Mouseless GTK+

["Jon K. Hellan" <Jon K Hellan item ntnu no>]

--
I am slightly frustrated about trying to interact with GTK+
applications without a mouse. Before blaming anybody, I would like to
know how responsibility is divided between the widget set and
applications. 

To illustrate what I am talking about, you can run testgtk in gtk+
1.2.4 and select "entry". Now try to type into the dialog.
Intuitively, I would expect to be able to type into the text entry
field at the top. But the only keys which have effect are <Tab>, which
navigates to the entry field, and Shift+<Tab>, which navigates to the
close button.

I also like having <Esc> to make the dialog go away, like in Motif and
Windows. It could just as well be Ctl+C, of course, but there should
be a way and it should be standardized.

This leads up to two questions:

1. Does GTK+ standardize "feel", or is this up to the application.

   If there is no standard, is this intentional or just because there
   hasn't been time to set one?
   I feel that GTK+ should standardize feel, but if it has decided not
   to, I'd like to hear the reason.

2. If GTK+ does standardize feel, what is the division of labour
   between application writers and the widget set in implementing the
   feel?

   Specifically: Should dialogs come with default key bindings? (They
   do in Motif). Should keyboard focus be automatically set to a child
   widget? (I think it is in Motif?)

   So when mouseless operation is buggy, should I try to fix the
   widget set or the application?

Jon