Re: 2.4 Proposed Modules - gok

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 16:33, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> But then they have other means to turn a11y features on... Like preferences
> dialogues and panel applets, surely? (tongue-powered mouse cursors and stuff
> are independent of the keyboard...)

I didn't explicitly say this before, but of course the "bootstrapping
problem" is an important one.  For instance, if a dwell-mode user wants
to configure GOK for the first time (or on a shared system), how does he
do it?

We are developing some "gesture listeners" as GModules that can be
loaded by gdm or some daemon running post-login, or which could be
loaded by an application like GOK.  These gesture listeners would
basically recognize a number of "patterns in user events" which would
allow this kind of bootstrapping.  For instance, if either the
corepointer or any XInput 2D valuator moved through a particular pattern
within a given period of time, GOK might be activated in dwell mode;
similar gestures could be used for switch users (switch tapped three
times, or held for 10 seconds, etc.).

Some GOK users, maybe most, will be able to make limited use of more
than one access method; by default GOK's buttons are reactive to direct
left-pointer clicks, so if a user is capable of that gesture, even with
difficulty, she can configure GOK via the dialog plus the GOK keyboards
themselves.  But it would be relatively easy for a user to accidentally
select the wrong input device, or switch number, or even access method
(from a dropdown list), so instant-apply would be very dangerous.  Some
of these access methods must, of necessity, turn off the "direct click"
sensitivity of the GOK buttons so one can really put GOK into a useless
state this way.

Some kind of auto-detection of devices, combined with new dialogs, would
be a better eventual solution for some users (along the lines of an
interactive "press the button you want to use for scanning" dialog,
instead of choosing device characteristics from lists, etc.)   But this
will make the GOK dialogs even less GNOME-like since they will (then) be
using interactive dialogs rather than normal controls.  It's a tough
problem because even for such dialogs, you can't devise a selection
method that will suit everyone.  The current "use GOK to configure GOK"
technique is more general but presents bootstrapping problems for some
users.  A possible consolation is the fact that many GOK users will have
access to assistants who can help them with the initial configuration of
GOK, but do-it-yourself wherever possible is clearly preferred.

- Bill