[13902] in Athena Bugs
Bad resolution to Defect number 10262
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Thu Oct 5 00:49:10 1995
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 00:49:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: motif-defect@osf.org
Cc: alexp@MIT.EDU, bugs@MIT.EDU, mattf@MIT.EDU, sandstro@cac.washington.edu
OSF Problem Report
=================================
Submitter Information (Include Email address at miminum)
---------------------
Submitter Name: Bill Cattey
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Email Address: wdc@mit.edu
Phone: 617-253-0140
OSF License Number: 23
Hardware/Software Configuration
-------------------------------
Offering and Version: Motif 1.2.5
Component (Module): Toolkit -- TextField Widget
Client Hardware: Platform independent.
Client Software:
Server Hardware:
Server Software:
Compiler:
Problem Description
-------------------
MIT (and many places around the world) uses a Motif Application Willow
written by the University of Washington. In fact, MIT and UW
collaborate on its development.
We try to keep Willow built on the most up-to-date version of Motif, but
it is sometimes a difficult thing. The worst situation occurs when the
Motif user interface architects decide that their model of the world is
more important than the ease or comfort of people running applications
built on Motif.
Back in July 1994 I opened trouble ticket 19394 asking:
> I would be grateful if someone could explain to me why the following
> actions are available in the XmText widget but not in the XmTextField
> widget:
> kill-previous-word, kill-next-word, kill-to-end-of-line, kill-selection, unkill
> ALL of these are functions we expect our users to want in such things as
> file dialog boxes.
Kevin Till replied:
> TextField is intended to be a light-weight text editor. In order to
> improve performance, some of the actions are from Text is not included.
> Only the documented actions are implemented in TextField.
Eventually we closed the issue with enhancement request number 9824
which was to make USE_TEXT_IN_DIALOG a runtime resource. I was told:
> Please go and chat with the Motif 2.0 folks. My understanding is that
> the COSE standards people imposed a REQUIREMENT that this behavior be
> run-time settable behavior for the COSE compliant Motif.
Now we have Motif 1.2.5. Defect 10262 documents how, not only is
USE_TEXT_IN_DIALOG not a run-time resource, the code assumes that if
CDE_FILESB is enabled, USE_TEXT_IN_DIALOG can NEVER operate.
The justification for this as reported by David Lewis was:
>thisappears to be the CDE style.
This seems insufficient justification. The line in the CDE standard
where this inconsistency is mandated should have been quoted so we could
go to the standards body and FIX a broken standard!
----
There is a simple principle here:
USERS DO NOT KNOW THE INTERNALS OF DIALOG BOXES.
USERS DO NOT KNOW THE INTERNALS OF APPLICATIONS.
USERS WANT CONSISTENT INTERFACES AND SHOULD NEVER
BE BOTHERED WITH KNOWING INTERNALS.
At some point, someone decided to drop kill-previous-word,
kill-next-word, kill-to-end-of-line, kill-selection, unkill from the
widget that accepts text input in a dialog box.
Users of Willow specifically expect to be able to do multiple word
deletes and restore ANYWHERE THEY TYPE TEXT. People at MIT and at UW
have had a very frustrating time providing this functionality.
Will some kind programmer PLEASE make the TextField and the Text widget
support the missing FIVE functions.
I will be happy to help the setters of the various Motif standards
understand about consistent interfaces irrespective of the internals.
This is something that sells a LOT of Macintosh software, and inspires a
lot of snide comments about the people who produce Motif standards. We
owe it to our users to program it right.
PLEASE HELP
-Bill Cattey
