Templot Club Archive 2007-2020
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posted: 25 Jul 2019 20:11 from: Martin Wynne
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Hands up everyone who makes much use of the CTRL+click function on the trackpad? To centre the trackpad on the clicked location. Thought not. Me neither. It's easy to forget that in the early days of Templot monitor screens tended to be much smaller than now. And Windows95 did not support the mouse wheel -- in fact a lot of mouses* didn't have a wheel. So functions to navigate the screen precisely were neccesary. Nowadays most of us are able to spread a trackplan across a wide screen monitor, and precise positioning isn't need. The reason I ask is that while making the latest Xplain yesterday, it dawned on me just how often I was clicking make the control. Which works fine, but it's a bit tedious. There is the M key shortcut, but that still requires the background template to be drawn highlighted, and for the pop-up menu to appear. While eating my lunch in the garden today, it occurred to me that the CTRL+click function was effectively spare nowadays, and could be used to do make the control directly if CTRL+clicked on a background template. It was too hot to stay in the garden, so this afternoon I have implemented this change. It was fairly straightforward to do, which worries me because diving into code I haven't looked at for 20 years is always fraught with hidden dangers and unforeseen consequences.  In fact it works fine. So much so that it's another of those changes which I can't understand why I didn't do years ago. Holding down the CTRL key you can click on any background template one after another, and it is immediately transferred to the control template. With no effect on any other existing functions. In effect this is a half-way house to the make-on-click mode, without the difficulties that has for partial templates. It will be in the next program update. The only issue outstanding being how best to indicate a key held down in the videos and Xplains? I can't see any way to avoid a text note alongside the mouse cursor every time. p.s. 1. centreing the trackpad on a mouse click location is still available via the trackpad > zoom/view > select trackpad centre... menu item. p.s. 2. CTRL+click still works to terminate a mouse action, even if over a background template. * plural of computer mouse is mouses.  cheers, Martin. |
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posted: 25 Jul 2019 20:34 from: Rob Manchester
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Hi Martin, In all my 37+ years working in IT we never called a box full of hand-controlled pointy/clicky things 'a box of mouses' - it was always a box of mice. I thought the plural question came up a few years back and it was thought that mouse was the singular and mice the plural. I am sticking to what I know But the main point of the post seems very logical, look forward to the update containing it. Rob |
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posted: 25 Jul 2019 20:51 from: Martin Wynne
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Rob Manchester wrote: In all my 37+ years working in IT we never called a box full of hand-controlled pointy/clicky things 'a box of mouses' - it was always a box of mice. I thought the plural question came up a few years back and it was thought that mouse was the singular and mice the plural. I am sticking to what I knowHi Rob, When a word is adopted for a new meaning, irregular and non-standard plurals are abandoned in favour of standard English. Hence, plural of forum is fora when you are talking about Roman town squares, and forums when they are web sites such as this. Plural of mouse is mice when they are small furry animals, and mouses when they are electronic devices. Or not. I do remember seeing MOUSES over a shelf in I think PC World or Maplin, and also in a computer catalogue. I have an old box labelled Mouses in my computer stuff. But it's too hot to bother much. cheers, Martin. |
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posted: 25 Jul 2019 22:26 from: John Lewis
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Martin wrote: "The only issue outstanding being how best to indicate a key held down in the videos and Xplains? I can't see any way to avoid a text note alongside the mouse cursor every time." Martin I think you need to invent a "finger on the CTRL button" emoji :-). John |
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