Re: Accessibility of Gnome panel / How to end session via keyboard

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

John:

The method Peter described isn't exactly right: the GNOME "foot menu"
(otherwise known as the Main Menu) doesn't actually respond to F10.  But
Peter's description of how to focus the panel itself. with
Control-Alt-Tab, is correct, it cycles focus between panels and the
"GNOME desktop" in the same way that Alt-TAB cycles focus between
ordinary application windows.  Once the GNOME panel is focussed via
Control-Alt-TAB, you must use TAB within the panel's items to focus the
"GNOME foot" icon and then press either spacebar or Enter to pop down
the corresponding menu.  There is a bug filed against the GNOME panel
requesting the "foot menu" to follow the "F10 to post" convention used
elsewhere in GNOME (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99297)
but it is unclear whether the GNOME panel maintainers will accept that
this is a good idea.  Perhaps you could email them at
gnome-panel-maint bugzilla gnome org     Once you have posted the menu,
the down arrow key will allow you to navigate to the bottom of the menu
to reach the "log out" item.  As Peter points out, you can also add a
"log out" button to your panel, eliminating the menu-traversal step.

The GNOME "Menu Bar" (an alternative panel menu item to the "foot") does
post on receipt of F10.  So you have the alternative of replacing the
"Main Menu" on your panel with a "Menu Bar" which eliminates the need to
press TAB repeatedly once you have focussed the panel.

Note that when using a screenreader you do get audio and/or braille
feedback as you traverse the menus, and a confirmation dialog appears
when you log out, so the user should receive sufficient feedback to know
that the logout request was received and acted on.

There is some danger in offering a global keyboard shortcut for "log
out" since inadvertantly triggering it could produce, well, unfortunate
results.

- Bill


On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 07:32, Peter Korn wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> I don't mean to suggest this as the ideal way to solve your problem, but I
> think there may be another way to reach your goal of exiting GNOME 2.x from
> the keyboard.
> 
> Ctrl-Alt-Tab will cycle you through the Desktop and whatever panels you have
> installed.  Many GNOME desktops have the menu panel installed by default;
> certainly you can make that happen for a desktop you control.  Once you have
> brought focus to the menu panel, F10 will activate the first menu (the
> GNOME-foot/Applications menu).  Right arrow will bring you to the Actions
> menu, and the last item on that menu is Log out.  Likewise, you could
> associate a mnemonic with Log out, and then once the menu panel had focus you
> could press that mnemonic.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Peter Korn
> Sun Accessibility team
> 
> 
> John Zitterkopf wrote:
> > 
> > I wasn't real sure where this question / request for assistance should have
> > been posted. I figured the Accessibility mailing list would be a good place
> > to start as this appears to be a limitation which would affect vision
> > impaired people more than my specific application. If you know of a better
> > place to seek information, please let me know.
> > 
> > Executive summary:
> > Gnome 2.x does not appear to provide a keyboard shortcut or other means to
> > terminating (or logging out) the session.
> > The Gnome panel does not appear to have acceleration keys on the menu;
> > preventing access via <ALT><F1> key sequence.
> > 
> > Background:
> > Prior to our upgrade to Gnome 2.x; we were using which ever flavor of Gnome
> > came with Mandrake-Linux v8.1.  I assume it was some version of Gnome 1.x.
> > With 1.x; we were able to enter <ALT><F4> as a key binding and it would
> > allow us to assign that key to "logging out" (or maybe it was "ending
> > session") (as I recall). This allowed us to use the keyboard to logout via
> > the following sequence (as I recall):
> > <ALT><F4>
> > <ALT>O
> > <ENTER>
> > 
> > Gnome 2.x appears to have removed the ability assign a key binding to ending
> > the session... Google searching has not yielded any answers to this
> > question.
> > 
> > As I stated in the summary above; there doesn't appear to be a acceleration
> > keys on the gnome panel so I cannot be sure any log out sequences will be
> > successful.
> > 
> > My goal:
> > Execute gnome... under keyboard control (without visual feedback).
> > Detect gnome is running properly (without visual feedback).
> > Using the keyboard only (no mouse, no monitor); shutdown gnome properly.
> > Needs to be 100% reliable and repeatable.
> > Detect gnome has shutdown and the Linux shell is active.
> > 
> > Plea for help:
> > Am I missing something crucial with the Gnome 2.x?
> > Anyone have any "hacking" ideas which I could kludge some configuration
> > scripts to give me what I need / want?
> > 
> > Last resort:
> > Where would I begin looking to modify the source code to provide some robust
> > method? Keep in mind I have nearly zero experience with code development
> > under Linux. I've compiled some apps and kernels which came with prepackaged
> > source code; but I'm not sure what packages / files I would start with to
> > kludge in some kind of solution.
> > 
> > John
> > 
> >               EE's do it 'til it Hz 8-)
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~John D. Zitterkopf~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > zitt zittware com           http://www.zittware.com
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