Re: atk_action_get_keybindings

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman ireland sun com>]

Padraig O'Briain wrote:
> 
> Bill,
> 
> Can you give me an example of an action which has a keybinding and what the
> keybinding is?
> 
> Padraig
> 

Hi Padraig:

A button or GtkListItem with a keyboard mnemonic would be an example:
in the case of a button with a keyboard shortcut, the action (usually
"click" whose description might be gleaned from the button
description) is where the keybinding is associated.

Likewise the File menubar item might have an "activate" action with
keybinding "Alt-F".  I am not as familiar as you at this point with
which "actions" make sense to expose on menubar items, but the
appropriate action would be one which causes the menu to drop down as
well as the word "file" to be highlighted.

The idea is that all UI elements that "do" something (other than
display themselves, change their own appearance, or do something else
that is not directly application-task-oriented) expose actions.  These
actions have three uses as I see it:

1) you can find out which AtkObjects "do" something when interacted
with, and get descriptions of their "actions"

2) you can find out if the AtkObjects have "workalike" keybindings for
mouseless activation;

3) you can actually invoke those actions via an alternate mechanism.

This last may be hard for a few cases like HTML form buttons but if we
can get #3 working then we eliminate the need for ATs to do hacky
things like synthesize mouse events, etc.

-Bill

> >
> > >The comments on AtkAction Intreface describe it as basic support for
> > >accelerators. Could Marc or Bill give me some idea of what is intended
> > >here as
> > >currently I have no idea what is intended?
> > >
> > >***
> > I'll have to defer to Bill on this one-- my understanding is that AtkAction
> > has been expanded to include a function called GetAccelerator, which needs
> > to be supported on the GtkWidget level.
> > ***
> >
> >

-- 
--------------
Bill Haneman
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland