Re: [Fwd: [Bug 53580] Changed - KEYNAV: GtkTreeView]

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Marc Mulcahy wrote:

> >I don't like this option for the reasons you mention-- the most common
> >operation in a list is to select an item, not to click a button on the
> >column header.  I think the case of a notebook tab is slightly different,
> >in that focusing a notebook tab can be esential to the operation of a
> >program, while access to list column headers wouldn't seem to be so.  I
> >wouldn't be willing to say it's never esential, but I've never run across
> >a case where it was...

Hmm, I've just been chatting to the GtkTreeView maintainer on IRC about
this,  and apparently the new TreeView widget does actually behave (more
or less) like I described in Option 1-- any 'clickable' column headers
get focus first, then pressing Tab again takes focus into the main body
of the list/tree.  If there are no clickable column headers, focus goes
straight into the list/tree.  I guess I should have double-checked this
before my original post...

Anyway, my summary of this discussion would be that unless we scream
very loudly and/or do all his other work for him, Option 1 is sort of
doable, and Option 2 is a rather more daunting proposition.  (Correct me
if I'm wrong here, jrb!)  So, what do we think... is the
columns-focus-first approach really distracting enough that it needs to
be rethought, or is it a sacrifice we'd be happy to make for the sake of
having an accessible list/tree control?

Oh yes, and another issue came up as well-- trees/lists can also be
re-orderable, i.e. you can re-arrange the rows by drag and drop as well
as the columns.  Anybody have any suggestions for a keyboard method of
doing that?  I can envisage some sort of Cut/Paste thing going on, but
pasting into a list is tricky as you need to paste inbetween items, not
onto them-- and it's worse in a tree, because there you can legitimately
paste onto _or_ inbetween items, with different results :o)

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