Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Discontinuous Selection
Message-ID: <6780@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 16 Mar 89 01:13:48 GMT
References: <3912@crash.cts.com> <37177@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 33

In article <3912@crash.cts.com> roberts@crash.cts.com (Robert Schwalbe) writes:
>How does one employ "shift-click" selecting _without_ causing a 
>continuous selection?  . . .
>Stuffit, when displaying filenames within an archive, allows selection
>of continuous items.  Is there any reason why I should not be able to
>select an item at the top and shift click on some other item, without
>selecting all items in between?

In article <37177@bbn.COM> levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin) writes:
>I don't remember what the Interface Guidelines say about this, and it
>may well depend on the capabilities of the LDEF that any individual
>developer uses or writes, but the following is true both for range
>selections in Excel and for stuffed files listed in Stuffit's window:

Actually an LDEF doesn't get passed this information; modifier keys the
same in all lists subject to the multiple selection flag setting.  The
List Manager simply uses an event modifiers longword and uses that to
enforce the shift-click command-click convention.  Unless software does
its own lists or rearranges the modifier bits before passing them on to
the List manager, they should all work the same.

>CMD-click will add an individual item to the list selected without
>selecting everything between that item and the previous item selected.

Correct, this is mandated by the Mac User Interface Guidelines, chapter
1 of volume 1 of Inside Mac, pages 39 and 40.  The List Manager handles
what this chapter calls "arrays", and "In text or an array, the result
of a Shift-click is always a range."  Command-Click is described on
p. 40 under "Making a Discontinuous Selection".  There is no standard
for Option-click there.  Stuffit does follow the guidelines.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"This signature is not to be quoted." -- Erland Sommarskog