Re: 6 API-ish issues

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com> writes:

> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 09:34:24PM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > 
> > [ GtkEntry selections ]
> > 
> > > GTK+-1.2 had a "selected but not the selection state, drawn in a different
> > > color. (Not SECONDARY, just not in an X selection; SECONDARY would defeat
> > > the purpose since only one app could have SECONDARY.)
> > >
> > > The biggest problem with doing this for GTK+-2.0 is that we already
> > > use two selected colors -- selected/focus, and selected/unfocused.
> > > There's no way users would ever figure this out.
> > 
> > Is selected/unfocused useful? The primary selection is still active and
> > ready to be pasted, even without the focus, so why is it shown shaded?
> 
> One potential reason having a "selected/unfocussed" is useful if that
> the "normal" focus indication for text is the text caret (at least if
> we are using interior focus, which is now the default).  If the text
> is highlighted, it can be much harder to see the text caret (probably
> at the end of the selected highlight box), so the visual indication
> of focus is weakened.  If the selection color changes depending on 
> whether the widget has focus, then the visual focus indication is
> not weakened.

The caret is in fact not drawn at all when text is selected, so yes
the need for focus indication is the main reason for the color change.

Regards,
                                        Owen