Re: Default button in dialogs

[Michael Rogers <mrogers cs ucl ac uk>]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 11:54:16AM +0200, Blad, John Erling wrote:
> If you choose to use specific keys for each dialog button
> you run into troubles when there are no keyboard.
> 
> Note that no keyboard does not imply there is a pointing
> device on the unit.

Most desktop software would have to be rewritten or heavily customised 
to work in an environment without a pointer or keyboard - there are 
so many assumptions (in the code, in the UI design, in the 
documentation) about what kind of system the software is embedded in. 

For example, how could you add a launcher to the panel without a 
keyboard (or something acting in place of a keyboard, like speech 
input)? I'm not asking how to do it with the current interface, because 
obviously you can't, but can you imagine *any* way of doing it? And why 
would you want to? Launchers exist because most users have a keyboard 
for typing commands, and they also have a mouse for clicking buttons, 
and clicking is easier than typing. Without those conditions the idea 
of launchers doesn't make sense. The whole GUI is based on those same 
assumptions.

IMO Gnome is desktop software and it should not try to cater for 
non-desktop systems. Look at WinCE for an example of what happens when 
you take an interface that's well-designed for a particular niche and 
apply it outside that niche. If we try to make Gnome usable on every 
possible system, it won't be usable on any of them.

So maybe we need to define what kind of systems Gnome is aimed at - is 
it reasonable to assume that there will be a keyboard and optionally a 
pointing device? Remember, X and GTK will still be policy-free, so 
most of the Gnome code will be reusable in non-desktop systems, but at 
some point we have to focus on desktop systems and I think gnome-libs 
is a reasonable place to introduce that policy.

Michael