Again, I am pleased with the crisp appearance of the
IDE on Mac, but ...
0 I wish that Command+w would close windows, and this
still does not work at all.
1a Keystrokes to get to and execute the default menus
works great. For example I can press Control+F2 and the
Apple menu is selected provided I have in focus a .ijs or
.ijx window. And once that Apple menu is selected I can use
the left and right arrow keys to navigate between menus, the
up and down arrows to select within any menu, and then the
space bar to select (execute) a menu selection. This is very
good.
1b However, once I open a dialog box such as File|Open
I begin to lose keystroke functionality. For example in
File|Open the Tab key does not allow me to cycle among
controls, I am stuck in the file list box. Furthermore, in
the file list box, if I arrow down, I get stuck and cannot
move as soon as the filename selected is NOT followed
immediately by a file of the required format. So, if for
example the file format selected is "Scripts (.ijs)" then if
the current filename is program.ijs and the next filename is
program.ijs~ then I get stuck and cannot move up or down
from program.ijs .
1c In the Studio applications such as Demos... once I
see the "Demos Select" dialog box, I cannot use the keyboard
to select a demo *until* I use the mouse to first select a
demo in the listbox. After first clicking with the mouse in
the listbox, I can use the arrow keys to move around in the
listbox and then click the Tab key to move to the Ok or
Cancel button and then press the Spacebar to activate
whichever button is selected. But I cannot use the Tab key
to reenter the listbox to change my demo selection. I have
noticed this behavior several times (the Tab key allowing
cycling between controls, but not into a listbox control
-- only out of a listbox).
2 When using the Find dialog box, the Tab key properly
cycles among the controls, except the if the edit field
"Find what:" is selected, then the next control selected is
not selected at all, but rather the find is executed in
either the .ijs or .ijx window .
3 The new break.ijs is still a mystery, but I am not
finding a need for breaks just now.
These are slightly annoying quirks, but I am willing
to use the mouse in J because all of the other features are
so strong. I continue to use vi for my script editting,
though.
Thank you J,
(B=)
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