Re: Linking Manipulate to arrow keys?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg101932] Re: Linking Manipulate to arrow keys?
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:56:37 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <h42u3p$pba$1@smc.vnet.net>
In article <h42u3p$pba$1 at smc.vnet.net>, John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com> wrote: > On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:13:37 -0400 (EDT), AES wrote: > > Any simple way to link the "+" and "-" (Step Forward and Step Backward) > > buttons in a discrete (or even continuous) Manipulation to the Right > > Arrow and Left Arrow keys on your keyboard? > > If the presence of a Manipulate were to steal the focus of the entire > application, I'd be inclined to agree with you. But recall that it's > still part of a fully interactive and editable document. the arrow keys > are still useful for editing and selection, both outside and inside the > Manipulate. Examples inside the Manipulate include the InputFields > driving the sliders and the actual content of the Manipulate. > > Also, it would be awkward if you had multiple sliders...which slider are you > presently changing? > > One reasonable and non-confusing way to do something like this would be to > support keyboard focus on the controls directly. This is done obviously and > ubiquitously in standard dialog box interfaces under Windows/X, and is also > possible on the Mac (although I believe you may have to turn on some sort of > special accessibility mode to affect sliders and such). This is certainly > something we're interested in incorporating into Mathematica-generated UIs > (including, but not limited to, Manipulate), but I can't guarantee when > you'll see it happen. > > Sincerely, > > John Fultz John, Thanks much for a helpful, informative, and straightforward reply. I can appreciate that the considerations you describe would complicate implementing the capability I inquired about . But at the same time, key-stroke-activated stepping is such an obviously useful capability for any kind of "live" demonstration or live display or live experimentation; and this capability is so widely (near universally) available in innumerable other apps (surely you've key-stepped forward and back through slide shows animations, or Quicktime movies) that it sure would be nice if Manipulate could "just do it" also. [Moving one meta level higher, I'd have to say that, for me anyway, the inherent difficulties you cite in doing this provide one more illustration -- a minor one but not trivial one -- of why Conrad Wolfram's idea that Mathematica should be a single, total, universal system for doing everything (rather than taking some much more modular approach) is a fundamentally misguided and generally bad idea.] But thanks again for an informative reply. --AES