Re: gucharmap

[Noah Levitt <nlevitt columbia edu>]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 15:32:03 +0000, Bill Haneman wrote:
> 
> 
> Glynn is right, using GtkDrawingArea has a disadvantage as far as accessibility 
> goes.
> 
> Unfortunately, complex drawing-area-type widgets with lots of individual 
> "children" inside tend to require more work than other custom widgets in order 
> to make them accessible.
> 
> If you use a GtkWidget per character cell in the charmap, you get accessibility 
> more-or-less "for free".  Otherwise, you have to provide complete keyboard 
> navigation that is compatible with tree-and-table-like widgets, 

Keyboard navigation already works. In fact, it was the first
method of navigation that I implemented. Arrow keys, pgup,
pgdn, home, end, as well as hjkl (vi keys), space and `b'
("less" keys), and Enter to add the active character to
text-to-copy. 

> and you must 
> export an AtkObject hierarchy for the "charcells" in the map.  Probably you 
> need to implement AtkTable on the character-table widget, and you need to 
> implement AtkText on the character cells as well.  

I do intend to do this. I'll probably solicit your help on
irc since you offered.

> You also need to make sure 
> that a themed visible focus indication is drawn onscreen when the utility is 
> focussed, and when individual character cells are focussed.  Perhaps using the 
> SELECTED state would be a reasonable alternative to a 'focus rectangle'.  

This is already done too. The active square is drawn with
SELECTED colors when the chartable has focus, and with
ACTIVE colors when it doesn't. (There is always an active
character.)

> 
> gucharmap should also observe the current theme colors and font size and style.

It does, with the exception that it takes the default font
and makes it 50% bigger in the chartable. For this type of
app I think it makes sens to start with a slightly bigger
font.

Noah

> 
> I would urge you to start by reading the following two documents:
> 
> "GNOME Accessibility for Developers":
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/guide/gad/index.html
> 
> "Making GNOME Applications Accessible":
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/presentations/GUAD3C/making-apps-access
> ible/start.html
> 
> I hope these are a helpful start; feel free to ping me on #gnome or #sun IRC 
> also (billh).
> 
> Basically anything the utility does with normal menus, buttons, etc. should be 
> accessible without further effort, so probably the character display area is 
> the only part that will require extra coding.
> 
> -Bill
> 
> 
> 
> ------
> Bill Haneman x19279
> Gnome Accessibility 
> Sun Microsystems Ireland