[LAD] Mouse/knob interaction

[Olivier Guilyardi]

On 09/10/2010 02:37 AM, Loki Davison wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Olivier Guilyardi <list at samalyse.com> wrote:

>> Actually, I used the fansliders before, in the very same place :) But there were
>> two things that I didn't like:
>> - the way they look, especially when unfolded, those ugly/huge shapes around
>> - the fact that unwanted changes happen when you go away to gain precision
>>
>> That's why I made those sliders IIRC. You have increased precision right after
>> clicking, you don't need to move away for that. Plus, with the way they are
>> integrated and some mouse magic, it doesn't matter if the window is closed to a
>> screen border or not. And I think they look neat ;)
> 
> Fansliders are lovely ideas, but the current implementation is pretty
> crappy, and I haven't look at the code in years and didn't have a
> clear idea about what I was doing with it last time anyway. Now that x
> composite is a lot more common it would be easier. I'm surprised
> Thorsten hasn't jumped in to the knob discussion yet. If anyone else
> wants to fix fan sliders feel free to give me a yell.

Since I used fan sliders in my app, I've been thinking a lot about them, and I'm
not sure they're such a great idea, for the reasons outlined above. And I saw
some sound engineers getting really confused when first trying them. But this
might be because they were just surprised.

> I still think knobs are pretty evil though. :)

Well, as I previously said, I think that knobs can make sense in certain
situations. So I'd rather see the phat knob improved ;) I think that's a really
cool widget, it provides a very clear visual indication, but it only supports
the circle movements.

It would be great if there were runtime options to customize the phat knob
behavior, to also support up/down and/or left/right, fine-tuning with a key
modifier, etc..

Providing alternative styles would also be very cool.

--
  Olivier