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

[jrb redhat com]

Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com> writes:

> 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?

This is correct.  The only problems I can think of with this approach is
that you end up with buttons that can be focused (ie. have the little
dotted line in them) that cannot be clicked or activated (with return or
space).  I don't know if this is confusing or not.

> 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)

I think in this case, the onus has to be on the application developer to
include a keyboard method.  I don't think we want a keyboard equivalence
of DnD built into GTK.

Thanks,
-Jonathan