Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

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xenic
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by xenic »

samo79 wrote: Well eventually tabs can be provided with a fixed dimention if the problem is that, in some case if a particular strings title are too long one can provide a classical "..." to trunk it at some point in order to make all tabs at the same dimensions and look, an help bubble to read the whole title (like NetSurf) can be provided too if needed .. what kas1e said is pure logic
For one thing, the console is frequently used as a text output mechanism which doesn't even need tabs. The shell is a text oriented object that requires your hands to be on the keybord to enter commands. Why would you want to move one hand to the mouse instead of entering RAmiga-K or Ctrl-/ on the keyboard to close a tab? My only complaint is that I actually need to press 3 keys to move from tab to tab. In order to click RAmiga-V to move to another tab, you need to also hold down the shift key to get a > insead of the lower case character. The next and previous keyboard commands should also work with the lowercase characters under the > and < characters.
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nbache
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by nbache »

xenic wrote:My only complaint is that I actually need to press 3 keys to move from tab to tab. In order to click RAmiga-V to move to another tab, you need to also hold down the shift key to get a > insead of the lower case character. The next and previous keyboard commands should also work with the lowercase characters under the > and < characters.
Don't forget that all this is highly dependent on your (keyboard's) language. On mine, for example, the < is an unshifted character, while the > is the same key, but with Shift. On some keyboards, both < and > are unshifted.

Best regards,

Niels
xenic
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by xenic »

nbache wrote:
xenic wrote:My only complaint is that I actually need to press 3 keys to move from tab to tab. In order to click RAmiga-V to move to another tab, you need to also hold down the shift key to get a > insead of the lower case character. The next and previous keyboard commands should also work with the lowercase characters under the > and < characters.
Don't forget that all this is highly dependent on your (keyboard's) language. On mine, for example, the < is an unshifted character, while the > is the same key, but with Shift. On some keyboards, both < and > are unshifted.Niels
That really complicates selection of keyboard shortcuts for a program. What's convenient on one keyboard is a pain on another. While testing to see if the tab key would switch tabs in the console I notice that OS4 GUI's are really inconsistant. Here is what I saw with tab key usage in various system prefs:
AHI Prefs: Tab key moves between GUI tabs.

PopUpMenu prefs Appearance tab: Tab key moves from gadget to gadget (including the bottom buttons).

PopUpMenu prefs Text tab: Tab key does nothing.

Printer Prefs: Tab key does nothing until you activate a string gadget and then it jumps from string gadget to string gadget and then to the bottom buttons. It skips the radio gadgets that PopUpMenu prefs move through.

Serial Prefs: If you don't activate the string gadget, pressing the Tab key changes your handshaking settings from None to XON/XOFF (nasty cause the user might not notice). If you activate the string gadget, the Tab key moves through activation of the slider knobs and then to the handshaking settings where is changes the setting to XON/XOFF. The botom buttons are never activated. When the sliders get activated by the Tab key, you can change the setting by using the up/down/right/left arrow keys. There isn't any way to activate those sliders to use the arrow keys other than by tabbing to them.

Palette prefs: Tab key does nothing.

DOS Prefs: Tab key does nothing until you activate a string gadget; then you can tab through all the gadgets except checkmark gadgets.

ASL Prefs: Tab key does nothing.

I'm not gong to continue listing differences by I must say OS4 system programs are wildly inconsistent when it comes to the Tab key. You never know what will happen when you hit that key.
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samo79
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by samo79 »

xenic wrote:Why would you want to move one hand to the mouse instead of entering RAmiga-K or Ctrl-/ on the keyboard to close a tab?
Because for example sometimes i may drag directly a folder into the shell in order to reach a particular path, in that moment i'm controlling the mouse so a close gadget can be usefull, however even not to count this specific case i don't see the reason to not add it, it will make the shell looking better and more complete
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by tonyw »

The Close gadget in ClickTabs was added at least a year after the console code was written. The console was the first system component to use Tabs (CodeBench didn't exist then, only OWB). After some discussion, we standardised on a way of closing tabs and the window, a standard that other authors have varied since then.

Rewriting the code to use the new features would not only take precious time, it would have to be tested and maintained, increasing the workload for all concerned.

I am not going to change working, tested code. I have more urgent things to do. Please, let's drop this discussion.
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nbache
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by nbache »

xenic wrote:
nbache wrote:Don't forget that all this is highly dependent on your (keyboard's) language. On mine, for example, the < is an unshifted character, while the > is the same key, but with Shift. On some keyboards, both < and > are unshifted.
That really complicates selection of keyboard shortcuts for a program. What's convenient on one keyboard is a pain on another.
Indeed it does. All (ASCII) letters and all digits are however usually safe bets, and you could argue that a program which needs more menu items than that should probably have its user interface redesigned anyway ;-). Or at least a lot of such menu items might be so rarely used that they don't necessarily need a shortcut. There are of course exceptions. But if we could make developers think along those lines when deciding which menu shortcut keys to use in their program, much would be gained.

Then again, even the good old standard shortcuts from the User Interface Style Guide include RAmiga-? for About. The question mark is a shifted character on many keyboards, including my Danish one. So I need to do RAmiga-Shift-+ to get the About box ...
I must say OS4 system programs are wildly inconsistent when it comes to the Tab key. You never know what will happen when you hit that key.
This is also true, and has been a problem for generations of AmigaOS. I wish there could be made some sort of default tab key handling e.g. in ReAction, where it will always find a good tab sequence through all gadgets in a window, but I'm not sure it can be done. And if not, it would mean that every program would have to contain explicitly defined tab sequences - which is just not realistic.

Best regards,

Niels
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samo79
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Re: Close gadget in shell tabs (and a button to open them)

Post by samo79 »

tonyw wrote:I am not going to change working, tested code. I have more urgent things to do. Please, let's drop this discussion.
Well, tabs in let's say a preferences window is a thing, but tabs in an application is a completely different matter
In case of a statical window you doesn't need any close item on them because it's indeed just a statical window .. i of course believe you when you say it was standardised in the OS in order to just have a plain clickable tab ... but concerning applications a close tab is almost mandatory, that's why all (using tabs) apps in any other platform have a visible close gadget on them
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