Re: [Usability] Re: The state of keyboard navigation

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Havoc,

On Thu, 2002-01-17 at 18:38, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > 	Surely you mean 2.0.1 Owen ? Gnome 2.0 needs to have good keynav. I
> > don't think we can wait another "mythical 6 months, man" to get good
> > keynav for impaired users.
> 
> I don't know what Owen plans, but I'd point out that changing
> keybindings is an incompatible change (breaks certain application
> code),

	Well I'm talking about keyboard navigation - which as I understand it
is the order in which the widgets are traversed on user input. While in
theory - yes I suppose people could be doing grotesque stuff that relies
on a certain order, I don't believe this is at all common. Either way -
bug fixes typically 'break' (or fix depending on your perspective)
something - and one might hope that inaccessible / sub-optimal keynav
was a bug no ?

> and thus really shouldn't even go in an ABI-compatible 2.2,
> though I would advocate fudging things a bit to allow it in 2.2
> anyway.

	I think you have a very large view of an ABI - if the binary interface
specifies the human interface precicelly, then arguably changing the
theme breaks the ABI ;-)

> The way to solve "mythical 6 months" is to freeze and stick to it, not
> to delay every release on the grounds that the next release will be
> too delayed. ;-) That's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

	I'm not anticipating delaying the release, but not allowing small
incremental fixes / changes in the key navigation to be done, will not
help anyone. 6 months is far too long to wait for it; surely this is
precisely what the minor point releases should be for ? or do you
anticipate totally suspending any (non-A(P/B)I related) development in
gtk+ as soon as you go 2.0 ?

> But the key point for the moment is to get as much as we can in 2.0.0,
> there are a number of patches in bugzilla, anyone who cares about
> finishing the rest needs to get to work, not argue about the deadline.

	I think it is reasonable to consider the amount of work, and the amount
of time left, and this seemingly curious approach to adding usability
features with no significant ABI impact during the stable period.

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot