on the Acorn GUI was to be
> able to drag-n-drop to *save* a file from an application.  Quite often I
> find myself having the explorer window open of some folder deep on our
> network drive and I want to save my document in there.  On the Acorn you
> could just click save and drag the file icon to the explorer window, but on
> Windows you have to navigate in the save dialog to the folder, copy&paste
> the path name into the save box, or save to the desktop and then move it in
> explorer.

You could even 'save' the file in this manner into another open application. For
example, a graph program would save a standard vector-graphics file, but if you
wanted to use the graph directly you'd just 'save' it staight into your
document processor window and it would be inserted at the caret.

In fact, RISCOS's drag-and-drop was standardized and integrated to a degree I've
not seen in any OS GUI since. Any file could be dropped into any filer
window or any application window, or onto the taskbar or the application icon
(obviously it was up to the application to deal with it sensibly - but 99% of
them did). And this was 20 years ago. :)

Post a reply to this message

> You could even 'save' the file in this manner into another open 
> application. For
> example, a graph program would save a standard vector-graphics file, but 
> if you
> wanted to use the graph directly you'd just 'save' it staight into your
> document processor window and it would be inserted at the caret.

Today it seems that Copy&Paste between applications has replaced this.  I 
use Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the whole time for moving things between applications.

> In fact, RISCOS's drag-and-drop was standardized and integrated to a 
> degree I've
> not seen in any OS GUI since. Any file could be dropped into any filer
> window or any application window, or onto the taskbar or the application 
> icon
> (obviously it was up to the application to deal with it sensibly - but 99% 
> of
> them did). And this was 20 years ago. :)

Yeh it's a shame, there were some good ideas there.

Other things that were nice:

Using Right Mouse Button to select an item from the menu left the menu open 
after doing the command.  This was really useful when you wanted to select 
several menu items in succession, especially if they were nested menus.

When you dragged a scroll-bar the pointer was locked to move only in the 
direction of the scroll bar, this meant you couldn't "slip" off the edge the 
scroll bar and lose the grip.

A window that had gained focus didn't automatically become the top-most 
window.  This was really useful if you are trying to type something into a 
document while looking at something else.  Today I find myself fiddling 
about with resizing and moving windows unnecessarily so I can type while 
seeing some other window.

I'm sure there are other things, I'm going to get my old A3010 from my 
parents attic at xmas to see if it will fire up.  I hope it does, there's 
120MB of retro greatness on it :-D

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:

> You could even 'save' the file in this manner into another open application. For
> example, a graph program would save a standard vector-graphics file, but if you
> wanted to use the graph directly you'd just 'save' it staight into your
> document processor window and it would be inserted at the caret.

Well, you can copy and paste data in this way under Windows. E.g., open 
Excel, select a chart, copy, switch to Word, paste the chart.

You will say "that's because Excel and Word are the same product - MS 
Office". But, weirdly, our specialist mass spectrometer control software 
has the exact same feature. And the pasted images show up even if you 
open the Word document on a PC that lacks the mass spec software...

> In fact, RISCOS's drag-and-drop was standardized and integrated to a degree I've
> not seen in any OS GUI since. Any file could be dropped into any filer
> window or any application window, or onto the taskbar or the application icon
> (obviously it was up to the application to deal with it sensibly - but 99% of
> them did). And this was 20 years ago. :)

Ah, the glory days of computing... :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> A window that had gained focus didn't automatically become the top-most 
> window.  This was really useful.

...isn't that what I said in the first place? ;-)

> I'm sure there are other things, I'm going to get my old A3010 from my 
> parents attic at xmas to see if it will fire up.  I hope it does, 
> there's 120MB of retro greatness on it :-D

Heh. Yeah. I need to retire my A1200 at some point - it's taking up too 
much space, and I hardly ever turn it on. Trouble is, all my synthesizer 
patches are stored on it, and I haven't yet found a PC program that will 
capture MIDI SysEx messages...

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   What really irritates me is Windows Explorer in this regard. For example,
> if I select a directory from the folder view on the left, and the directory
> contents then open on the right, if I try to scroll the file listing, it
> just scrolls the folder view on the left. And the other way around.

I would have sworn I wrote the exact same thing myself a little earlier 
in this thread... ;-)

Annoying, isn't it?

Post a reply to this message

"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > You could even 'save' the file in this manner into another open
> > application. For
> > example, a graph program would save a standard vector-graphics file, but
> > if you
> > wanted to use the graph directly you'd just 'save' it staight into your
> > document processor window and it would be inserted at the caret.
>
> Today it seems that Copy&Paste between applications has replaced this.  I
> use Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the whole time for moving things between applications.

True. In fact, a system clipboard was something RISCOS lacked, although there
was plenty of freeware that implemented it.

> Using Right Mouse Button to select an item from the menu left the menu open
> after doing the command.  This was really useful when you wanted to select
> several menu items in succession, especially if they were nested menus.

Yep, I hardly ever left-clicked on anything! That extra mouse button was
incredibly useful.

Also: opening a directory viewer with right-double-click would close the parent
directory viewer (obviously not applicable to current filer browsers!)
Similarly, right-click closing a directory viewer would open the parent.
Incredibly useful for quickly navigating directory trees.

> When you dragged a scroll-bar the pointer was locked to move only in the
> direction of the scroll bar, this meant you couldn't "slip" off the edge the
> scroll bar and lose the grip.

One of my favourites was the right-button scroll-bar dragging - if you had both
horizontal and vertical scrollbars in that window you would then be scrolling
both of them at once - 'panning' in fact.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > You could even 'save' the file in this manner into another open application. For
> > example, a graph program would save a standard vector-graphics file, but if you
> > wanted to use the graph directly you'd just 'save' it staight into your
> > document processor window and it would be inserted at the caret.
>
> Well, you can copy and paste data in this way under Windows. E.g., open
> Excel, select a chart, copy, switch to Word, paste the chart.

Windows does have a system clipboard - something that RISCOS lacked. Then again,
it didn't really need it, given the behaviour I described - you could save any
selection in most apps so I guess the question never arose.

Actually, the thing I miss most from RISCOS was its compact and powerful native
vector graphics format. Every relevant application could read and write it; it
was the standard way to move graphics data around. Even today, there is no
standard OS format on any system I've seen that comes close. I'm still appalled
that Word makes do with that dreadful metafile rubbish - I've never got it to
work for me and have always had to fall back on hires pngs rendered from SVG.
Laborious, wasteful and substandard.

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:

> Actually, the thing I miss most from RISCOS was its compact and powerful native
> vector graphics format. I'm still appalled
> that Word makes do with that dreadful metafile rubbish - I've never got it to
> work for me and have always had to fall back on hires pngs rendered from SVG.
> Laborious, wasteful and substandard.

What can I say? Word sucks. :-)

PostScript is very powerful, but designed for use on paper. It's also 
rather heavy. (It's a full Turing-complete programming language. It has 
a truckload of features that only a printworks would care about.)

SVG could be nice, but seems unpopular for whatever reason.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> What can I say? Word sucks. :-)

I sympathise - Word definitely used to suck a lot, but it is much better.
However, its inability to handle vector graphics puts it firmly next to the
typewriter for me.

> SVG could be nice, but seems unpopular for whatever reason.

It would be great if Word supported it.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Darren New schrieb:
>
> > I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.
> >
> > If you pick something up to drag-and-drop it, then move diagonally over
> > the >
> That'd be cool, indeed.

That's actually quite easy in Windows:
Drag whatever you want to drag onto the target app's taskbar button and that app
will get focus and then drop it in there.

Post a reply to this message

Aydan wrote:
> Drag whatever you want to drag onto the target app's taskbar button and that app
> will get focus and then drop it in there.

Oh my. I'll have to try that next time. A new trick. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Windows does have a system clipboard - something that RISCOS lacked. Then again,
> it didn't really need it, given the behaviour I described - you could save any
> selection in most apps so I guess the question never arose.

It sounds more like "RISCOS presented a drag-and-drop UI for the clipboard." :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> What can I say? Word sucks. :-)

Actually, metafile is standard on Windows and is pretty much the same thing 
as "PICT" format on Macs. It's a list of the graphics operations/calls it 
takes to produce something, so it's basically postscript-like - a list of 
resolution-independent instructions.  Without being a full-blown language.

You can get a metafile out of any program by printing. That's what the "save 
to file" on the print dialog means.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I sympathise - Word definitely used to suck a lot, but it is much better.
> However, its inability to handle vector graphics puts it firmly next to the
> typewriter for me.

Word has handled vector graphics since OLE days. You're doing it wrong. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     When I minimize, I get a nice mini-screenshot of the window at the 
> bottom of the screen.

We call that a task bar, here. ;-)

>     Why do people have icons on their desktop?

I only have stuff I'm working on. It bugs me to no end that I'll download 
something and it'll get put in some obscure "downloads" directory. No, I'd 
like to work on it. I have icons on my desktop just like I have papers and 
pens and coffee mugs on my desktop.

I don't put *programs* on my desktop, like so many others do.

If you want really quick access, that's what the "quick start" bar is for. 
And honestly I only ever use that at work where it's the same 4 programs I'm 
using to do my job over and over.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Aydan wrote:
>> Drag whatever you want to drag onto the target app's taskbar button 
>> and that app
>> will get focus and then drop it in there.
> 
> Oh my. I'll have to try that next time. A new trick. :-)
> 

It is amazing the *new* things you learn from watching other people work :)

BTW don’t try to drop the target on the target app's taskbar button. 
Windows whinges like a POM :)


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> A window that had gained focus didn't automatically become the top-most 
> window.  This was really useful if you are trying to type something into 
> a document while looking at something else.  Today I find myself 
> fiddling about with resizing and moving windows unnecessarily so I can 
> type while seeing some other window.

This has been hit upon a few times in this thread, and Windows can do a 
stay-on-top thing...if you're using particular skins with WindowBlinds. 
  Haven't really played with it in a long time, so don't know what 
practical things it can do now.  Skinning apps was, for me, really just 
a passing fad from around the turn o' the century.  Nowadays I'm just 
concerned with the application space, not what colour the edges and 
things are.  When the layout is identical, the skin on top hardly 
changes much, unless it's something *really* different from the base.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.
> 
> What I really miss in Windows which was the norm on the Acorn GUI was to
> be
> able to drag-n-drop to *save* a file from an application.  Quite often I
> find myself having the explorer window open of some folder deep on our
> network drive and I want to save my document in there.  On the Acorn you
> could just click save and drag the file icon to the explorer window, but
> on Windows you have to navigate in the save dialog to the folder,
> copy&paste the path name into the save box, or save to the desktop and
> then move it in explorer.

Mac supports that.

Applications that handle "documents" show a document icon in the titlebar. 
You can drag it to a Finder window.

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> A window that had gained focus didn't automatically become the top-most
>> window.  This was really useful if you are trying to type something into
>> a document while looking at something else.  Today I find myself
>> fiddling about with resizing and moving windows unnecessarily so I can
>> type while seeing some other window.
> 
> This has been hit upon a few times in this thread, and Windows can do a
> stay-on-top thing...if you're using particular skins with WindowBlinds.

Or with menu addons like PowerMenu.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> Ah, while we're ranting anyway...
> 
> Why the **** does /no/ graphical user interface provide a way to
> rearrange the running programs in taskbar?! I mean, that shouldn't be
> /too/ difficult to implement, right?

Get Taskix for Windows.

For KDE, I heard they're working on it... But since the taskbar is just 
another plasmoid, I think you could "easily" write your own. Even in an 
interpreted language.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>>     Why do people have icons on their desktop?
> 
> I only have stuff I'm working on. It bugs me to no end that I'll download
> something and it'll get put in some obscure "downloads" directory. No, I'd
> like to work on it. I have icons on my desktop just like I have papers and
> pens and coffee mugs on my desktop.
> 
> I don't put *programs* on my desktop, like so many others do.
> 
> If you want really quick access, that's what the "quick start" bar is for.
> And honestly I only ever use that at work where it's the same 4 programs
> I'm using to do my job over and over.

KDE4 desktop doesn't support icons anymore. The feature was removed.

Instead, there is a "folder view" plasmoid that you can put anywhere on the 
desktop, and shows the contents of an arbitrary folder.

If that folder happens to be ~/Desktop, and the plasmoid is resized to cover 
the entire screen, you get quite close to the previous behavior. But who 
would want *that*? Now you have way more flexibility!

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook wrote:
> This has been hit upon a few times in this thread, and Windows can do a 
> stay-on-top thing...if you're using particular skins with WindowBlinds. 

Interestingly, i read about one person's travails with trying to get the Mac 
to do this. Apparently, because the Mac application software is written 
expecting the window with focus to be the window on top, giving focus to 
lower in the stack breaks a number of things like menu accelerators and so 
on, because the app's menus aren't initialized unless the app is on top. So 
if the app gets a key and looks thru the menus to see if it is a menu 
shortcut, it can crash.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> > Windows does have a system clipboard - something that RISCOS lacked. Then again,
> > it didn't really need it, given the behaviour I described - you could save any
> > selection in most apps so I guess the question never arose.
>
> It sounds more like "RISCOS presented a drag-and-drop UI for the clipboard." :-)

:D

Post a reply to this message

On 18-11-2009 19:01, Stephen wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Aydan wrote:
>>> Drag whatever you want to drag onto the target app's taskbar button 
>>> and that app
>>> will get focus and then drop it in there.
>>
>> Oh my. I'll have to try that next time. A new trick. :-)
>>
> 
> It is amazing the *new* things you learn from watching other people work :)
> 
> BTW don’t try to drop the target on the target app's taskbar button. 
> Windows whinges like a POM :)

Don't know what that acronym means but it is one of those surprising 
windows things. It known what goes wrong but refuses to behave as expected.

Post a reply to this message

On 18-11-2009 18:34, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> What can I say? Word sucks. :-)
> 
> Actually, metafile is standard on Windows and is pretty much the same 
> thing as "PICT" format on Macs. It's a list of the graphics 
> operations/calls it takes to produce something, so it's basically 
> postscript-like - a list of resolution-independent instructions.  
> Without being a full-blown language.
> 
> You can get a metafile out of any program by printing. That's what the 
> "save to file" on the print dialog means.
> 
Are you talking about the format where it first rounds the vertices to 
the nearest pixel on screen before output or are you talking about 
another vector format that I totally missed?

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> Are you talking about the format where it first rounds the vertices to 
> the nearest pixel on screen before output or are you talking about 
> another vector format that I totally missed?

I think it depends how you save it. It's the graphics context recording the 
stuff, so it gets rounded to whatever resolution the graphics context is 
using, I'd guess. I never really looked into it much past what I already 
described here.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message