[Tfug] Speaking of desktops (little 'd')...

[Rich]

On Nov 11, 2008, at 11:04 am, Bexley Hall wrote:

> The phone/calculator keypad always bugs me.  Someone (some *two*!)
> obviously made a concious decision to layout the keys for one
> in one order and the other in a different order.  Was the first
> "arbitrary" and the second, "Oh, boy!  We sure goofed on that first
> one!  Let's fix it for *this* one..."?  Were *both* arbitrary?
> Or, were both *deliberate* with studies of their respective
> uses?


Ever gone into a bank to change your PIN? I remember PINs by shape,  
not number. The ATM uses 0 at the top; but they have you enter it  
into a USB numeric keypad -- 0 at the bottom. So I have to think of a  
"shape", work out what numbers it's represented by, then type in  
those numbers. I mentioned it -- the banker told me she'd never noticed.


>> Windows that say "I'm focussed!" when
>> they're not -- this only seems to happen on Windows,
>> where programmers find it too hard to use the provided GUI,
>
> Ah, good point!  But, it would be hard to implement something
> where the application could NOT do this.  Unless you force the
> WM to decorate *all* windows and always use those decorations
> to convey this state.  So, even if an application drew its
> own *bogus* titlebar, the *real* titlebar around it would
> still accurately convey this information...

It could work -- by *always* leaving at least the window borders to  
the WM.

>> [slow Windows shutdown]
>
> But that's a consequence of the OS's bloat.  For the same reason
> it takes so long to *boot*.  I don't think (?) that's a part
> of the "user interface" per se...

Well, I'm the "user", and I'm "interfacing" with the machine, by  
wanting to lift the bugger up and take it with me. I know it's a  
consequence of Windows's design -- it should ask me if I want updates  
to be installed *now*, or next time I *boot* the machine. Then even  
if I refuse now, I'm forewarned for next time -- I might even power  
it up at that meeting I'm heading to, or when I get home, simply  
because *now*, I'm aware it needs some "alone time" to deal with its  
issues.

> You mean the WM decorations (i.e., your examples are all
> outside the scope of the application)?

Yes.

> ... I don't like having
> controls that can do "bad/big things" next to controls that
> are more forgiving. ...

Precisely my point. "Close window" is a terminating event -- it  
should not be placed directly next to other controls.

Does anyone feel comfortable resizing a window from the top right  
corner?

> I've found focus follows (mouse) cursor can be annoying as it
> requires you to leave the mouse *in* your current window.

Not so: with sloppy focus (the usual implementation of of ffm), so  
long as your pointer doesn't enter any other window, you're fine.  
I.e. the root window isn't counted as a window.

> I run <mumble> which hides the mouse cursor after some period
> of inactivity.

On other platforms, typing will hide the cursor immediately (Mac, I'm  
looking at you). This is handy, because I've noticed that, if I'm  
entering text into a text widget, about 4/5 of the time, I blunder a  
keystroke at the point *directly* under the pointer. It can't simply  
be a coincidence, so I wonder if it's psychological.

> YCHCYAQFTJB
Sorry, I'm too slow to get this...

> Huh?  Perhaps I was unclear.  By "noise" I really meant *noise*
> (i.e., auditory phenomena).  Hard to imagine squirreling them away
> in a small window!  (open window, lots of sound comes rushing out,
> close window quickly!!  :> )


:-) "Noise" has that other, generic meaning, of "unwanted  
information". That's what I assumed you meant. (Hm. It would be  
interesting to have volume controlled by window size!)

>> On Mac (I mention it only because it's my non-work
>> machine) there is a plethora of text editors that use their
>> own screen to reduce distractions. Every few months, someone
>
> Huh?  "their own screen"?

"Their own virtual screen" then. They go full screen. I still use the  
word "screen" the way I learnt on the Amiga, where you could drag the  
desktop titlebar (constrained to vertical) to reveal other virtual  
screens. Pretty much every Amiga application ran this way, and it's  
only now that I realize how hugely productive it was, because I  
wasn't being distracted with the previous and next stages of my  
workflow. Now on every platform, I find I can be distracted by other,  
highly important, but highly disruptive tasks.

R.