Usability [was: Re: [PD-dev] Re: pure devil (fwd)]

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> I just got an alternatve idea: How about moving the connection using
> e.g. the cursor keys? When only a connection is selected, LEFT would
> move the inlet-connection one inlet left, Shift-LEFT would move the
> outlet connection left. 
> Probably this should not be done using the cursor keys as they are
> also used to move objects.

Well, I don't think we should shy away from modal interfaces when they 
make sense.

What I propose is that the interface should:

 * stay mostly non-modal for the mouse (just the Edit/Run duality, if that
   doesn't go away)

 * become modal for the keyboard's arrows. Modes could be:
    1. travelling around
    2. moving selection
    3. editing objectbox text
    4. selecting an outlet or inlet for making connections or following
       existing connections
    5. making a new connection

That would be because we don't have (m)any extra modifiers, as:

 * Shift is already used for moving by larger amounts (i think it's by
   bunch of 8 pixels)
 * Ctrl is already used for instant-run-mode
 * Alt with arrows is often reserved by the window manager
 * Cmd is OSX-only and its PC equivalent is Alt or Ctrl depending on
   various whims
 * Meta is often the same as Alt and/or Escape
 * AltGr (or OSX Alt) is reserved for accented letters
 * And there's pretty much nothing else left (ScrollLock? haha).

> Oh, and selecting connections by moving over them with the mouse would
> also make work more comfortable.

do you really mean selecting them, or just highlighting them?

also the in/outlet selection mouse-cursor is very bad on recent KDE 
desktops i've seen. This is why IMPD introduced highlighting of 
inlets/outlets.

____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada