[SDL] Alt-F4 not working on Windows

[Mason Wheeler]

Apples and oranges.  The "don't hook the mouse" rule makes a lot of sense for windowed programs, and was written in a time before fullscreen gaming had even been dreamed up. And as you pointed out, there's no other good way to control an FPS.  What you did enhanced the players' experience without any true drawbacks, simply by ignoring an outdated rule that needed to be updated.

Here, we're talking about the right of a computer owner to quit any program at any time.  This is a fundamental right and must be held absolutely sacred.  If you violate it, you're taking control of the computer out of its owners' hands. In other words, you're writing malware. The line here isn't "there's no alternative", it's "there's no excuse."  Interface considerations are secondary, and key combinations can be altered just a little bit to keep from b0rking one very important command that's been in place forever and then some.


----- Original Message ----
From: Bob Pendleton <bob at pendleton.com>
To: A list for developers using the SDL library. (includes SDL-announce) <sdl at lists.libsdl.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2008 4:41:21 PM
Subject: Re: [SDL] Alt-F4 not working on Windows

>Hoo boy, this takes me back. I was involved in the port of Doom II to the Mac back in the middle 90s.... 
>Of course, Doom and all of its decedents use the mouse to move you forward and backward and to turn left
>and right. It turns out that that use of the mouse was forbidden by the Apple usability guidelines. There Mac
>fans up in arms over the failure to comply with the holy word as writ by by great lord Mac. We got flamed
>left and right. Oh my. OTOH none of those Mac fans could tell us any other way to navigate in the game.
>We asked what they thought we should do and the result was "comply with the guidelines". Of course, the
>guidelines were written without any consideration for how you would use a mouse in a first person shooter
>so the guidelines were useless. 
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