A Question...

Hi, I just found StrokeIt yesterday and I love it so much, but I have a question now...

I am used to move files by Right click and drag, because it will provide me more options. Now when I do this, StrokeIt will still show its stroke on screen. Is there a way to screen strokes while clicking on a file?

I don't speak English in daily life and I am not sure if I do express correctly. If you can understand what I mean, please help me...thx~~

You can set a timeout in the Preferences. If you move your files with RMB and stop and wait the amount of time set when your cursor with files is at its destination the stroke is discarded, the line is removed from your screen and releasing the RMB will act as normally, you'll have the popup with options you need.

Or you could simply use the Ignore gesture button (Ctrl is the default if I recall correctly). Can be set in Preferences, too.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2009 07:59AM by gemisigo.

gemisigo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can set a timeout in the Preferences. If you
> move your files with RMB and stop and wait the
> amount of time set when your cursor with files is
> at its destination the stroke is discarded, the
> line is removed from your screen and releasing the
> RMB will act as normally, you'll have the popup
> with options you need.
>
> Or you could simply use the Ignore gesture button
> (Ctrl is the default if I recall correctly). Can
> be set in Preferences, too.

thanks a lot~~
hope that in the next version StrokeIt can provide the function what I suggested.
I don't think StrokeIt need any action once clicking on a file.

I do not know what function are you talking about since I haven't seen you suggesting any. Maybe the sentence "Is there a way to screen strokes while clicking on a file? " was mistakenly interpreted by me as "Is there a way to block/disable/remove screen strokes while clicking on a file?" It is not clear if you are disturbed by the line StrokeIt draws or is it the action it tries to do after releasing the RMB?

Personally, I don't think StrokeIt does or even should know anything about whether your click landed on a file or not. It would be an enormous work to check that due to vast number of different file managers and the several dozen of different techniques/apis/whatever the checks would need.

Not to mention that I would not like StrokeIt to arbitrarily decide whether to do an action or not. I like to learn from my mistakes (if there is any :)
There is no need to restrict it. Imagine a window crowded with files. You could not initiate a single stroke because you would have to move the cursor to a free point where there are no files. That would be very dumb and annoying and render StrokeIt almost useless in file managers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2009 09:30AM by gemisigo.

Actually I am disturbed by the line StrokeIt draws~~

I can accept your suggested solution but still a really little uncomfortable.The 1st one will cost me some time to wait and the operation seems not so fluent.
To the 2nd one, i don't what to touch keyboard and that's the reason I choose StrokeIt.
I'm too lazy and picky,right? Haha..

Your last paragraph is reasonable.
I agree, too.

I only hope If it is not difficult to fulfill, there can set a check box in the preference~~

Thank you very very much.You are so warmhearted~~

We are all lazy to some extent :)

You are right, both solutions have their trade-off but you can lessen them a bit. In the first case you can decrease the timeout as you get more experience. This is what I would prefer. Setting it to lower than 200-250 millisecs is a fair value not to break the smoothness of you operations.

And if you really do not want to touch the keyboard you can disable line drawing completely albeit you will still have to wait for the timeout. Using it without drawing the line is a bit strange at first but you can get used to it in a very short time. I used it for a while when I switched to Vista and the line drawing was slooooow.

There is one more alternative, I don't know why did I forget it :) You could set gestures to middle button. Or X1/X2 buttons if your mouse has them.

I don't want to break your spirit but there is little hope that there will be a checkbox for this. Believe me, it IS difficult to implement that feature for most of the file managers and impossible to include all of them. The constant checking would make it clumsy. Anyway, it's up to Jeff to decide, but I don't think he will do that.

Another thing:
If you set StrokeIt to Copy a file by a simple gesture, say, move Up, will you still have to copy files by dragging them? Probably much less than you used to do. You just click the file, stroke Up, click where you want it to go, stroke Down for paste.

Perhaps, but then he will have to do 2 strokes instead of one (that is, dragging the files). Not to mention, that if he wants to move the files it will take three different strokes to accomplish copying/moving, either by using "copy_paste_delete", or "cut_paste" combinations.

Well I agree that it is not perfect, and I admit that I use strokes to move or copy files only when I am not doing it from or to desktop; right-dragging the file until after timeout is more intuitive with desktop. But still, I find the stroke up - stroke down combination quite easy to use in normal folders.

I don't understand why you say that cut-paste is three strokes, because I do it in two (Cut and Paste), just like copy-paste.

In addition, I must say that I find it a bit uncomfortable to move the mouse accurately while holding down a button, whereas a gesture can be made in a wild move, requiring no accuracy.

> I don't understand why you say that cut-paste is three strokes, because I do it in two (Cut and Paste), just like copy-
> paste.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear, I'll clarify.
If you want to preserve both the abilities to copy and to move, you'll have to use three different strokes. One for "copy" and one for "paste" to accomplish copying and a third one for moving.
It can be either "delete" in which case you have to use three different strokes to move files or it can be "cut" so you can manage it in two. The latter is less cumbersome, but there are many times I change my mind and decide not to keep the file(s) in their original place after the copy operation has already begun.
No matter how you combine them, you'll have to do three different strokes to achieve two different goals: "copy+paste+delete" or "copy+cut+delete".

But I don't think that would bring forth any problem since a regular user uses these four functions (copy-cut-paste-delete) on regular basis :) so they'll be simple strokes that can/should be triggered quickly.

> In addition, I must say that I find it a bit uncomfortable to move the mouse accurately while holding down a button,
> whereas a gesture can be made in a wild move, requiring no accuracy.

As far as I'm concerned, I use both, strokes and drags combined with keys (shift/control/alt), whichever I find the more efficient. Dragging a bunch of objects into a window does not require too much accuracy, certainly not more than a stroke.
Using drag you can do both copy and move in a single 'stroke' + a select from a context menu. The drawback is that you either have to wait for the timeout or you have to trigger strokes with a button other than RMB. And we should not forget that there are defaults based on whether source and destination are on the same drive or not. So, there are many occasions when a drag can be faster/more efficient/more elegant :) than a stroke. And there are also many exceptions to that 'rule' ;)

I agree with all you say. I wonder whether there are some users who choose to hold down a modifying key while stroking: the purpose of StrokeIt is that I do not have to look at the keyboard.
Dragging a file while holding down control/shift/alt in order to copy/move I never do, because I can never remember which key does what; I don't risk trying it because I'd hate to perform the wrong action.

> I agree with all you say. I wonder whether there
> are some users who choose to hold down a modifying
> key while stroking: the purpose of StrokeIt is
> that I do not have to look at the keyboard.

Since I'm using a custom-made dvorak layout on a qwerty labelled keyboard it would be very confusing to look at the keyboard at any time. While my right hand is on chasing the mouse my left is welded to the keyboard. It is not too hard to find the modifier keys. Even then, the only modifier I use together with strokes is SHIFT. I use it to delete files without moving them to Recycle Bin (SHIFT + DELETE).


> Dragging a file while holding down
> control/shift/alt in order to copy/move I never
> do, because I can never remember which key does
> what; I don't risk trying it because I'd hate to
> perform the wrong action.

I learnt them this way :) SHIFT 'shifts' things to their new place, ALT creates their 'alt'erego (i.e. their link or shortcut), and there is nothing left to CONTROL but to copy things.

Good mnemonic trick. My English wasn't good enough when I was 10 to come up with such wordplay (though I might have made something up in my own language).

I would make a comment on my right hand doing strokeit and my left hand lying on my knee, but uhh... I guess the infelicitous name of this program might give the wrong impression. It's just that I tend to not use my left hand at all when I am not typing text, so that holding alt takes a little too much effort.

Your comment on the name, well... made me laugh my head off :))) We should rather not go into it ;)

My hands usually lay on my desk even if I'm not typing but yours are obviously not in the comfortable vicinity of your keyboard. Well, we all differ from each other. At least in our habits :)

Indeed, let's keep it at that!

You can add Class "WorkerW" in ban list

so,Strokeit will doesn't work on Desktop