[platform-ui-dev] Re: [eclipse-dev] Opera/Mozilla style mouse/pen gestur

[Jared Burns <jared-eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>]

In Mozilla, gestures have to be performed using the left mouse button because 
the context menu appears on right mouse down. Opera does gestures with the 
right mouse button by default because it doesn't bring up the context menu 
until mouse up. However, it turns out that Opera is the only application I 
run that brings up the context menu on mouse up. All of my GTK+ apps 
(including Eclipse) bring up the context menu on mouse down, so Opera is not 
following platform behavior here.

The difference between Motif and all other "Linux toolkit" apps is that Motif 
dismisses the menu on mouse up, but the others don't. This means that other 
toolkits don't have the awful feel of context menus on Motif, but they still 
have the same problem relative to this feature - clicking right mouse down 
brings up the menu so you can't use the right mouse for gestures.

Personally, I prefer Opera's solution to Mozilla's. Gesturing with left mouse  
drags creates problems because it you can get false-positives when you are 
just trying to select text. However, I can imagine people screaming bloody 
murder (Luc is whining at the mere suggestion ;-) if we change the mouse-down 
pop-up behavior on GTK.

Good luck. :-)

- Jared

On Wednesday 27 November 2002 09:01 am, Chris McLaren wrote:
> Thanks for the comments. Mouse gestures will be a preference, which is off
> by default.
>
> Some people commented about the 'rocker' gesture - a different type of
> gesture where one presses the primary mouse button then presses the
> secondary mouse button (or visa versa) in a 'rocking' motion, usually
> assigned to backward and forward navigation (but should probably be user
> definable).
>
> I didn't add this feature yet because I wanted to first discuss the
> implications of sharing the primary (usually left) mouse button with the
> editor developers (like Kai, specifically). Getting the secondary button
> seems fairly non-invasive so far, with the exception of this context menu
> issue on Motif, but for the rocker gesture you can't really have one
> direction without the other and until the implications of sharing the
> primary button are understood, rocker gestures should remain out.
>
> Regarding Motif, I suppose a preference to enable mouse gestures (meaning
> the user has to 'sign up' for the change in behavior) won't be sufficient
> for hardcode Motif users. I'm not sure how Opera/Mozilla solve this issue
> on Motif, if at all. Could someone investigate this? Another option I have
> is allowing the user to specify that one or more modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt,
> Shift, Command) must be pressed to enable gesture recognition. This should
> solve the problem on Motif, but unfortunately will make the feature
> somewhat less useful. Mozilla supports modifier keys as a preference.
>
> Chris.