Re: [HIG] Close as default "action", option groups, mnemonics

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 06:59:19PM +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-07-09 at 18:28, Gregory Merchan wrote:
> > It's bad enough to have Close buttons everywhere, but making them default

(More on this later.)

> > Perhaps organising the HIG along the lines of purpose rather than means
> > would be helpful. Something like:
> 
> Perhaps it would, it's a bit of a no-win situation really.  If you
> organise things by purpose, you end up duplicating or cross-referencing
> because the same thing can serve different purposes.  If you organise by
> means, you can lose sight of what the purpose is :)
> 
> The original aim was to provide a description of each control in the
> Controls section, and provide more general guidelines and examples of
> their usage in a wider context in the Windows and Visual Design
> chapters.  As we all know though, both of those chapters are rather
> badly lacking at the moment (although Coleen is working hard on
> improving the Visual Design chapter).

Well, that's still duplication. :-)  I suggested this for alleviating the
widget miscodings, but it may not help that anyway. I've just been informed
that some people even using GtkRadioButton reimplement exclusivity because
they don't know what the group parameter is for.


> > Providing mnemonic and tab access to a group of exclusive options is less
> > likely to create key conflicts, faster, and what at least Windows does.
<snip>
> 
> This is kind of what was in the original keynav spec, although we did
> still intend to have access keys on the individual controls rather than
> on the group label.  But IIRC Owen argued against the tabbing/arrowkey
> behaviour and didn't implement it-- I forget whether on technical or
> other grounds.  Should be possible to dig out the discussions on this in
> bugzilla somewhere though....

Not necessary. I seem to have confused some 1.x app with a 2.x app.
Gtk+ 2.x does behave like Windows for the tab and arrow keys in radio
groups. (However, since people are reimplementing everything out of ignorance,
I won't be sure what Gtk+ normally does until I write some test code or read
sources.)


More to come,
Greg Merchan