Re: selectable labels

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:

> Though maybe it makes sense if we say that selectable labels should
> only be used when you really have data that's likely to get
> copied. i.e. labels that are just tags for GUI elements shouldn't be
> selectable, selectable labels should be used e.g. for displaying the
> current time or some other variable data. At that point it could make
> sense to say that you can put key focus on the label.

<devil's advocate>

Fair comment-- but isn't that exactly what text fields are for?  You can
already put dynamically-variable text in a text field (non-editable if
need be), at which point I assume it should support selection, copying
and inclusion in the tab sequence by default?  

The only addition you would have to make to the text field widget then
is a "don't draw a border around me" flag, if there isn't such a thing
already, for cases where you really didn't want one... but the border
itself is a good visual cue that you can select and copy from this text,
even if you can't actually edit it.  But with ordinary labels, how can
you tell which ones you can copy from and which you can't, without
actually trying?

</da>

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771