Description Nick Edgar 2001-10-31 20:36:53 EST

This PR captures notes regarding accessibility for Eclipse UI 2.0.

JA asks, on Oct 31:
Nick, I know you're looking at accessibility issues, so I thought I'd run this 
by you: how about Alt-left arrow and Alt-right arrow for switching between 
editors and views within one perspective?  That would make for really 
convenient navigation when combined with the ALt-up and Alt-down for switching 
perspectives.  You'd be able to just hold the alt key down, and then navigate 
with cursor keys to any view in your workbench.  Just a thought...

NE replies:
We have to change the perspective switching keys.  We can't use ALT+DOWN 
because that's needed by some controls, such as the combo box for popping down 
its options.

My current plan is to adopt MDI conventions as follows:

CTRL+F6:  cycle between editor stacking order (holding SHIFT down too goes the 
other way).

F6: cycle between panes, including editor area (but not individual editors), 
fast views and detached views (holding SHIFT down too goes the other way).  
It would be nice if only the icons for fast views were highlighted, then ENTER 
to activate if wanted, otherwise it would be pretty visually disrupting to 
activate all the fast views.  Not sure which order makes more sense: creation 
order; top-down, left-to-right; or most recently used.  My current thinking is 
that creation order makes the most sense, since at least it's stable 
independent of view rearrangement, and the perspective creator can have some 
control over it then, e.g. in Resource perspective, we could set it up so that 
F6 from Navigator goes to editor, then to Outline, then to Tasks.

ESC: activate current editor.  

I'd also like to define accelerators for specific views, e.g. CTRL+ALT+N for 
Navigator.  This and ESC would diminish the need for F6.

For perspective switching, I'm proposing getting rid of the current 
accelerators (ALT+UP and ALT+DOWN), and adding the list of open perspectives to 
the Perspective menu, and numbering them.
So ALT+P, 1 would activate the first perspective.  I'm also considering 
maintaining a stacking order of perspective activation as well, so closing one 
would activate the previously activated one.
There could also be Perspective menu entries for Next / Prev perspective based 
on this order.  We could also have accelerators for this, but I can't think of 
any good ones!

I like the idea of being able to cycle between all perspectives and views 
without having to move your fingers around much, but how important do you 
really think this is?

I'm open to comments and suggestions.

JA replies:
It's probably good to adopt the MDI conventions, mainly because it means less 
learning curve for people who rely on these features.  However, I'd like an 
easier to use setup as well.  My feeling is that keystrokes such as Ctrl-Shift-
F6 and Alt-P,1 are awkward enough that I'd probably just end up using the 
mouse.  This might seem minor, but the reason I like really like the current 
Alt-Up and Alt-Down is because all the keys involved are right at the bottom of 
the keyboard, in a very convenient location.  While I'm navigating through 
code, my hands are already in that position because I use cursor keys and Ctrl-
left, Ctrl-right to navigate around within an editor.  I can currently 
transition from navigation within an editor to navigation between perspectives 
with almost no movement.  F6 on the other hand is probably the furthest key 
from my natural hand resting place.

I'm currently using Alt+Up & Down quite often, because I'm experimenting with 
multiple java perspectives, one on the entire workspace, and one focused on 
each package I'm currently working in. This seems to be the only way of 
tackling the loss of context problems that occur when only one java perspective 
is used.  Recall how easy it was to switch perspectives in VA/J using Alt-Tab, 
and how painful it would have been to use only the window menu shortcuts.

How about modifying my original suggestion to Ctrl+Alt+cursor keys, or even 
Alt+Shift+cursor keys?  Or make it configurable -- I'd happily configure it to 
use just Alt, since combo boxes never appear in views anyway.  I wouldn't use 
different keys for navigation between editors vs. navigation between views... 
just treat each editor as a view.  Alt-Left from first editor or Alt-Right from 
last editor would switch to a view.

For the scrolling between fast view problem, how about only making the view 
popup after the control key has been released?  This would then behave like Alt-
Tab, where each touch of the tab key moves to a different window, but the 
activation only happens when the Alt key is released.  This would also be nice 
for the perspective switching, it would make it alot faster to get from 
perspective 6 to perspective 2 in your list.

I like the ESC for active editor and special keys for certain views ideas...