Re: [g-a-devel]Support for Color in ATK

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Draghi Puterity wrote:
> 
> I think we should ask ourselves the following question:
> 
> "Can I have in a well behaved GTK application a widget which has a red
> text/background and another widget with let's say a blue text/background?"

Yes, if the application uses GTK states to distinguish the widgets and
determine the colors.  AN application can install its own widget state
color set or theme, or extend an existing theme, but widget colors
should be based on a theme and state.

> If the answer is yes, then I think we need widget colors, because the blind
> user should be able to distinguish between them. I also don't think that a
> widget color will always express a state, 

It should (see above ).  If it is colored to improve readability this
means that the color carries no intrinsic information and thus no state,
but by the same logic the color information is extraneous to the
non-sighted user except when communicating with sighted colleagues. 
Remember also that colors are not fixed but depend on the theme, so even
sighted colleagues cannot rely on color as a verbal communication tool
unless they are using the same GTK theme.

> it can be colored just to improve
> app readability or to offer some extra (maybe app specific state)
> information. A red button could mean in a given app or context "enabled" in
> an other "disabled" but the difference is stil relevant for the blind user.
> Or think for example at a viteotext app which could have four coloured and
> unnamed buttons. Talking on a broader accessibillity scale, some apps could
> use coloured widgets for iliterate users (so if SUN wants contracts from the
> White House... ;-) ).
> 
> I don't know the "good behaviour rules" of GTK, but if using different
> colors for widgets in a GTK app would make us say to the app programmers
> that this is an ill-behaved app, I think they would laugh us at best. 

At the moment the official position is that such apps should use GTK
widget "state" for such coloring if it is at all meaningful, and that
apps which override GTK theme colors (that is, which provide hard-coded
colors for widgets rather than either getting colors directly from
themes or basing colors on themes) are ill-behaved.  No one has laughed
or challenged us on this yet, but of course this can't be enforced.

-Bill

> As
> always, I'm not aware of what is really doable in the current time-frame and
> of the costs of doing it. I just wanted to present my point of view from the
> blind user perspective.
> 
> Draghi
>