[LAD] a case for a knob control standard?

[hermann]

Am Dienstag, den 28.09.2010, 18:44 +0100 schrieb pete shorthose:
> if there was a standard that described the expected behavior of commonly 
> used
> (or just useful) knob control methods, perhaps in the form of a short draft
> specification on freedesktop.org, would people (ie developers) use it?
> 
> expectations and requirements clearly differ so we would probably need to
> gather together and discuss those in use with a mind to removing or 
> combining
> similar methods, explicitly naming them and defining their behavior in the
> abstract. if we required that applications implement a set few methods as
> configurable options (as a minimum) in order to comply then we might 
> eventually
> see the back of the unpredictable mess we have now. it wouldn't matter 
> how they
> are configured, be it gconf, dotfile, command line, prefs dialog, env 
> variable..
> as long as it could be done.
> 
> worth thinking about or is it just too niche? are the actual real world
> applications too varied and specific to make it useful?
> 
> for example it would certainly be nice to crack open a library config
> or application prefs window and assign VLMC (vertical linear motion 
> control*)
> to the left mouse button and RMC (radial motion control*)
> to shift + left mouse button, and have those conform to the expected 
> standards.
> or even just to set KNOB_CONTROL_METHOD=RMC in your global environment
> and have all the adherent applications just do what you expect.
> 
> it seems to me that standards (of the mutually agreed rather than officially
> sanctioned variety, since the latter is impractical) provide the best means
> to bring about common behavior in sovereign systems. naturally it would be
> completely platform independent.
> just having named control methods with explicitly defined behavior may 
> help matters
> too.
> 
> cheers,
> pete.
> 
> *crappy names i'm sure, but you get the idea.

Sound's like a good Idea, but I believe that it would only work when
standard GUI tool-kits provide the knob control functions. That will be
the first step to standardise knobs/circular controllers.