Re: [g-a-devel]Do Treeview cell need text interface ?

[Peter Korn <korn sun com>]

Hi Mukund,

> With the recent change for the cells to report names, am wondering if
> they need to expose text interface ?
> 
> On querying the text interface, I find only the following functionality
> works (whatever that doesn't work makes sense considering the role of
> the cell):
> 
> AccessibleText_getAttributes (return value is NULL though)
> AccessibleText_getOffsetOffsetAtPoint
> AccessibleText_getText
> AccessibleText_getTextAtOffset
> AccessibleText_getTextBeforeOffset
> AccessibleText_getTextAfterOffset
> AccessibleText_getCharacterExtents
> 
> With the table-cell reporting name, all the above functionality looks
> redundant except the last one (Extents).
> 
> Therefore, IMHO, table-cells don't need to export text interface. Unless
> am missing some important perspective.

The key reason to implement AccessibleText on table cells - and in fact on
virtually all text on the screen - is for the function
AccessibleText_getCharacterExtents().  

Users of Braille terminals will use a mode of their screen reader called
"full window review" or "full screen review" (actually two slightly different
but related things).  In this mode, their Braille display will render an
entire line of the window (or screen) with appropriate layout of the
information in that line - replicating spacing, font proportionality, etc. 
Then, when the user "reads" up or down by line, relative position information
is faithfully rendered for the new line, giving the user a sense of the
vertical alignment of the contents of the window (or screen).  

Table cells are a particularly important place for this - getting an
immediate, tactile sense of how two-dimensional information is layed out.  An
example of where this information isn't as important is with things like the
text within buttons, and the text on individual menu items.  Though again,
there is the occasional user (perhaps a database programmer responsible for
database query user interfaces) who wants layout info with these as well.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team

> >  -----Original Message-----
> >  From: gnome-accessibility-devel-admin gnome org
> >  [mailto:gnome-accessibility-devel-admin gnome org] On Behalf
> >  Of Marc Mulcahy
> >  Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:34 PM
> >  To: Padraig O'Briain; gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
> >  Subject: Re: [g-a-devel]Activate action for TreeView cell
> >
> >
> >  Yes, I think reporting the name of a text cell as the text
> >  contents would
> >  be useful.
> >
> >  Marc
> >
> >  >
> >  >When using at-poke I have noticed that the table cells
> >  report no name.
> >  >Should we
> >  >report the text associated with the cell as the name in a
> >  similar way as
> >  >we do
> >  >for a GtkLabel?
> >  >
> >  >Padraig
> 
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