Re: [g-a-devel] List sort order accessibility

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Hi Peter, Drake:

Although I agree with what Peter wrote, I think there are at least two 
other things to consider.  One is that if there is an onscreen visual 
indication of which column is being used for sort order, in a GUI (and 
there usually is), then that visual indication should somehow be 
reflected in the ATK/AT-SPI state of the relevant column header.  In 
some interfaces this may be implied by existing state, i.e. if a header 
has STATE_TOGGLED it may be the 'sort order' header.  In Thunderbird 
using the theme I am currently looking at, sort order (and whether 
'forward' or 'reverse') is indicated via a visible 'arrow' or triangle 
onscreen.  It seems to me that this arrow should either be explicitly 
exposed or, more likely, its presence should be exposed via a semantic 
STATE.  It could also be exposed as an ATK 'object attribute' as Peter 
suggests below.  In this case it seems clear that the visible headers's 
state information should include this bit of semantic info, whether or 
not the actual list also includes such sort-order information in its 
attributes.  I also think that the 
ATK_RELATION_CONTROLLER_FOR/ATK_RELATION_CONTROLLED_BY reciprocal pair 
may be appropriate in this context, since the header 'button' 
effectively becomes a sort-order controller for the list when clicked.

Best regards,

Bill

Peter Parente wrote:
> Hi Drake,
>
> I don't know of an explicit field in atk/AT-SPI for exposing sort
> order on a widget such as a tree. However, it seems like the
> weakly-typed object attributes feature might work here for someone
> wishing to expose that information.  See the following two links:
>
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/atk/AtkObject.html#atk-object-get-attributes
> http://www.gnome.org/~billh/at-spi-idl/html/classAccessibility_1_1Accessible.html#a8
>
> What I don't know is if there is some established convention for what
> the name should be on the attribute or what enumeration should be used
> for the value. What we want to  avoid is a proliferation of synonyms
> across applications and toolkits. For instance, "sortorder:ascending",
> "sort-order:forward", "order:down", and all possible permutations.
>
> The AT-SPI link above suggest the use of attributes names/values from
> already established namespaces such as W3C specs and the Dublin Core.
> If others agree that object attributes are the way to go, then
> following an established standard is the right thing to do here.
>
> Pete
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