Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!ANDREW.CMU.EDU!wjh+ From: wjh+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Fred Hansen) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: R3 Selection Mechanism Message-ID: Date: 25 May 89 15:41:49 GMT References: Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 44 > Excerpts from mail: 25-May-89 Re: R3 Selection Mechanism > dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mi (1611) >> What is the user interface to selections? How is the X selection > protocol used in practice? > There is no single interface to selections mandated by the protocol, nor > should there be. Yes, I should have been clearer in my post as to what I thought this bboard discussion ought to be doing. It was my idea that we could collect succinct descriptions of various user interfaces, just so we could compare and contrast them. If this effort does no more than lead to greater understanding, it will have been worth it. If it leads to even a small reduction in the number of schemes a user has to learn, it will be of great value. > A typical counterexample to the single-selection-interface approach is > emacs. It has its own ideas of what constitutes a selection and how > selections are manipulated, and it's nothing like the interface Hansen described. This confuses me because I have believed the ATK cut/paste scheme is close to that of emacs, at least Gosling-emac. The mapping from my description to emacs seems fairly direct: control-@ and the various cursor movement commands to establish the selection (S) and the target (T). Keystrokes (K) instead of menu picks (M) to select the various operations. As I mentioned in my note, the menu ATK picks (M) can also be done with ATK keystrokes (K): ^W cut meta-W copy ^Y paste meta-Y replace So how does emacs differ from ATK? Fred Hansen (412) 268-6788 wjh+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: wjh+@andrew for UUCP try: ...!psuvax1!andrew.cmu.edu!wjh Omega say, "Enjoy the raspberries."