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From: john@ctc.contel.COM (John Schettino  x4156)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  Drag & Drop
Message-ID: <9102061237.AA04715@ctc.contel.com>
Date: 6 Feb 91 12:37:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34


>From: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
>mike@tss.com (Mike Carl) writes:
>>...the MIT X Consortium is currently hammering
>>out a definition for a drag and drop model of interaction for X Window
>>Systems.  Drag and drop has become a popular concern among many desktop
>>developers.
>
>I have to admit that I'm not hip to the "drag & drop" concept.  Since I've
>been programming in X and reading this newsgroup for a couple of years, I'm
>probably not alone.  Could someone higher on the hipness scale drag an
>introduction to this over here and drop it into the flow?
>

I`m not very high on the hipness scale, but...
You can see "drag & drop" in action by looking at a Mac user copy files.
1) select desired file(s)
2) click and hold the mouse button
3) DRAG the selected files to the desired location
4) DROP the selected files into the directory by releasing the mouse button

Or, watch someone use the Sun OpenWindows file manager tool, which does
the same thing. Sun's mailtool for OpenWindows (and probably most other
Sun OW tools) provide D&D for text editing also:
1) hilite the text to copy
2) click & hold left mouse button (first  7 letters shown in a little box)
3) DRAG to new position in text flow
4) DROP the copy into text flow by releasing the mouse button

The concept also comes under the heading of "direct manipulation"
in human factors/CHI texts.

John Schettino
john@ctc.contel.com (gee... no, GTE!)