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[squeak-dev] Mouse Move on a Touch Screen ??

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Jim Rosenberg

[squeak-dev] Mouse Move on a Touch Screen ??

I'm still getting used to my first touch-screen device -- a Nokia N810
(thank you Derek O'Connell!!) I have to say that I am still in a state of
culture shock. After having spent more than 20 years doing various kinds of
arcane things with mouseOvers, I suddenly find myself with a machine in
which it seems not to be possible to move the mouse without the mouse being
"down". Squeak (I'm using 3.8) doesn't seem to be adapted for this. I'm not
finding any preference that will e.g. let me move the mouse with the arrow
keys. Is there a way to do this?

There seems to be a deep assumption in a lot of GUI design that when you
put the mouse down, you intended to do this, but just moving the mouse you
may not be intending to move it to where it is if the mouse button never
went down. Maybe you're just "traveling" somewhere and haven't finished.
Mouse down is a kind of "commitment", that mouse move is not. So, requiring
the mouse to be down in order to move it breaks all kinds of deeply
embedded GUI design decisions.

What are people's thoughts on how to move the mouse on a touch screen
without "touching down" somewhere?

Edgar J. De Cleene

Re: [squeak-dev] Mouse Move on a Touch Screen ??

El 1/11/09 8:16 PM, "Jim Rosenberg" <[hidden email]> escribió:

> I'm still getting used to my first touch-screen device -- a Nokia N810
> (thank you Derek O'Connell!!) I have to say that I am still in a state of
> culture shock. After having spent more than 20 years doing various kinds of
> arcane things with mouseOvers, I suddenly find myself with a machine in
> which it seems not to be possible to move the mouse without the mouse being
> "down". Squeak (I'm using 3.8) doesn't seem to be adapted for this. I'm not
> finding any preference that will e.g. let me move the mouse with the arrow
> keys. Is there a way to do this?
>
> There seems to be a deep assumption in a lot of GUI design that when you
> put the mouse down, you intended to do this, but just moving the mouse you
> may not be intending to move it to where it is if the mouse button never
> went down. Maybe you're just "traveling" somewhere and haven't finished.
> Mouse down is a kind of "commitment", that mouse move is not. So, requiring
> the mouse to be down in order to move it breaks all kinds of deeply
> embedded GUI design decisions.
>
> What are people's thoughts on how to move the mouse on a touch screen
> without "touching down" somewhere?

I guess we need resurrect Genie, but is only a guess.

Edgar

Hans-Martin Mosner

Re: [squeak-dev] Mouse Move on a Touch Screen ??

In reply to this post by Jim Rosenberg

Jim Rosenberg schrieb:
> What are people's thoughts on how to move the mouse on a touch screen
> without "touching down" somewhere?
>
>
My guess: Just don't try, you'll fail.
A touch screen GUI needs to be usable without mouse-overs, and even
dragging with mouse down is often not desirable.
I have used Squeak to implement an end-user application for recording
live audio to hard disk (and then creating CDs or MP3 files for portable
players). This application has a 8.4" 800x600 touchscreen display. GUI
design needs to take into account that people's fingers sometimes have
remarkable thickness (30 pixel height for buttons is considered too
small by some users). And everything has to work on mouse clicks (or
finger presses) only.
For an end-user application, these requirements can be met with relative
ease, but I would not want to program with such an input device. As
Edgar said, Genie might be a reasonable choice, but then you'd have to
define a complete gestural interaction language. There does not seem to
be a standard for that, unlike mouse interaction, where there mostly is
a consensus on how it works.

Cheers,
Hans-Martin

Derek O'Connell-2

Re: [squeak-dev] Mouse Move on a Touch Screen ??

In reply to this post by Jim Rosenberg

On my notebook the touch-pad is perfectly usable with Squeak. Putting
a finger on it does not generate a mouse-click at the first instance
and I can move the pointer around then lift and touch down again for a
short period to get a left click. My guess is this behaviour is
determined at driver level but I will look soon to see if it can be
replicated on the N810. This is only a part solution for general
Squeak usage though because things need scaling for such a small
screen... we need a "Mobile Squeak" edition.

Genie works fine on the Nokia tablets but again the GUI needs
rehashing for the small screen.

DOC