[Gambas-user] Menu editor - not a bug but annoying

[Doriano Blengino]

Benoît Minisini ha scritto:
>> Kadaitcha Man ha scritto:
>>     
>>> 2009/11/28 Jussi Lahtinen <jussi.lahtinen at ...626...>:
>>>       
>>>> There are many GUIs where you must validate your input with enter.
>>>> Example, if you send message with pidgin.
>>>>         
>>> Enter means, "I am finished. It's your turn to do something, mister
>>> pooter." Tab means, "I am not finished. It's still my turn and I'm still
>>> doing stuff." Escape means, "I am finished, and you can throw all my work
>>> out, mister pooter."
>>>
>>> Based on that, can you see why pidgin sends text when you press enter?
>>> And can you now understand why windows with default buttons tend to
>>> close when you press enter?
>>>
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>>>       
>> Dear Kadaitcha, keep in mind that there is a lot of people out there
>> which do not exactly understand what a keyboard is. Typically, when a
>> message box with an OK button pops up, they leave up the right hand from
>> the keyboard to grab the mouse and click the OK button. In this
>> philosophy, you should not wonder when you see applications you can't
>> use without a mouse, because the majority of people don't even notice.
>> But the majority of people also believes to be a computer guru, and if
>> you say "I think this is a mistake" they will reply "it's you who is
>> wrong, because things have always been done this way".
>>
>> Being used to delphi, the first time I've seen the VB menu editor I
>> laughed: it was crap compared to delphi's one. When I discovered gambas,
>> I saw the same menu editor. But I didn't laugh anymore; there are many
>> things I would love to change but, on the other hand, gambas has an
>> unbeated productivity in the linux desktop. What you are saying is right
>> - everyone would benefit from this change, but not everyone understands it.
>>
>> Salutations,
>>
>>     
>
> Yes, the IDE menu editor was copied from the VB one. But hey, this is some 
> code that comes from Gambas 1, done even before the TreeView control, with 
> just some little changes in it.
>
> I have never used Delphi, so I have no idea of how its menu editor looks like.
>   
My intention was not to blame you - my mail was oscillating between 
criticizing some kind of people and award gambas of its merits.

Back to the question; when I use the gambas menu editor I find it a 
little annoying: if the Enter key would confirm the current item instead 
of closing the form, it would be nice. I say it now because someone else 
did it before. In addition I think that, anyway, the gambas menu editor 
performs what it should perform: it *does* edit menus. It could be 
better, but probably there are other things more important just now (who 
knows... QT4?).

The Delphi's way to edit menus is simply as follows: an empty form 
opens, which shows a menu bar (the one you are editing) exactly as you 
would see it in the real application - the only difference is that one 
of the main items, in the bar, is always "opened" (dropped down). Every 
item is managed like any other visual controls - you edit its properties 
in the property editor. You can drag and drop items around, and a double 
click opens the code editor the same way as any other event. I think 
that they had to rebuild "by hand" the whole menu management, because 
windows (tm) does not support drag and drop, non-transient menu pages, 
and so on. The same as GTK and perhaps QT, I think.
I don't want to say that this is the best possible way, I only say that 
it seems better than the gambas current one.

Just these days (or these months, should I say?) I am trying to write a 
GTK IDE for freepascal. Given that, I try to never miss a chance to see 
what others do in similar situations. I downloaded and tried many of the 
IDEs and programmer's editors I am aware of. Just to see and learn (or 
steal ideas...). Try to take a look at delphi: you will discover that in 
many things gambas is well designed (strange, if it was inspired by VB!) 
and will perform well; but may also happen that you get new ideas and, 
if not, you will be entitled to say "I know - but this is not good".

Regards,

-- 
Doriano Blengino

"Listen twice before you speak.
This is why we have two ears, but only one mouth."