Reported from the tablet: the tool rail is very useful there, and the same
interface under a mouse and keyboard is not. That is `ui-navigation.md` D-N2's
central assumption failing in use, and the interesting part is which half of
it failed.
D-N2 was right that platform is the wrong axis and width is the wrong axis: a
tablet in landscape wants what a desktop wants, and a desktop window dragged
narrow wants what a small screen wants. `apply_layout_class` still decides the
layout class from the window and nothing here changes that. What D-N2 got
wrong is the sentence "touch changes hit regions, not layout" — it identified
input as the real difference between the targets and then assumed that
difference could never reach the layout.
Two controls answer one question — which group of adjustments am I looking at
— and neither is better in general. A horizontal strip above the column is one
gesture to a target the eye has already found, and it pans when the operation
set is rich, so a group can sit off the end with nothing saying so: a pointer
user tolerates that, a finger user never discovers it. The same list down the
rail is every entry visible at once, each finger-sized, on the edge of the
screen the hand is already holding, and it costs no width because the rail is
already there.
So `ToolRail` grows a second section, and `GroupStrip` stands down when it
does. The two are never both on screen, which is why they can share
`adjust-tab-picked`: Rust is not told which was pressed and has no reason to
want to. Mode and group stay independent axes as N1 requires — one entry lit
in each section, and choosing a group while a tool is held still filters
without putting the tool down.
They stay drawn differently, which N1 also required. The tools fill with
`active-dim` and invert their ink; the groups take a bar down the leading
edge — the strip's underline turned ninety degrees — so a lit entry says which
kind of state it is without the reader having to remember which section it was
in. The rule between the sections is the second signal.
The rail scrolls now. Its own note argued against a Flickable because "this
list is four entries written in this file"; with the groups in it the list
comes from the operation set, which is exactly the "something the user's data
decides" that note excluded this control from.
The axis is input, and it is a preference because the automatic answer is a
guess that cannot be made reliable. Neither platform can be asked what the
user is holding: an Android tablet in a keyboard case is being driven like a
desktop, and a touchscreen laptop is whichever its owner says.
`dr_plat::is_touch_first` reports the usual case per platform, and
`GroupNavigation` lets it be overridden. Settings names what Automatic
resolves to on this device rather than leaving it to be found by pressing.
D-N6 records the reversal beside the decision it reverses, including the half
that still stands and the question it opens: whether Local is a mode at all,
or a scope that would collapse the two sections into one list.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
dtourolleandClaude Opus 5
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