[linux-audio-dev] Sliders

[Dave Robillard]

On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 13:03, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> Hello again!
> 
> The discussion about linear or radial mouse movement for 
> knobs finaly got me to mockup an idea i had in my mind 
> for sometime already.
> 
> For now I call it fan sliders:
> http://wrstud.urz.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-06-10_fan_slider_01.png
> 
> It's all about concept, not style.
> 
> The idea is to allow rather small sliders, but on mouse-down lines from 
> top and button appear on one side (important for making the feature 
> discoverable). Outside of the inital slider the pointer position is indicated 
> by the crossing middle and vertical line. The straight horizontal extension 
> is only meant to make reading easier. So up/down is value change, outwards 
> increases precision (can of course be turned for stuff like pan).
> 
> If the graphics do not fit on the screen, it still can work because the 
> value is indicated by the initial slider and inclination of the center line 
> (well, at least I hope so).
> 
> Default expansion direction should be reading direction, but moving the 
> pointer out on the other side could make it turn over. Close to the right 
> screen edge the behaviour could be as known from menus.
> 
> The first mockup has a slider where the dragable part is clearly defined. 
> The second gives a stronger sense of value, but is not clear about where  
> to click (I propose everywhere on the slider area, always grabbing the  
> actual value. No special behaviour like known from scrollbars).
> It's also more space efficient, because the whole are can be used (with 
> the other one a half button must be spared on both ends each.)
> 
> For those concerned about precision of pointer movement / inadvertently
> changes to precision while adjusting value:
> Instead of linear spreading out, it could be stepped (lines looking like 
> stairs). But that would be much less elegant.
> 
> 
> Comments, please!
> 
> ---
> Thorsten Wilms

I think that's a really good idea.. the 'base' slider could be really
small (ie the size of a knob), but the movement would be linear, and
with variable precision.. and it seems like it would be immediately
obvious how to use the thing.

It'd be a pain to implement though.  Can Gtk/Qt even do stuff like this?

-DR-