Re: Widget sensitivity and tooltips

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Gregory Merchan wrote:
> 
> Gtk+ widgets which have been made insensitive to user input do not show
> tooltips and cannot be focused.
> 
> A widget should be made insenstive if its function can not be called.
> The effects of this are a change in the normal appearance of the widget
> (usually a dimming), that the widget does not respond to user activity
> such as clicking or releasing a button or typing, that the widget cannot
> be focused, and that it does not show its tooltip.
> 
> These last two effects limit the usability and the accessibility of programs.
...

> The accessibility is twice limited because the existence of the widget may
> not even be known if it is not in the focus path and also it can not be made
> to present a tooltip.

Fortunately the widget still exists as a child of its parent container,
and can be queried via the ATK interfaces.  This means that even simple
assistive technologies can still obtain and present information about
insensitive widgets.

I haven't been able to confirm that the tooltip is available
(programmatically) as well except via the "atk_object_get_description"
call, which by default uses the tooltip text.  Alternatively, the
accessible "description" can be reset by the application when the state
is set to insensitive, to provide information on why the button is
grayed out.

Regards,

Bill
 
> This seems to be a known problem in the way sensitivity is handled;
> unfortunately, it also seems to have been punted to a later version.
> 
> Anyone got the time to spare before 2.0?
> 
> FYI,
> Greg Merchan
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