bdcribbs
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In the room editor if you copy something and paste it, then try to paste it a second time, it doesn't work. You have to copy it again. You should be able to repeatedly paste the same thing until you copy something else.

mrimer
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That sounds like a good idea -- but you click to paste -- what might you do to say you want to stop pasting?


[Edited by mrimer on 07-10-2003 at 04:31 AM]

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

bdcribbs
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ahh... I didn't realize that, I was stuck in the way I'm accustomed to things working and assumed I had to be holding CTRL-V when I clicked in order for it to paste... I never even tried it without pressing CTRL-V! That explains some weird behavior I thought was a bug

The way I expected it to work was that if I held CTRL-V and clicked, whatever was most recently copied got pasted. But I don't know if that's how it should work. I only expected that because CTRL-V is the conventinal partner to CTRL-C, which doesn't necesarily mean it's a good design.

Another idea is to stay in paste mode until you right-click. But then there should be some visual indication that you are in paste mode.

Then again, using a modifyer on the click to do a paste allows you do to other editing, and later on paste the thing again.

mrimer
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Yeah -- maybe pressing Ctrl-V while clicking to paste an arbitrary number of times would be a clean-cut solution. How about we try that.

As to an indicator -- we could highlight or outline the selected region with some kind of glow or something, but I'm worried about ending up with too many glowing things in the room at a time. That it might get confusing for some users, that is.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

bdcribbs
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If there were some intuitive way to make clear that you were about to paste, I don't think a highlight or outline would be too cluttering.

I've run up against this problem repeatedly recently, certain users will desire a feature that introduces complexity, while other users can't handle that complexity... I don't know an easy way to deal with it.

mrimer
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I've decided the click while holding Ctrl-V is really klunky. So how about just press Ctrl-V, and it will paste starting at the square your mouse cursor is currently over. You could do it an arbitrary number of times.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

StuartK
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mrimer wrote:
I've decided the click while holding Ctrl-V is really klunky. So how about just press Ctrl-V, and it will paste starting at the square your mouse cursor is currently over. You could do it an arbitrary number of times.

Sounds OK, but I don't like that we absolutely rely on mouse-keyboard combinations. That doesn't mean it's not workable, I just don't see a mouse only alternative that remains true to whatever interface convention you're using. I also don't like that pasting doesn't require a positive mouse click, either before or after the paste. But if I'm in a minority of one I'll live with whatever you choose - it's not that often I need to copy+paste something.

FWIW Other alternatives would include pressing Ctrl-V or a 'paste' button then clicking where you want to paste. Or having a room cursor seperate from the selection, so you could define an area for copying, select the destination, then press Ctrl-V, or the onscreen paste button (similar to how copy-paste works in other software I've used e.g. text editors)

Additionally to whatever you choose above, how about a right-click context menu with a short time delay before appearing? This would display available functions like delete (default) define selection area, paste etc if you hold the button down for half a second? That'd suit me fine.

[Edited by StuartK on 07-10-2003 at 08:14 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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All right! I think I've got a good system for this going now. So here's the new system.

Hitting Ctrl-C while the mouse is selecting a room region will mark that region for duplication (as before). After that, hitting Ctrl-V will highlight that region, indicating that on the next mouse click the region will be duplicated to where the mouse clicked. Ctrl-V can be struck at any time (followed by the mouse click to copy) to recopy the previously region an arbitrary number of times.

It seems to work great.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.