Posted by stacktracer on Nov 13, 2013; 3:56pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Making-a-NEWT-mouse-drag-continue-through-a-mouse-exit-tp4030617.html

We recently switched from JOGL 1 to JOGL 2 at work, and have been running into issues with
mouse-drag events when the mouse gets dragged from inside a NEWT canvas to outside it. It
seems like the drag ought to continue, even while the mouse is outside the canvas, but
instead the canvas stops getting drag events as soon as the mouse exits, even if the mouse
button is still pressed. We see this up through at least JOGL 2.1.2.

We would like to chip in and try to fix the issue, if we can. It's obvious there's some
history (1, 2, 3) behind the current behavior, though, so it seems like we should start by
asking for input.

Specifically, we would like to get NEWT mouse-drags to work like AWT/Swing/SWT mouse-drags --
if the mouse is being dragged, and goes outside the bounds of the component, the component
continues to receive drag events (and, notably, the mouse-up event at the end of the drag).

1. Has "continue drag on exit" behavior been deliberately avoided in NEWT for some reason?

2. Does implementing continue-drag-on-exit in NEWT sound possible? (Or prohibitively difficult? Or totally hopeless?)

3. Is there something fundamental about NEWT that makes continue-drag-on-exit harder to achieve in NEWT than in, say, AWT?