RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Galleries and focus handling

["Charles Moir" <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx>]

> > That sounds exactly the same as the Align dialog to me.

Alex said
> In all galleries except the layer 
> and frame galleries, changing the gallery selection (or 
> otherwise clicking in the
> gallery) has no effect outside that gallery until some form 
> of "use this" button is pressed; the layer and frame 
> galleries immediately apply.

Er no they don't you can click on any layer and it highlights, but only
when you click on the check box "a type of use this" button does
anything happen. Actually that's not true changing the layer changes the
current layer, but doesn't really change the document in any way.

I think this is now off topic. Yes there are some inconsistencies in the
behaviour of galleries, but they do wildly different things (and to make
matters worse look at the name gallery - it does track selection, and
allows immediate changing of object selection from within the gallery).

> Mind you the 
> align dialog is slightly peculiar in this way as if you bring 
> it up and objects /are/ aligned, this isn't shown in the UI 
> (which would actually be useful).

But that would break the existing ability to set a required alignment,
and then just single click apply to any set of objects.

> > Yes, but that's just because there's no room to put 'Apply as fill' 
> > and 'Apply as transparency' (but I hope the tool tips make 
> it clear).
> 
> That's what I meant in that they apply an item. They don't 
> apply a set of changes you have made.
That's too subtle a difference for me. Semantics.

> Actually the existing colour dialog user interface is quite 
> nasty in this respect - you can't see why a colour is 
> highlighted. It would be nicer if the line colour and fill 
> colour(s) were indicated with dots the same way as on the 
> colour line

Well it is indicated. The current line colour has a line next to it (bit
subtle), but you can tell which is which. But it's not consistent with
the colour line method, true.

> You can't currently select a particular colour in the 
> gallery, select object A in the doc, hit apply, select object 
> B, hit apply, etc. etc. because selecting the object changes 
> the gallery selection.

Yes, and that's the exact behaviour the Align gallery does allow. I
agree the colour gallery behaviour seems random. Never used it myself,
ever. But this is off topic I think.

> I'll be happy if there is a definitive answer to the list of 
> questions I put in my reply to Phil (and if he fixes up some 
> of the confusing terminology around the word "window" but 
> that will not be a functional change). I think we have had 
> answers on this list to all of them. I may not /like/ every 
> answer, but better to have a consistent set of rules.

That's up to Phil.

> I don't think we lose anything. I think my point was that 
> they should all be consistent, and that there is actually a 
> fair change from Xtreme in several cases here (I don't think 
> that's bad, I'm just pointing it out).
> The specific change I'm mentioning is that bringing up a 
> dialog/bar will by default not put the focus in an editable 
> field / combo (we agreed that should be the default), so 
> Return will not work by default. Also, we agreed non-modals 
> should not close on escape. That's a change for most 
> non-modal dialogs (and, given we get consistency, a change 
> for the better).

Yes agreed.

> Moreover, if we fix it in a general way centrally, those 
> dialogs which perform poorly will stick out like a sore 
> thumb. They may need Xtreme kludges applied locally to the 
> dialog reverted. Or they may need to be special-cased anew 
> but we can try and avoid this.

OK, so we make these changes and just see how the dialogs behave.

Charles