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Re: [platform-ui-dev] RFC: Cut, Copy, Paste Proposal (end date = 12/03)


I agree that I do not think we need new SWT support to indicate that an item has been cut by greying its icon.

Copying and moving are common tasks.
Currently they can be performed using drag and drop (which integrates well with the file system) or via dialog based actions.
The dialogs are typically used to specify the "target" and essentually duplicate a navigator.
By going to a clipboard based model for copying and moving we get rid of the need for extra dialogs and present a clearer notion of what the cut, copy, paste global actions will perform in the currently active part.

A side benefit is that copy will also put a text representation onto the clipboard. This provides a much requested and useful feature without the need for a separate "copy as text" menu item.

I agree that there is a lot of design work (cut seems to be the tricky case) but the goal is to make things simpler from the users point of view.





"Mike Wilson/OTT/OTI" <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/29/01 09:54 AM
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        Subject:        Re: [platform-ui-dev] RFC: Cut, Copy, Paste Proposal (end date = 12/03)



On windows, the only visual indication that a cut is in progress is that the icon associated with the object being cut is set to a "greyed" version. SWT support is not required to do this.


Aside: It seems like a fairly complex system is being designed here. Do we have the task model data which indicates this would actually be useful to a significant number of users?


McQ.



"Nick Edgar/OTT/OTI" <Nick_Edgar@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/28/2001 04:09 PM
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       Subject:        Re: [platform-ui-dev] RFC: Cut, Copy, Paste Proposal (end date = 12/03)



Some of my points below have already been mentioned, but I'm including
them anyway.

- It's not clear that ResourceTransfer should carry the markers or other
metadata for the resource.  If I copy a .java file, I don't want its
compilation problems to come with it.  I may or may not want its
associated tasks.
Should probably separate the two, allowing the user to first copy the
resource, then copy any tasks if desired (copying problems still doesn't
make sense, since they are derived from the content by the compiler).

- Paste Special support is fairly common if you want to transfer some
attributes but not others (e.g. content vs. formatting).  Not clear that
Navigator and Tasks need this though, although this might be an approach
for handling metadata.

- Using the full path for the TextTransfer for the selected resource(s) is
not necessarily the best choice.
In the UI, we generally present full paths without the leading slash (e.g.
MyProject/MyFolder/MyFile.txt), since the root of the workspace is not
necessarily a useful concept to the user.
Depending on the context, it may make sense to use either the full path
with leading slash, the full path without leading slash, the simple name,
or the location (actual file name).
The user may expect filesystem-based separators as well, not just forward
slashes.
If we do have to decide on a default, my preference would be full path
without leading separator, with forward slashes.

- The text used in the task list drag and drop is not very user friendly.
It was originally more for debugging purposes than to be useful to end
users, so I do not recommend using it.  We should come up with a better
human readable representation, and use it for both CCP and D&D.
One option would be tab-delimited text, since this can be pasted nicely
into spreadsheets and tables in word processors.  Even better would to
associate RTF for a table, as well as plain text.  For example, try
copying a range of cells in Excel, and pasting them to Word, WordPad, and
NotePad (and vice-versa).
I'd like to see the task list work like this.
It might also be nice to allow tasks to be pasted into the task list from
a similar format (but not problems).
Likewise for Bookmarks and Properties.

- We will also need support from SWT for visually indicating a cut/move in
progress, in Tree and possibly other widgets (Table for task list).
Compare with MS Explorer, which dims the item being moved.
If we don't have visual feedback for cut, it will be very confusing.
Is this even possible on other platforms?

- Esc cancels the Cut in MS Explorer.  We have no way of hooking this in
SWT currently (hooking Esc as a global accelerator breaks other areas such
as code assist and rename in Navigator).

- There are accessibility issues here.  You can't currently deselect or
multi-select in a Tree using keyboard only.  There's an SWT PR for this
already.  We need to ensure that whatever solution we come up with is
workable using keyboard only.

- If copy (or cut) works differently for projects than for other items
(e.g. pops up a dialog for projects, but not other items), then we should
not use the same action.  It would be preferable to disable copy and have
a separate Copy Project item on the context menu.

- Regarding the confusion over what gets copied for markers, the clipboard
supports multiple formats, so it should be seen as copying all of: the
marker itself (MarkerTransfer), its text (TextTransfer), and a table
representation (RTFTransfer -- see above).  It's the client doing the
paste who gets to decide which format it prefers.

- Need to ensure ResourceTransfer and MarkerTransfer support multiple
items, if they don't already.

- I concur with Simon that we should support copying resources between
separate workspaces.  This means that the ResourceTransfer must encode not
only the resource's path but also its location, and possibly an ID for the
workspace (e.g. if I cut a /A/B in workspace 1 and paste it to /C/B in
workspace 2, I want to delete /A/B from workspace 1, not workspace 2 if it
also has /A/B; this may just work out if it's the cut handler which does
the deletion though).






"Karice McIntyre/OTT/OTI" <Karice_McIntyre@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
11/26/01 05:31 PM
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      To:     platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
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      Subject:        [platform-ui-dev] RFC: Cut, Copy, Paste Proposal (end date = 12/03)


Please provide comments on the following proposal by 12/03.  This is not a
call for committers to vote.

(See attached file: cut-copy-paste-proposal.zip)



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