[LAD] Mouse/knob interaction

[Gordon JC Pearce]

On Tue, 2010-09-07 at 19:34 +0100, Folderol wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 13:23:17 -0500 (CDT)
> "Gabriel M. Beddingfield" <gabrbedd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, 7 Sep 2010, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> > 
> > > This is going to stir up a bit of discussion!
> > >
> > > Rotary knob GUI elements - should you move the mouse in a circle to
> > > operate them, or up and down?  What about side to side?
> > 
> > My opinion...
> > 
> > circle: no.
> > up and down: yes.
> > scroll wheel: yes.
> > left and right: up to you.
> > 
> > -gabriel
> 
> Hate the things. Would much prefer a neat collection of sliders and/or
> spin boxes.

Never going to happen.  Numbers are the worst possible way to represent
an "analogue" value.

I don't care if Fc is 1752.7Hz - I care if it's "about quarter up".

> In the real world you grab a knob with your fingers and have real
> precise *tactile* control. This is nothing like a computer
> representation, so why try to fake it?

Instant visual recognition of configured values.

> A compact 2000 step spin box would be rather hard (and expensive) to
> implement in the real world, and how would it deal with direct entry of
> numbers? It works perfectly on a GUI.

I can show you a compact 2000-step spin box -
http://www.rigpix.com/icom/ic2e.htm

Okay, so the least-significant digit is only ever 0 or 5, and not all of
the ten possibilities for the most-significant digit are valid.  Have
you never seen those thumbwheel switches before?  They crop up on old
external SCSI drives.  I have one of those radios sitting on my bench
right in front of me ;-)

Gordon MM0YEQ