[GNUe-dev] Intuitive behaviour in Forms

[Reinhard Mueller]

Hi all,

after working with forms for some while now, there are some points where
I think forms doesn't behave intuitively and should be changed:

* When an entry receives the focus, the whole text in the entry should
become selected.

* Personally, I regard it as quite unintuitive that cursor keys navigate
through the records. A more intuitive reaction to cursor-up and
cursor-down could be:
1. if the focus is in a multi-line entry, and we aren't at the
first/last line, move a single line up/down.
2. otherwise, if the focus is in a widget with more than one row, and we
aren't in the first/last record, move a row (= a record) up/down
3. otherwise, move one entry up/down

* Also, an intuitive behaviour for the return key could be:
1. if the focus is in a multi-line entry, insert a newline
2. otherwise, if the focus is on a button, press that button
3. otherwise, if the form has a default button (which could be set by a
trigger), press the default button
4. otherwise, move to the next entry

An idea how this could be cleanly implemented:
Every GFObject defines a method "processEvent" that gets an event as a
parameter and returns a boolean whether the event was processed or not.
As GFInstance receives an event, it passes that to the object currently
having the focus, and does normal processing if that object didn't "take
away" the event.
Of course, we would have to define a new event "requestRETURN" to be
able to distinguish <Tab> and <Return> keys on GF* level.

What would others think about this?

Thanks,
-- 
Reinhard Mueller
GNU Enterprise project
http://www.gnue.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No army can stop an idea whose time has come.
        -- Victor Hugo, 1802-1885

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