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What is needed is a multi-line capable list field, preset to magically appear on mouseDown over and below an appropriately prepared button that looks like a pulldown.

Fine: put your money where your mouth is and make one for us all to see.

if someone wants a purple headed oxern to pull their cart, who am I to question it ? I just start looking for purple headed oxern

... the rule for barristers; or code vs design
Seems to me that is muchly why Redmond's applications were so bad for so long.

1 ox
2 oxen

Davidv wrote: Fri Mar 12, 2021 12:05 am

if someone wants a purple headed oxern to pull their cart, who am I to question it ? I just start looking for purple headed oxern

... the rule for barristers; or code vs design
Seems to me that is muchly why Redmond's applications were so bad for so long.

Well, I haven't seen all of Richmond's applications, but of the ones I have seen a few looked ok to me. I would say the rest looked like they showed what he wanted, which should be all that matters really.

In this instance, we're discussing HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) and whether it was gospel or not. Your view, that one should never wander out of what is being done *now*, tends to stifle any advancement going forward. Just recently (well, fairly recently from MY POV), that would apply to smart phones for instance. After all, phone design was locked for almost a 100 years before those showed up.

Let's look at what we're talking about specifically though, HIG. You ever watch 'Pirates of the Carribean'? Well, just like in that movie, they are a set of guidelines, not the gospel according to whoever (and, even if they were the gospel according to whoever), why would I adopt their gospel?

Let's look at it from your side, *IF* the HIG were so perfect, how come one set hasn't been adopted by all yet? In fact, I'll go one step further, and ask why they keep evolving?? They certainly are not static in any sense of the word.

Having a menu with multiple selections is hardly going to be the furthest out or differentest intereface <intentional spellings, I love making up new words too > ever seen on the planet, and it isn't even radically different from what is in the HIG. Certainly not when compared to purple oxern.

Just for the record, IANAL <I am not a lawyer>, and there are far more types that would fall under this umbrella such as artists, designers, inventors, kooks, nutballs, humorists, etc. Like that smartphone you have? Well, I'm glad someone thought outside the phone design HIG to provide it, cause the original mobile phone brick looked far different

richmond62 wrote: Fri Mar 12, 2021 12:08 am 1 ox
2 oxen
3 oxern

There, fixed that for you

bogs, where did I write "Richmond"?

Where did I propose a gospel view?

Your misreading of my explicit words and general meaning is remarkably comprehensive. There is really no point to further reply.

My bad, sorry I misinterpreted your reply. Just for the record, the above should be "Redmond", it is just Richmond's misfortune that I was thinking about 'oxern' when formulating the reply heh.

As to the 'gospel' parts, you first said -

Davidv wrote: Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:59 pm I am not aware of multi-line selection from a drop-down (or similar) menu in any of the obvious OS, so wonder at the OP's desire to introduce such a thing here. On the other hand, multi-line selection in a field is commonplace.

What is the case here, the reasons to shift normal operating paradigms for users?

While there certainly might be some meaning there that escapes me other than a reference to the HIG, I didn't see it.

How to do it seems to me of only academic interest, perhaps not a type that should be touched, or perhaps we are going to revolutionise the thinking of Apple, Microsoft, and a million penguins.

Seemed to re-enforce that perception, at least how I read it, and this is the most of what I was replying too. Adding -

... the rule for barristers; or code vs design

Made me think my original statement needed clarification.

Sorry I so horribly misinterpreted what you were saying, but it still looks to me like boiled down, it says the equivalent of -

Why bother thinking up something, when everything you *(should)* need is already thought up by the makers of <choose your indoctrination here>

- but I'll certainly again apologize for that interpretation of your statements

My 5 cents are an example of dropdown with help of a button and list field.
If it is not there then build it with LiveCode
Regards,

Paul

-
Well, it is a start.

This slightly different version with a smooth slide down and up of the selection field.
Based on the Idea of Richmond62 Paul

@Paul.

Right on. Simple to do, and we have discussed this several times in the past.

Paul's gadget can be tweaked just a bit so a user would not be able to distinguish it from a native (but enhanced) pulldown. Just a little cosmetic surgery on the controls. The "mouseLine", er, line, has to hilite. The list field itself has to disappear if the mouse is released. Those sorts of things.

@Jon. Do you need or want to do this? If so, can you do it on your own?

Craig

Thanks Craig. Appreciate it.

I have a few reasons for following HIG guidelines for each OS.

• Support calls are greatly reduced because the controls are familiar and the user knows how to use them.

• Introducing new behaviors for otherwise familiar controls requires additional documentation. No one reads documentation. See above.

• If you are planning to distribute in the App Store or the Mac App Store they will reject the app if it doesn't conform. (See "walled garden.")

• If the control doesn't behave as expected, users will think the feature doesn't exist and, if it's important enough, will delete the app and look for one that works "correctly."

Now if you're inventing something with no precedent then go for it. That's innovation. But if there's an existing convention, you'll save yourself a headache if controls act as expected.

Well, I certainly hope no one drew the conclusion that I think the HIG is either not a good idea, or a complete waste of time from my remarks.

My problem isn't with having a set of guidelines to go by per se, it is when a set of guidelines are placed over the value of answering a question asked.

The answering (or not) part is easy enough, and I don't know anyone qualified to judge whether it is worth doing or not except the person who asked about thing [x], as ultimately they would have to support it.

On the other side of that, if someone asks about xyz, and you think jkl would cover it, there is no problem suggesting looking into jkl and explaining *why* you think it might work better.

HIG are as HIG are . . .

But the HIG that were used to develop the dashboard for cars in 1920 are not the HIG used to design
the dashboard in my Toyota Auris . . .

And Jeff Raskin had a whole set of different ideas . . .

And iconoclasm is generally quite healthy.

cmhjon wrote: Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:17 pm I would like to use a drop down menu style control that allows multiple selections. Is there a control that allows this? I've tried all of the 'menu' controls and none seem to be able to do this?

Menus per se are designed to be retracted once an item within it is clicked. (And as a separate matter, if this menu were to be part of a menu bar it would be extremely difficult to implement on macOS.)

If the panel that you'd like to appear allows any number of clicks, how does the user let this panel know that she's done making selections and close the panel?

Perhaps there would be a button for that? Could such a button be labeled something like "Done", "Select", or "OK"?

And if during the selection process she changes her mind and would like to dismiss the panel without making a selection, could there be a second button labeled "Cancel"?

And since highlighted lines may be ambiguously interpreted, might a column of checkboxes provide greater clarity?

As I think through the details of this interaction, I wonder if what's needed here might just be a dialog window containing a list of checkboxes with "OK" and "Cancel" buttons.