Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!andrewt From: andrewt@watsnew.waterloo.edu (Andrew Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: 1.4 Wish: Revamped sizing gadget Message-ID: Date: 11 Oct 89 17:35:21 GMT References: <5228@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu Distribution: na Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Lines: 35 In-reply-to: nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM's message of 10 Oct 89 21:28:54 GMT In article <5228@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) writes: I would like to propose a change to the system sizing gadget. The way it is now, the user is too limited in the directions he/she can alter the window. When trying to right-justify a window of a certain size, it can become quite a chore. Resize-drag-resize-drag- etc. This is one thing that I like in MS Windows (gak), that you can drag *any* corner around to resize the window. I'm not necessarily proposing that that method be proposed, just something slightly more flexibly than the current version. I also would like to see what a previous poster proposed: visual display of the window borders while resizing (would that really be much of a problem to implement? I wouldn't think so). I agree entirely. The best example of a window resize operation is the way 'twm' does it for X windows. In order to resize a window, you click on the gadget, then move the pointer outside the window in any direction. If you exit near the middle of a side, you can only resize in that direction. If you exit at a corner, you can resize from that corner. If, for example, you exit from the top, and then move the pointer down past the bottom of the window, it automatically grabs the bottom of the window instead and starts resizing from that. This is similar to (though less versatile and more intuitive than) the method for resizing used on the Xerox 1108/1186 series of Lisp machines. The only bad part about this scheme is that you must exit the window in order to resize. You cannot grab the gadget and simply move into the window to make it smaller; you must first leave the window and then reenter. I also think that commands like resize and move should be abortable by clicking the other mouse button before releasing the button used to start the operation (see X window manager 'awm'). -- Andrew Thomas andrewt@watsnew.waterloo.edu Systems Design Eng. University of Waterloo "If a million people do a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing." - Opus