Re: [g-a-devel]Re: Bug 89336

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 09:48, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi Padraig,
...
> 	I spent _days_ trying to get Bonobo to be 'accessible', and allow the
> toolbars to be reached by the keyboard. It seems that this was just so
> much wasted time - so I'm extremely pissed off about it.

I think the bug's concern is the resulting behavioral difference between
Gtk+ menu keynav and menu keynav in embedded bonobo components.

We really appreciate the work done to make bonobo controls accessible; I
hope it doesn't all get ripped out, but even if it does (and is replaced
by something else that works), I hardly think it was wasted effort.  At
least someone (you) now has a comprehensive understanding of the
problem, and has left a trail for others.

Last I heard, the plan of record was that toolbar keyboard-navigation
for gtk+ was a 2.2 feature; I sense some slippage there but it is still
something we need in the near-to-medium term.  As long as we are missing
that, any gtk+ apps that use toolbars must provide complete duplication
of toolbar features via menus, in order to be considered accessible.  So
I think your toolbar-focus code is serving some purpose, by removing
this requirement for Bonobo toolbars.  I think that the only difficulty
other than the menu-nav side-effect is that Calum and others may prefer
a slightly different keynav keybinding for toolbars.  

I don't have a problem with leaving in the existing
sucking_gtk_keybindings code, my impression is that it is doing more
good than harm.  However I think we should press Owen again (he made a
comment in the bug report that could be used to press for gtk+ changes)
to see if Padraig's four-line gtk+ patch, which appears to solve this
problem, is acceptable.

regards,

Bill
 
> 	Worse - AFAIR it was extremely difficult to try and persuade Gtk+ to
> allow me to conditionally focus widgets - hence the
> sucking_gtk_keybindings mess - the widgets only entering the focus chain
> when <Control> is held down and all manner of other mess. Similarly
> hooking into whatever mechanism Gtk+ uses to do Menu focusing looked
> extremely hard when I poked - simply because Gtk+ uses it's own
> privileged internals in a way Bonobo can't.
> 
> 	Clearly I'd like to bin all the junk code in there, and make the
> toolbars inaccessible by keyboard - is this the case in Gtk+ ?
> ultimately I'm not at all sure what the result is, whether gtk+ toolbars
> are key navigable [ were not last time I looked ], and what the plan is
> going forward.
> 
> 	Also on past form I have a total lack of interest in trying to hack
> round non-expandable Gtk+ code, to try and implement hacks to try and
> make things accessible that arn't needed.
> 
> 	In short - I'm horribly annoyed about it; and I've lost interest ;-) if
> you can fix it - please do so, I'd love a patch cleaning that rubbish
> out. Is toolbar a11y officially a lost cause ? does Gtk+ do it ? etc. My
> instinct is to rip all that code out - but I havn't had time yet.
> 
> 	Regards,
> 
> 		Michael.
> 
> -- 
>  mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
> 
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