Re: Migration Paths for New Modules

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2006-07-20 at 19:52, Shaun McCance wrote:
(my comments on assistive technology gconf keys removed)
> Yikes, all right.  We should definitely keep the exec_ats key
> for legacy.  I suppose the Assistive Technology Preferences
> dialog should continue to set the old values, if possible,
> to keep older machines functioning the same.

I'm not sure it's important to keep back-compatibility if the user
re-runs the config dialog.  It might be better to use that opportunity
to offer to switch the user over.  

IMO the question is whether we want to post a dialog the first time an
AT user logs in to a new Gnome desktop, offering to migrate her/him.

While your combo-box suggestion is interesting and allows the user
maximum choice, it may be better just to change horses at this stage. 
Of course users who want to stay with gnopernicus should be able to do
so without too much interference, but otherwise perhaps we should keep
the interface simple.  If we do choose some sort of combo (and some
.desktop file convention as you suggest), perhaps one of the combo
entries should be "Other...", "<i>custom</i>", etc. and trigger a simple
file chooser for picking an alternate.

Should we take this to some other list for discussion?

regards,

Bill

> I'm not sure what keys are used by the Preferred Applications
> dialog.  The keys under /desktop/gnome/applications seem to be
> obsolete.  We could just make six keys: a boolean to enable
> each technology, and an exec string for each technology.
> 
> Then there's the question of the interface.  Would we want to
> shunt stuff off to the Preferred Applications dialog?  I think
> it will be more obvious if it's right in the Assistive Technology
> Preferences dialog.  So something like
> 
>   [ ] Screen reader
>       Select: [__ Orca __]
>   [ ] Magnifier
>       Select: [__ Gnopernicus __]
>   [ ] On-screen keyboard
>       Select: [__ GOK __]
> 
> If each AT installs a .desktop file, we could have a special
> key that indicates what sort of AT it is, like:
> 
>   [Desktop Entry]
>   Encoding=UTF-8
>   Name=On-Screen Keyboard
>   Comment=The GNOME On-screen Keyboard
>   Exec=gok
>   Terminal=false
>   Type=Application
>   Icon=gok.png
>   Categories=Application;Accessibility;
>   X-GNOME-AT-Type=on-screen-keyboard
> 
> Then we could actually present a drop-down with choices.
> Maybe we still need a "Custom" with a text area for the
> exec string.  The Preferred Applications dialog allows
> that.  And that would make the above interface uglier.
> We'd probably want a way to pack in a warning label
> for each checkbox when you don't have any known ATs
> installed for that type.
> 
> I'm just tossing out suggestions.  Input is welcome.
> 
> --
> Shaun
> 
> 
>