Re: 2.4 Proposed Modules - gok

[David Bolter <david bolter utoronto ca>]

Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:

> > From: David Bolter [mailto:david bolter utoronto ca] 
> > Ian has mobility concerns to deal with.  He finds it 
> > difficult to hold 
> > his head still and face one direction for any significant amount of 
> > time.  He has movement in his arms but the movement is fairly 
> > ballistic.  Fortunately this mobility allows Ian to use an on-screen 
> > keyboard and two switch inverse scanning (a row column scanning 
> > method).  Now suppose he has a mozilla email compose window 
> > up and he is 
> > using the compose gok keyboard, as his face and gaze sweeps 
> > across the 
> > screen during a rudimentary head movement, he notices that 
> > the current 
> > highlighted row is two before the row he wants.  He hits the 'advance 
> > selection' switch twice.  During the next sweep he recalls 
> > that the key 
> > he wants is a blue key that is three blue keys to the right 
> > of the red 
> > key, and notices that the red key has one key to the left of it, his 
> > math being lightening fast, he instantly knows to advance the 
> > 'selected 
> > key' highlight the correct number of times.  During the next sweep he 
> > double checks the label  of the key he wants (which is a pretty small 
> > font, but if it was much bigger the keyboard would be too big for his 
> > resolution), and also implicity notes the color.  Confirming 
> > the correct 
> > key is selected he press his other switch to select it.  This 
> > all might 
> > happen in a second or two or ten...
> >    
>
> See, I knew you had your reasons.
>
>  
>
> > Note: this scenario is currently fiction for the since the 
> > gok compose 
> > keyboard doesn't currently have a red key.
> >
> > As for the gok having different shades of blue, that choice 
> > was not made 
> > specifically on some empirical clinical research.  We can use 
> > whatever 
> > colors and color properties are suitable, and we can base them on the 
> > user theme which I must admit Bill has being nagging me about for a 
> > while :-) .  It is just something that got left.  If the user 
> > requires 
> > high contrast then the theme will tell that tale and gok 
> > should be able 
> > to proceed from there.
> >    
>
> That sounds good. Hopefully there's a bugzilla bug for that so it doesn't
> get forgotten about.
Good idea.  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112650  I've made 
it a blocker for the HIG tracker bug: 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92670

> I had just been thinking that, even if the idea is to look different to the
> rest of GNOME, then it would take some cooperation with the theme system to
> make sure that's always true.
>  
Looking different was never the motivation.

>  
>
> > If the user doesn't care for key type based 
> > color coding, they can turn it off and use the default gtk themes (as 
> > Peter noted is available in the gok settings).  If we 
> > convince ourselves 
> > that gok should use gtk+ themes by default, we can go that 
> > route.  I am 
> > not there yet.  Best to get more feedback from the target 
> > users I think.
> >
> > Me, I used to put stickers on my keys when I was learning to 
> > play quake...
> >
> > Lastly, it might help to not think of the gok keys as gtk 
> > buttons.  They 
> > are simply keys, gok keys, on a dynamic-branching-keyboard.  
> > We almost 
> > decided to draw our own keys.  Maybe I should pull some of our old 
> > design notes and post them on the gok site.  If I do, I will 
> > let you know.
> >    
>
> I'm sure that all such information is helpful, and might avoid someone
> mistakenly undoing the design later.
>
> Although I haven't actually been able to run gok yet (see my other email)
> what I've read and seen so far suggest that things gok is a pretty good,
> though unusual, candidate for GNOME. 
>  
Great!  And thanks for resurrecting this issue.

cheers,

David

> Murray Cumming
> murrayc usa net
> www.murrayc.com 
>