Selections BoF

Sunday 29 July 2012

Attendance - Cosimo Cecchi, William Jon McCann, Jakub Steiner, Bastian, Emmanuele, Carlos, Simon from Sugar...

How to differentiate between paste and word selection?

• Tap to place cursor (one handle)
• Long press to select a word (two handles)
• nb - Android seems to do tap to place cursor when between text, but pops up an insert button when at the end of a string

What about select all?

• Android used to present a choice on long press - Select Word / Select All (probably not what we want)

Handle pointing inside a selection with multiple lines - makes it hard to view text, doesn't conceptually fit with "handles"

• For single line selections, both handles could be on the bottom
• Or could we have the handles smaller and the interaction area large?
• When at the bottom of the screen, the handles should be above the selection

Can we expose some of this on non-touch devices? eg. for adjusting selections

Double-click

• Typically selects a word
• Could use double tap for this
• If the initial selection is a word, moving the handle should be by character (not by word)
• It would be better to have consistent behaviour for editable and non-editable text

Triple-click

• Selects the paragraph

Do we want this for list views? - for selecting lists

What about deselection?

• Tap somewhere else? Could be difficult if the surrounding area is packed with responsive elements
• One alternative - eat the click - clicking or pressing somewhere else would have no effect and clear the selection (essentially turning selection into a mode)

Actions

• Problem with current context menus - they are very long
• Should the application provide actions or should they be consistent?
• Current GTK provided context menu - has options for input methods and inserting unicode control characters.
  • Input method options aren't required
  • The unicode characters are only required for mixed language cases
• Clear is strange - hard to understand. The menu should operate on the selection only.
• Delete can be handled by the keyboard.
• Undo doesn't make sense. It's something that's added by the application, not GTK.
• Select All - could make sense
• Sugar needs the actions too
• Should it be icons or text?
• How do you get a context menu on a text entry box?
  • We can't use click and hold for select and for context menus
  • It might be OK to lose the separate context menu that is normally accessed through the right mouse button
    • These options should be available from the gear menu
    • Works with the Documents selection mode - right click selection opens the select mode with the item selected
  • Right click on a selection should always act on that selection
    • For images you should get a context menu that is specific to the image - and not contain generic actions
• Escape key could remove the popup buttons. Pressing Esc a second time would unselect.

Do we need a iOS style magnifier for modifying an insertion point?

Insert button could display what is going to be inserted

Could require that someone clicks/taps the selection in order to display the actions popup

• This would shrink the handles down
• Tapping/clicking the selection again would remove the action popup and the handles would return to their normal size