Subject: Re: Pie menus

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1992 21:25:24 -0500

> [ Pie menus ]
>much more easily than moving down a linear menu.  Also, it's much faster,
>since the mouse pointer starts in the right place for all the menu items,
>rather than having the "last chosen" hack currently used.

Note that "last chosen" is not quite the hack you think it is.
It has a very desirable user-interface property.  On the average,
you end up moving the mouse up about half the time, and down
half the time.  This keeps the mouse on your desk.  By contrast,
using J. Random X utility, you continually drift off the bottom,
and have to lift the mouse up and recenter it on your desk.
Repeatedly selecting the same item in a pie menu (imagine a
"page forward" command in ghostview, for example) would still
exhibit this drifting property.  So you'd still want some sort
of "last chosen" default.

>How hard would it be to add a new menu type to sam/libXg?

Try it and see...

---

From: John (For the colours are many, but the light is one.) Mackin <john@ civil.su.oz.au>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1992 21:58:00 -0500

Mike is dead right.  "Last chosen" is abolutely not a `hack.'  I'd
be pleased if Mr Fitzhardinge was a little more careful with his
epithet-slinging.  Not only does it keep the mouse in the same
place on the table, but it also happens to contribute greatly
to the editor's usability, since a single click on B2 repeats
the last B2 action, which is often just what you want for
searching and pasting.

    Try it and see...

Hear, hear!  You want it?  You do it.

OK,
John.