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Hi Matthew, I'm forwarding your message on to Mike Pedersen, the UI designer for the Orca project. I'll let him explain his thinking on this and decide what changes need to be made, based on your feedback. Thanks. -------- Original Message --------
Hi Rich On Dec 17, 2007, at 10:59 PM, Rich Burridge wrote to gnome-doc-list gnome org: > ... > On the application specific tab in the Orca Preferences for > the "pidgin" application, there is now a new frame that contains > three radio buttons that looks like this: > > +-- Messages ---------------------------------------+ > | | > | 0 Speak all new messages | > | O Speak only channel with focus | > | O Speak all channels when application has focus | > | | > +---------------------------------------------------+ > ... If every radio button (or checkbox) in a group begins with the same word, "Speak" in this case, that's the GUI equivalent of code duplication. It means the labels need refactoring. Like this: Speak messages from: (*) All channels ( ) Only the channel with focus ( ) All channels when the application has focus (You'll notice this also gets rid of the frame. When all you have is three radio buttons, putting a frame around them is a bit excessive.) The next problem is that "focus" is geek jargon, and "the application" is needlessly vague. We can fix that a bit: Speak messages from: (*) All channels ( ) A channel only if its window is active ( ) All channels when any Pidgin window is active But that's still a bit awkward. Perhaps screenreader users would find it easier to think of this as a controllable mute function? Mute a channel when: ( ) A different window is active ( ) A different program is active (*) Not at all On a broader topic, why does Orca have application-specific tabs at all? I have half a dozen chat programs installed. In a theoretically complete Orca, would I have to set the same speech options half a dozen times over? What about other programs that often have new text appearing, such as the Gobby editor, multiplayer games, or slow terminal commands? Will each of them need an equivalent set of three radio buttons in their own tab? One possible way of addressing this would be with automatic murmuring. Speech in background windows could always be a bit quieter than in the frontmost window. And if there was too much new text appearing in all windows for the speech to keep up, text in background windows could become much quieter, and overlap with the foreground window and other background windows. This background murmur would be more of an activity indicator, rather than expecting you to actively listen to the background windows. Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ |