>In MC, we are allowed to manipulate text selections from menu items, but
>attempts to make a text palette or dialog for this fail: MetaCard
>deselects text in non-focused windows.
>
>Ostensibly, this design decision was made to prevent the impossible: How
>can you have two controls, each in a difference window, each with the
>focus?
>
>Mac OS answers this with an alternative text selection to indicate to the
>user that text is selected but not currently editable: instead of the
>inverted appearance of text which has focus, non-focused text selections
>are indicated with an outline of the selection region. UNIX has a
>different set of rules and therefore different methods of resolving this,
>and according to Tog, Windows is not even a GUI and can therefore be
>summarily dismissed from the discussion. ;)
>
>But even if we are talking about supporting a paradigm of a single OS,
>and fully recognizing the challenges of making platform-specific things
>in a multi-platform tool, this particular item is so critical that it
>makes a great many application designs impossible. No font attribute
>dialogs, no font settings palletes, no text linking tools, none of the
>many, many things which would make useful, if not essential, additions to
>our applications.
>
>So: anyone find a way around this? Anyone successfully implement a
>palette or dialog which indicates for the user the section of text about
>to be affected by the controls in another window?
>
"find" does that but only for words. I agree this behavior should be
extended to selected text.
>
>
>- Richard Gaskin
Regards, Andu
