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List:       kde-panel-devel
Subject:    Re: n+1st report about arrow keys in krunner
From:       Jacopo De Simoi <wilderkde () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-03-07 13:18:18
Message-ID: 201003071418.19156.wilderkde () gmail ! com
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OK, this morning I tried some quick hacks to see how this looks in practice and I \
have a few comments already:

1) binding focus of the first item with focus of the Combobox feels really natural so \
I'd commit to trunk as soon as I clean up the code.

2) using the down arrow to go down the result list directly from the combobox is also \
quite ok, it works and feels very natural for the single runner mode (since you have \
no history there). However there are a few issues which I encountered playing around \
                with it in "regular" mode
  * as far as I can tell KHistoryCombobox gives no clue about wheter text has been \
entered by the user or has been selected from the history. This makes detecting \
"pressing Down without any further entry in the history" quite complicated in \
                practice (unless we are willing to subclass the historycombobox or \
                change the libs).
  * suppose there is a bunch of results and the user presses down several times; then \
the user wants to come back to the combobox and presses up several+1 times by \
accident.. suddenly the previous element in history is selected, results are changed, \
the user is now very confused.

A solution would be to act "symmetrically", i.e. to go back in history if and only if \
                the down key has *not* been used to scroll down the list.
Con: adding further conditions may lead to rather non-intuitive behavior for a user \
which needs both features...

Another solution would be to change the shortcuts for the history handling (e.g. add \
                a modifier)
Con: krunner should be thought as a minicli, and up/down in a minicli are supposed to \
handle history

Let me know your opinions 

__J

P.S.
Sorry if the code is not yet ready for trunk, I had only time to try some chainsaw \
patching here and there; in any case I feel it's constructive to post my impressions \
here and hope for some smart feedback. Of course I can attach a patch if you're \
willing to try it out on your local copy.

> Am Samstag 27 Februar 2010 23:09:57 schrieb Jacopo De Simoi:
> > If (and only if) pressing Down without any further entry in the history,
> > then it could move the focus to the first entry in the list.
> I would change to: If (and only if) pressing Down without any further entry in 
> the history AND the Up key has not been used in this selection session.
> 
> If a user just presses down it can be expected he wants to use the list. If he 
> used the up key before pressing the down key, he wants to browse the history. 
> So if he reaches the end of the history list again, we can expect that he 
> still wants to browse the history and not the list.
> 
> (Oh and thanks for the hint with the history browsing. Did not know about it - 
> very useful feature ;-)
> 
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