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From: meo@rsiatl.UUCP (Miles ONeal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: the magic number 32637 in Athena form widget
Message-ID: <4645@rsiatl.UUCP>
Date: 4 Nov 90 04:28:30 GMT
Organization: Systems & Software Solutions, Inc.
Lines: 26

asente@adobe.com (Paul Asente) writes:

>... The hardware still isn't around today; if you
>need more than 16 bits worth of positioning on current hardware you're not
>programming your application right.

Thus, the magic of "scrollbars".

At first, I was a bit miffed when I ran into the "limitation"
of 16 bits. BUt that was purely a theortical, ivory tower type
miffdom - the not-so-theoretical limits of my screen were far
greater. In fact, it quickly became apparent that (as Paul notes)
the solution was usually wrong if it led that way.

Most users can't deal with too much data they can't see at one
time (summaries are a separate issue - we're talking seeing
only a small piece ofthe whole picture here.

Secondly, even when you want to do something like this, you
probably want more control anyway. Sure it's more effort, but
if you set things up to pan via scrollbars, nobody's going to
yell at you when it doesn't work with their setup of window
manager, session manager, etc.

Miles O'Neal
{uunet | emory}!rsiatl!meo (home)