Re: Review of accelerator changes

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Tim Janik wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Bill Haneman wrote:
> 
> > Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > >
> > > Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> writes:
> > > > Should we kick the question of what the default should be to the
> > > > useability project? since I don't think we'll really get anywhere
> > > > with the:
> > > >
> > > >  "It's confusing for users"
> > > >
> > > > vs.
> > > >
> > > >  "It's a cool feature that everybody who has been using GTK+ since
> > > >   before 1.0 wants"
> > > >
> > > > argument. Just much not data there.
> > >
> > > I can remember at least a few mails to user lists where users thought
> > > this was a bug, and at least a few mails to developer lists where
> > > developers wanted to turn it off due to user complaints/confusion. So
> > > there is at least some data. Whether it's conclusive is another
> > > issue. ;-)
> >
> > Really, really we should turn off on-the-fly editing of keybinding stuff
> > by default.  It's too easy to do this by accident, and for blind users
> > it's mind-bogglingly confusing.
> 
> i don't see how blind users can be used as argument for the
> general case here. they need a bunch of atk code run in the
> first place to get to use GUIs, so you can also turn off accel
> changes there, similar to how you're going to tweak other
> code portions accordingly.

I meant these as two different arguments.  And so far we are not
tweaking stuff when we load libgail, it's designed to work without
changing/mucking with the other theming and configuration settings. 
Loading libatk has no effect since it's a dependency of gtk+ now.  Also
note that libgail isn't just for blind users, it's for users with all
sorts of disabilities, so we can't just turn the keybindings stuff off
there, users with poor motor control might want the dynamic keybindings
(though they can get them via other mechanisms like the onscreen
keyboard).

> also, changing accels is not so easy if they need to be combined
> with modifiers by default, and accidental changes can be reverted
> just as easy as the wee made.

Not if you're a naive user and aren't sure how the change happenned in
the first place.  I predict that we will get zillions of bug reports
about this if it's the default.

> >  Unexpected for everybody the first time
> > it happens, I'd dare say.
> 
> well, pretty much _everything_ new is going to be unexpected, it wouldn't
> be something new other wise (if you come from a different toolkit), that
> doesn't autmatically make it bad though.

OK, my vote is that these are evil.  Consider it one vote.

Don't get me wrong, I think configurable keybindings are cool, but I
don't see why they have to be configurable via keystrokes, there could
just as well be some onscreen utility or popup for doing this that at
least would make it less likely to happen by accident or 'silently' from
the users' point of view.

-Bill

> >
> > -Bill
> >
> 
> ---
> ciaoTJ