Squeak without mouse?

Aaron J Reichow reic0024 at d.umn.edu
Thu Dec 26 20:26:51 UTC 2002


Hey Markus,

Right now, Squeak is utterly dependent on the mouse.  I know of no
changesets which make it more kb workable, but would be interested in it
myself.  I will be adding some of this to Dynapad, and hopefully it'll be
loadable outside of it. I know, yet another thing that I 'will be adding
to Dynapad.'  A system for global hotkeys is pretty imporant to me as a
user of Squeak on a Handheld PC, where it's kind of a pain to reach for
the stylus.

Right now, there's no way to declare global hotkeys, for switching
or closing windows, for instance.  It's all handled within a specific
morph, like a PluggableTextMorph for instance.  So, if you want to do a
Cmd-W to close a window, you have to have a PTM focused... I hope to
remedy this, establishing a chain of command in hotkeys. (e.g. if the
focused morph doesn't handle it, go up a level, and so on, until reaching
the World morph.)

Not knowing the complete picture, I'd say Squeak is pretty bad as far as
disabled accessibility.  It'd be impossible to use blind.  That said, it
could be a lot easier to make it accessible than other systems, thanks to
Smalltalk's archetecture.  It could be quite straight forward to make a
screenreader using the builtin classes, tying into Morphic a bit.

Regards,
Aaron

  Aaron Reichow  ::  UMD ACM Pres  ::  http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/
"Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were
consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them."  ::  paul graham


On Thu, 26 Dec 2002, Markus Fritsche wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Are there any changesets out there which make Squeak more useable for
> keyboard users (those who try to avoid the mouse)?
>
> Additionally, could you say that squeak is ergonmically good for
> disabled users?
>
> Thx, Markus
>
> --
> http://reauktion.de/archer/
>
>




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