[BRLTTY] Explicit toggle change

Dave Mielke dave at mielke.cc
Wed Oct 23 11:31:24 EDT 2013


[quoted lines by Stéphane Doyon on 2013/10/14 at 17:34 -0400]

>in r7287 you have "Indicate via a tune if an explicit toggle change
>is redundant."
>
>Can you explain the rationale?

It was bothering me more and more that a tune indicating an action was being 
played when, in fact, no action was being taken. The worst offender was the 
FREEZE toggle. It seemed quite harmless to me to introduce a way to indicate 
that the toggle was already in the intended state. In all similar instances I 
can think of, like a mute switch when on a teleconference, this kind of 
indication is, in fact, extremelye valuable. I can't imagine why anyone would 
ever want the position of a switch to be invisible or unverifiable.

>With the Alva BC640, Baum, and many others I think, we use separate
>bindings for explicit CSRTRK+on and CSRTRK+off. One reason we have
>this is so we don't have to remember the state. 

The same is true, for example, for me when I switch between six-dot and 
eight-dot mode. Perhaps I'm just odd, but I don't mind finding out that I was 
already in the intended mode.

>And one convenience is we can always use CSRTRK+on to both have the effect of 
>HOME plus ensuring tracking is back on. With the new change, if I do CSRTRK+on 
>while tracking is already on, I don't get my HOME effect. And I find the new 
>beep really strongly conveys that I did something wrong, I find it realyl 
>arresting.

That's understandable. Is it, however, an argument for removing the tune for 
being already in the intended state or for treating CSRTRK+on as a special case 
since it has an additional side effect? I myself believe it to be the latter, 
and must then ask if it's better to deal with the special case or to merely 
tweak it into working right by removing what may well be, in all other cases, a 
useful feature.

>In short, I don't think I like the change at all :-). But perhaps 
>you had a situation where it's beneficial? I suppose the side-effect of going 
>back to the cursor on CSRTRK+on means it's not truly a toggle... 

Exactly. I believe that CSRTRK+on really is a special case. We should fix it so 
that the side effect is restored.  What, however, should we do with its tune? 
We could have it still play the ON tune. We could make it silent if cursor 
tracking is already on.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | The Bible is the very Word of God.
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | http://Mielke.cc/bible/
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