Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!world!decwrl!sun-barr!newstop!sun!argv From: argv@turnpike.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Heller) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: pushpins in OL (was: OSF statements about OPEN LOOK) Message-ID: <142694@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 19 Sep 90 00:02:19 GMT References: <1990Sep13.204215.5215@Solbourne.COM> <1990Sep14.172922.27088@alphalpha.com> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Organization: O'Reilly && Associates Lines: 66 In article <1990Sep14.172922.27088@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes: > > You need to add 2*(number of buttons-1), > >assuming one is a "Cancel", to get the functionality of a single pushpin. > Now you are asking whether having pushpins is better than Okay/Apply/Cancel. > I don't buy the 2* number. In fact, I can just make all of the buttons > do their operations and have no Okay button, then Cancel will take it down > and I have all the functionality of a Pushpin. There is a point to the "default button" in motif dialogs: if this is the only one that take down the dialog, then it's difficult to indicate which buttons to choose. I don't want the user to think he has to select the "cancel" button in addition to any other button displayed just to remove the dialog. "Cancel" has impliciations that are not consistent across all dialogs. In one respect, it should mean: "reverse all changes I've made in this dialog (reset all button values) and close the dialog." Or, it could mean, "reverse the changes that my last "apply" selection caused." Whatever it means or is interpreted as, that interpretation is not the same as "just close the window". A new choice must be made. I've found that the best thing to do in such situations is to label the default button (otherwise known as the "Ok" button) with "close" and the "apply" button has the label "Ok" -- there is no other "Apply" button. "Cancel" doesn't close anything -- in fact, "close" is/should be the ony button in the dialog that closes it. Having "close" be in the same spot in all dialogs and does the exact same thing maintains consistency and reduces confusion among the users. While this seems to be the thing that makes the most "sense", I wonder if any Motif GUI experts out there think that there is anything wrong with that assumption? > Personally I think pushpins > are cute, I'd prefer tearoffs for my menus though, but that's probably hard > to do under X. Pushpins functionally do the same thing as tearoff menus. The argument about pushpins is an interesting one. I didn't quite get the point of it until someone I was corresponding with privately made it clear (altho we've lost contact and I forget who it is). OL does provide a user interface element (pushpin) that is drawn and managed by window manager. Since that pushpin is the sole element responsible for dismissing the popup menu, the application *does* require an open look window manager to provide this element. Without it, the application does not necessarily have to provide a way for the user to dismiss the menu. I argued before that all good window managers (motif, open look, twm) should provide some method for dismissing all toplevel windows -- if you are not using one that does, this could be considered pilot error. I have been convinced that this isn't really a strong argument. Thus, I think the best solution is for the XView toolkit to provide its own pushpin item and not require the window manager to provide it automatically. > But given the lack of a better suggestion I'd love to see > pushpins added to Motif. As noted before -- tear off menus provide virtually the same functionality as pushpins and could thus be implemented without "stealing" the concept of pushpins from open look. The user interface itself needn't match OL or Apple's exactly, but I'm sure someone creative enough can figure it out for himself ;-). -- dan ---------------------------------------------------- O'Reilly && Associates argv@sun.com / argv@ora.com Opinions expressed reflect those of the author only.