Lots of Cool RR functionality, can we enhance button event model?

ruairi · 04-04-2005, 02:16 PM

I am really impressed by the functionality being squeezed into RR. So much so that my customised skin is getting really cluttered with buttons, there are buttons everywhere!

I'd like to keep my skin as minimal and uncluttered as possible. How about adding to the button functionality so that we can mimic multiple features in one button. Here's the idea:

1. press a button (normal button)
2. press and hold a button (something like a right click on a mouse)

If there is a press and hold option, you could set the hold time in RR.ini so a user can set their preferred single click time, hold click time, and maybe a cancel click timeout. The press and hold could be translated into a right click for the skin editor/designers, for example L & R syntax in each filename.skin file, with the default being L so all the existing skins are backwardly compatible.

There is a further extension for button clicks which maybe a step to far: each button holds a state value: click it once -> state one, click it twice -> state two, click it three times -> state three, etc... Each state is a different RR function and once a key is pressed it waits a few milliseconds just incase it is pressed again. Kind of like the functionality for a mobile phone keyboard. This enhanced button event model would allow use to build skins with very few buttons and a minimalist feel. To assist the user we'd need a display of the current state of the currently pressed button.

What do you guys think? Guino, is this feasible?

I was a big fan of the ZX81, I remember the good old days!

guino · 04-04-2005, 02:57 PM

possible yes.. if I intend to add this.. not for now.. the reason is that adding complex functionality to buttons like states press/hold adds a great deal of complexity to the usage of the software -- worse than cuttering the screen with buttons .. if a screen is getting crowded with buttons, I suggest grouping your functions that are alike in different screens -- if they relate to the same playlist etc, then you should make screens that are exactly the same (but with different buttons etc) when pressing a "switch" button, this new screen is loaded and it would basically look like that "panel" or part of the screen changed only. You can even implement this state thing by doing the same.. to be more specific: make something like Audio_player.skin, Audio_player2.skin and Audio_player3.skin... then make them exactly alike (as to looks) and then make a button in there that loads Audio_player2.skin and in that one, a button that loads Audio_player3.skin (and that one loads Audio_player.skin). Although I don't recommend doing such thing, it should be possible to do what you want .. I'd at most recommend making a "menu" with functions just like the radio functions menu.

ruairi · 04-04-2005, 03:45 PM

Fair point.

Good idea about the multiple skins/menu. I'll leave it for the moment.