Re: [Usability] New beeps in gtk

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jan 3, 2007, at 7:50 AM, Yevgen Muntyan wrote:
> ...
> I would like to ask your opinion on this new GTK feature: more beeps
> here and where.
> ...
> First, it beeps when you press a shortcut for insensitive menu item. 
> For instance, if Undo is disabled and you press Ctrl-Z, it beeps.

Oh, bravo! I've idly wondered if that would ever be possible, but I 
never investigated whether it was reported as a bug.

> In particular, you can press and hold Ctrl-Z to undo all changes and 
> wait until it starts beeping (it beeps on every key press, i.e. you 
> hold keys and it's beeping repeatedly).

That would be excessive. It need only chime once, when the action first 
becomes impossible, and then remain silent until you release the key.

> Second, it beeps when you press an arrow key or Home/End or
> PageUp/PageDown (or those with modifiers) in a text widget (GtkTextView
> or GtkEntry) and cursor can't be moved, i.e. if it's already where this
> key would move it - first position for Left, first position nit the
> paragraph for Home and so on. For instance, if cursor is at the 
> beginning of an entry and you press Left, it beeps.

That too would be excessive. It is much easier to see that you are no 
longer scrolling through a text field than that you are no longer 
undoing things, so a sound is not nearly as helpful.

> ...
> Is this right from usability point of view? It's said that this beeping
> actually is usability - you get notified when an action initiated with 
> keyboard failed. But I believe it's counter-usability, computer should 
> not beep if nothing that requires user attention happened and nothing 
> happened that user won't know about without beep (e.g. if you press 
> Ctrl-V and paste failed for some strange reason but not because there 
> is nothing in clipboard).

There are two general approaches to a sound interface.
*   Negative -- play sounds for unsuccessful actions, be silent for
    successful ones. (Like the audio equivalent of the command line.)
*   Positive -- play sounds for successful actions, be silent for
    unsuccessful ones.

Hardware already takes a positive approach -- keyboards and mouse 
buttons are noisy, and deliberately so.

Software has long taken a negative approach, mainly because its sound 
abilities have been crappy, confined to loud and ugly beeps. In the 
late 1990s Microsoft and Apple introduced positive sounds for their 
operating systems, but these were off by default. (Microsoft also 
introduced positive sounds for Mac Office 98, but I can't remember what 
the default was for these.)

It would be interesting to try a positive approach, but it would need 
careful engineering to produce sounds that were subtle and reassuring.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/