Re: [orca-list] Your thoughts on item position and count in menus?

["B. Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

Your points are all good, but my reason for wanting an option to display taking separaters in to account it 
that there is probably an attempt to group 
certain items because of what they display or do was intended. 
I'm no purist about much of anything, but Orca has always taken a path of giving the user a presentation as 
close to that seen by those looking at a 
standard visual page. This is a marginal case but when communicatinig with sighted folks it's helpful to have 
the best possible idea as to what they are 
seeing.
In the case of the t-bird help menu the first three items are all truly help in  a pure sense, while the last 
two are a bit different, and that is why 
the t-bird devs decided to separate them I reckon.
I think it is important to not overload the user with too many prefference choices when potential gains from 
choices are minimal, and probablyl not make 
or break for anyone, and that does temper my enthusiasm for adding a way to turn a different style of list 
item numbering on, but I am still in favour 
of adding such an option.
 

-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Geoff Shang wrote:
Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 07:44:47PM +0300

> Hi,
>
> I've flipped through this thread with interest.
>
> I know many of us would like to see it stay the same as it is now.  Before
> saying what I think, I'd like to examine the issue with hopefully some
> objectivity.
>
> I am a firm believer that one shouldn't decide to change something for the
> sake of changing it, and shouldn't leave something the way it is just
> because it's always been that way.  It's always better to mean to do
> something, and in this case, it's better to either change it or leave it
> because it's the better way for it to be.
>
> In looking at which is better in this instance, we should consider the
> question of why we have an item count at all, and whether this reason is at
> all relevant when considering the change.
>
> To my mind, the reason why we are interested in item counts in menus is,
> quite obviously, primarily so that we know how many items are in the menu.
> Changing this would seem to undermine this point.
>
> I would also propose another reason why we want item counts in menus.
>
> When we navigate a menu in most GUIs, (presumably this is relevant in Gnome
> also but I've admittedly not used it much), when you reach the bottom of
> amenu, the menu wraps around to the top.  An application that has large
> menus can be confusing because you may be halfway through the menu for the
> second time before you realise you've heard this before.  An item count will
> alert you to the fact that you have gone back to the top by resetting the
> item count.  Changing the way this counting works would undermine this also.
>
> I would also advance the theory that menu groupings are really only meant to
> be a visual aid to help people find the item they are interested in. As we
> have to navigate menus item by item, separators don't really help us much at
> all.  Arrow navigation presents menus as one big list of options, and that's
> how we need to consider them when we decide how to speak them.
>
> So I think we should leave it as it is, because to change it would merely
> serve to confuse and to undermine why we count items at all.
>
> Cheers,
> Geoff.
>
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