Re: [g-a-devel]Clarification on keynav for toggle/radio/check buttons .

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Narayana Pattipati wrote:

> Can you please clarify these doubts I have in keynav bug#53577.??

Yes, sorry... your mail was in my pile of "must-answers", I've just been
swamped with bug reporting for the past few days...

> > a) What is meant by 'functional grouping' in
> >    case of check/toggle buttons. I understood
> >    'functional grouping' for radio buttons, i.e radio
> >    buttons are always grouped. Can you please explain
> >    with an example, if possible.

When I wrote the keynav spec, I was assuming that in gtk-2.0 it would be
possible to functionally group check boxes in the same way that you can
group radio buttons.  It appears that you can't actually do this,
though, so I think any references to "groups of checkboxes" in the spec
are basically irrelevant now, and can be ignored.

> > b) And in the keynav proposal, it is said that 'radio button'
> >    should be toggled by pressing 'spacebar'. But what I found
> >    is, a radio button gets selected when user moves focus to it.
> >    What is meant by toggle radio button with spacebar.??

I think you can ignore this too.  The original idea was that the arrow
keys should move focus around within a radio button group *without*
changing the state of any of the radio buttons.  Therefore there had to
be a way of setting an unset radio button once you'd given it focus.

As you say, though, it's now implemented so that as soon as you give
focus to a radio button, that radio button is set at the same time.  I
think that behaviour is probably fine for now.  

IIRC, on Microsoft Windows, you can have both behaviours for groups of
radio buttons-- arrow keys do the same as they do in gtk-2.0, and
Ctrl+arrowkeys (or Shift+arrowkeys, I forget which) do the same as in
our original keynav spec.  But I don't think we need to worry about
providing that sort of enhancement right now, if at all.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems