Re: calculator clarification

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Ravinandan Arakali wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I was looking at the changes made recently to gcalc application
> to make it accessible, where the GtkDrawingArea was replaced by
> GtkEntry and tooltips were provided for buttons.
> I have a question regarding this.
> Was there a specific reason not to provide tooltips for the buttons
> representing the numbers 0 to 9 and the math symbol "e" ? Is it
> necessary to provide tooltips for these too, such as "Seven" for the digit
> 7.
> 

Hi Ravinandan:

I expect that tooltips on 0-9 would add little of use from an
accessibility point of view, since the labels are already exported via
the default implementation of atk_object_get_name () for buttons.  The
'e' button probably could benefit from a tooltip, if only something like
"e (base of natural logarithm)". 

[Padraig: correct nomenclature? ;-)]

The tooltips are exposed via accessibility interfaces as
atk_object_get_description ().  If the tooltip were not necessary for
normal use the same end result (from an accessibility standpoint) could
be accomplished by explicitly setting the accessible name/description of
such buttons inside the calculator code:

   atkobject = gtk_widget_get_accessible (e_button);
   atk_object_set_accessible_name (atkobject, "base e");
   atk_object_set_accessible_description (atkobject, "base of natural
logarithms");

My opinion is that just setting the tooltip for 'e' and other non-digit
buttons will be sufficient.

Best regards,

-Bill

> Thanks,
> Ravinandan