Re: IRB GUI on OSX?

On Monday 07 December 2009 09:55:09 pm Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
> Oh, those are Mac OS standard keystrokes for switching *windows*, not
> *tabs*.  I think there's a keystroke to switch tabs, but I don't know
> what it is b

Ah. I distinctly remember a preference within Terminal, for switching to the 
previous and next Terminal window. Maybe that's changed.

> >  - Sloppy focus
> 
> As in focus follows mouse?  God, NO!

It's a personal preference, one you're lucky enough to share with Steve Jobs. 
But this fits into that ideological problem -- with KDE, you can click a 
checkbox to enable or disable sloppy focus. With open source, you can add that 
checkbox if it isn't there. With OS X, you WILL do it the Apple Way, because 
it's Just Better.

And no, not focus follows mouse. Sloppy focus. The difference is that the 
focus isn't lost when you mouse over the desktop, it only changes when you 
mouse over another window.

Also, I don't have it auto-raise. That would be annoying.

> I've bumped the mouse too many times.

I don't bump my USB mouse -- or at least, if I bump it, it's intentional. If I 
bumped my trackpad, I'm as likely to "tap" (and click) as to move, so I've 
just taught myself not to bump it.

> >  - WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out "pack left" or "grow pack" on
> > KDE --
> > really can't live without them now)
> 
> I'll look those up.  But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there's no
> easy way to remind oneself of them?

System Settings -> Keyboard. Or look for them in the menus. Or, in any KDE 
app, Settings -> Configure Shortcuts -- most apps will also have a Configure 
Global Shortcuts, which is nice, too.

Quick overview: "pack left", or "pack <direction>", means "Move this window in 
this direction as far as it can go without bumping into the edge of another 
window, or the edge of a screen." It's a very quick, very intuitive way of 
organizing my windows.

Similar with "grow pack", vertically and horizontally -- a quick way to get 
the windows tiled just so. Maybe one day I'll switch to a tiling window 
manager, but I still like using the mouse to manually rearrange things. 
Stupidly simple example: Opening a new "compose" window is probably going to 
be small-ish. I don't want it to take over my entire screen, but I'd like to 
at least grow it vertically. For me, that's win+up to move it to the top of 
the screen, then win+q to grow it downwards -- two keystrokes and it's done. 
On the wrong side of the screen? Win+right.

Also, I'm not sure if OS X has this yet, but I'm pretty sure Windows doesn't: 
Alt+click anywhere in the window and drag to move the window.

> >  - Middle-click to paste currently-selected text. In ANY application.
> 
> No easier and no harder than Cmd-V.

First, Cmd-V doesn't do that. It pastes the contents of the clipboard. If I 
hit ctrl+C first, then ctrl+V, I can do the same thing -- just as you have to 
hit Cmd-C first.

And second, it is easier, sometimes. If my hand's already on the mouse to 
highlight the text, and I've now moved to another window, I don't even need to 
raise (or focus) that window, I just find where I want to paste (maybe use the 
mouse wheel to scroll) and middle-click, I don't even have to navigate the 
cursor there. I don't ever have to take my hand off the mouse.

It's similar to the advantage of dragging and dropping text, though I never 
got the hang of that.

Compare to the typical: Highlight with the mouse, ctrl+c, click on the other 
window, click somewhere inside the text area you want to paste (probably 
somewhere specific to move the cursor there, ctrl+v. MUCH slower.

Now, I don't dispute the keyboard method -- if I'm already navigating with the 
keyboard here, it's easy enough for me to select some text with shift+arrows 
(maybe shift+ctrl+arrows and/or home/end), ctrl+c (or ctrl+x), alt-tab 
somewhere else (or use arrows again), and ctrl+v. But that only works if the 
thing to paste to is within easy keyboard range (easy to alt-tab to) -- if I'm 
going to use the mouse anyway, may as well use middle click.

> >  - Workspaces that work well.
> 
> So do Leopard's Spaces, AFAIK.  I don't use the feature on either OS.

It's been awhile, so I don't remember exactly what was broken. I do remember 
that Leopard's Spaces weren't as good as just about any Linux concept of 
workspaces.

> >  - Binary package managers for everything. On OS X, I had maybe 10-15
> > apps
> > that didn't autoupdate, so I had to manually check.
> 
> Virtually everyone is using some sort of autoupdate now, and for those
> that don't, there's AppFresh.

Ah, so at least the usability issue is gone.

All that's left is my purist rage about how bloated a .app folder is. I like 
my package managers to handle dependencies, so I actually have _shared_ 
libraries, rather than baking everything into the app.

> >  - I can boycott Apple for what they've done with the iPhone.
> 
> I love my iPhone (unjailbroken, though slightly tweaked).  I don't think
> apple has done everything right with it, but I see no reason for a
> boycott.

Biggest reason is the app store.

First, that users can only purchase apps through it. Or, for that matter, only 
download _free_ apps through it.

And second, that the approval process seems so freakishly random that even if 
I didn't have the "free as in free" problem (seriously, they want DRM in MY 
PHONE?), I'd be terrified to actually try to develop something for it. It 
really looks like I might get approved or rejected on a whim, whether or not I 
was accepted before.

But Apple is starting to get on my nerves generally -- I'm just seeing more 
and more proprietary stuff. I mean, they're _more_ proprietary than Windows. I 
mean, my Apple keyboard (that I'm typing this on) has firmware, and I can only 
update that firmware from a Mac. (Plus, it comes with a USB extension cable 
that can only be used with this keyboard, not even with itself!)

This kind of attitude is pervasive -- I get the feeling that if Apple thought 
they could get away with it, they'd replace freely downloadable Mac software 
with an App Store for your Mac.

> > I could go on, though it'd get progressively sillier (wobbly windows).
> > Probably the number one reason is that I will, at some point, be able to
> > add
> > that feature I want to my window manager, or write one that supports it.
> > (Haven't gotten around to it yet.) On the other hand, Apple are the only
> > ones
> > who can implement true sloppy focus on OS X,
> 
> Untrue.  Plenty of people have released kernel hacks for Mac OS;

A kernel app is different than a GUI shell hack.

> I
> understand some apps even have a sloppy focus option

Yes, but it's up to the app. For example, Terminal.app does have a sloppy 
focus option. If any Terminal window has focus, you can configure it such that 
mousing over another Terminal window will switch to it.

But this leaves several problems:

First of all, it's up to the app. Safari doesn't have this, so I can't mouse 
over a Safari window and then over a Terminal window. I wouldn't be at all 
surprised if Terminal was the only non-X11 app to offer this.

Second, the app has to have the foreground. So the above probably wouldn't 
work either -- it'd be more like, if Safari was already in the foreground, I 
could mouse over another Safari window to switch to it -- but I'd still have 
to click (or cmd+tab) to get to Terminal.

Finally, even if every app supported this, it would still have to be 
configured in every app -- or you'd have to come up with a sloppy focus 
framework, such that every app that could support this can be triggered by one 
setting in System Settings.

Oh, and you still couldn't do focus-follows-mouse, unless you hacked the 
desktop to allow it.

So I could hack this on, badly, if I convince every app I use to support a 
common framework for allowing this one feature that not everyone even likes...

Or Apple could add the feature globally, adding one little checkbox to System 
Settings, and be done with it.

Or I could use Linux, where this feature is already here. And for that matter, 
I mentioned my interest in tiling window managers -- cool concept, would take 
a bit of retraining my brain to get used to it -- would OS X ever support it? 
Probably not, but see, on OS X, it's not up to me. On Linux, it is.