Re: REMINDER: GEP-2 discussion end date

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 21:26, bordoley msu edu wrote:

> I'm not sure if this has been discussed in this thread or not, but I think
> this issue may be a rare case where accessibility requirements contradict with
> general usability. I for one do not want to see a melding of all "appearance"
> related capplets (ie. font, theme, background etc.). However for users with
> accessibility concerns having all the "look and feel" options in one
> convenient place is probably a requirement. So I'm wondering if a compromise
> can be met. What I'm thinking is that we keep the current capplets but add an
> additional appearance capplet to the accessibility preferences menus which
> provides all of these options in a way that meets the requirements of users
> for whom accessibility is an issue. Thoughts?

Fortunately I don't think we need to do this, if we have

* a simple "metathemer"-type capplet with a simple UI; and

* include suitable low-vision theme-sets in our default list.

that means that such themes need to be able to specify font as well as
gtk+, metacity, background, icon, etc. settings, but the details should
probably be exposed to the user in other dialogs, not this one.

The set of appearance features currently handled by the XP theme dialog
seems inclusive enough to me, for accessibility purposes (it includes
all the ones I mention above, except maybe icons).  I think XP's current
icon theming deficiency is a known issue and seriouslimitation which
fortunately we are not emulating.  (BTW, we have gotten very positive
comments about our high-contrast large-size icons, thanks tigert and
jakub).

It would be both cute and nice to include things like custom sounds,
etc. but hardly a requirement as long as there is someplace else for the
user to customize those things.  In that respect I think sticking to
"appearance" here and not including keybindings, etc. is OK and will
limit debate...  

-Bill

> dave