Subject: Re: Win32 Word Count, modeless dialogs, keyboard input, etc
From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jul 04 2000 - 06:28:31 CDT
Hi Thomas,
On Sat, 1 Jul 2000, Thomas Briggs wrote:
> work. If you open a modeless dialog, then go back to the document, then
> select (for example) Tools | Word Count from the menu bar, the Word Count
> dialog is updated but the document retains the input focus. It's
> specifically coded this way in the unix version, so I mimicked it in the
> Win32 version, but I have to ask: is this really the desired behaviour?
> Should I have to click on the dialog with the mouse in order to give it
> the input focus?
I did this because in unix it is possible to choose between "click to
focus" and automatic grab upon entering a window. I always use the latter
and for people who use the former I guessed that they were just perverse
and liked to click to gain focus - why anyone would actually want to do
that I don't know but a large fraction of the computer literate world is
used to that strange behaviour so I left it in. If this isn't a good idea
I would be very happy to have it changed :-)
>
> 2. What's the rule for when modeless dialogs should stay on top of the
> documents? The Word Count dialog, for example, falls behind the document
> once it loses focus (I mimicked the unix behaviour here as well), but the
> Insert Symbol dialog stays on top. Is this by design? Accidental? Is
> there a rule we should be following in this regard?
>
Once again in unix this behaviour is governed by the settings of your
favourite window manager. I was not aware of any difference in
implementation between word count and insert symbol or any of the other
modeless dialogs. Some people like windows to be automatically raised on
gain focus, others like me want windows raised upon a click. As far as I
know none of the modless dialogs implement any specific policy in this
regard.
> In case anybody's actually read through this whole thing, I'm going to
> throw out one more thought while I'm at it. I must say that I'm really
> impressed with the AbiWord codebase - I'm no junior programmer, but for me
> to be able to jump in and with relatively little effort implement the
> stuff I have says a lot about the code that's already there and the people
> who wrote it.
>
Yeah me too :-). But wait till you try to understand how findpointcoords
works and Jesper has improved that a lot :-)
Cheers
Martin
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