[Etoys] Jiggling the mouse

[K. K. Subramaniam]

Hi,

Yesterday, I watched a 7-year old girl use Etoys to assemble a face using 
ellipses and rectangles. Sometimes, the rotation center had to be changed 
from the default for embed ops (e.g. ears). I had taught her to bring up the 
halo menu and and use the red menu button to turn on the direction handle. 
She discovered that moving the rotate button leaves behind the direction 
handle and preferred to use it. When the rotate button is used, the direction 
handles appear and stays on even when the rotation ends with the original 
heading.

My initial reaction was to make a note to file a trac ticket. But then, 
watching the ease with which she used the rotate button to bring up the 
direction handle and move it around, I realized this jiggle gesture comes 
easily and naturally than shift click for children. Jiggle the dup button to 
get a sibling, jiggle the color button to get a property sheet and so on.

BTW, I made a one-liner fix to use simple drag (instead of shift-drag) for 
moving direction handles. If others can try this out and find it useful, I 
will file a ticket for its inclusion in Etoys.

Subbu
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'From etoys3.0 of 24 February 2008 [latest update: #2059] on 21 July 2008 at 10:18:39 pm'!
"Change Set:		movecenter
Date:			21 July 2008
Author:			kks

<your descriptive text goes here>"!


!HaloMorph methodsFor: 'private' stamp: 'kks 7/19/2008 22:55'!
prepareToTrackCenterOfRotation: evt with: rotationHandle
	evt hand obtainHalo: self.
	evt  redButtonPressed  ifTrue:[
		self removeAllHandlesBut: rotationHandle.
	] ifFalse:[
		rotationHandle setProperty: #dragByCenterOfRotation toValue: true.
		self startDrag: evt with: rotationHandle
	].
	evt hand showTemporaryCursor: Cursor blank! !