Aven Bug (well, interface issues at least)

[Olly Betts]

On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 02:46:48PM +0000, Mark Shinwell wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 02:08:38PM +0000, Wookey wrote:
> > > Right click to centre makes intuitive sense to me - right button drag
> > > pans the view, and "centre on station" is really "pan so that this
> > > station is in the centre of the window".
> > 
> > I'd agree with that - certainly my initial reaction for how to change this.
> > Don't forget PDA users though. They still need some way of doing it with a
> > one-button interface. button-modifiers to get right-click is one option but
> > some way of doing it even with one button ought to remain even it's not very
> > convenient.
> 
> Personally I'm not convinced about right click to centre: the right
> button dragging thing is supposed to be like a normal "canvas drag"
> operation, and I can't think of any other application implementing such
> operations (ghostview, acroread etc.) which behaves in the way
> suggested.

That's probably because ghostview and acroread don't have a "centre on
survey station" feature (or anything remotely like it).  They also don't
provide 3D manipulation features.

And to be honest, ghostview and acroread are two of the worst designed
and uglist looking UIs I regularly have inflicted upon me so I don't
think either is something to aspire to model too closely.

A 3D CAD package might provide a better insight into how others have
solved a similar UI problem.

> (Not that I'm suggesting that the current behaviour is much good either!)
> 
> Things like this really need to be customisable by the user -- then the
> PDA problem goes away...

Even if we do, we still need a default binding.  And it ought to be a
good one as a lot of people won't mess with the bindings, either through
lack of knowledge of how to, or through slackness (I rarely bother
changing the UI bindings on software).  In some ways, it's the first
impression a new user gets of the software that matters, and that will
be with the default bindings.

Cheers,
    Olly