Re: INPUT TYPE="file", speech output, & triggering mechanisms

aloha, mark!

you wrote:
> someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Amaya (on Windows) uses
> MSAA either, yet if you view the validator page on Amaya in alternate view,
> the word "Browse..." or that text appears, which could then easily be read
> aloud.
 
right and right, although the second "right" is true only if your browser
is screen-scraping to build its off-screen model, but if the "Browse" 
button is going to be included in the serial stream/navigation order based
on the DOM tree, then the AT needs to know where to look for it... 

> Remember, the word "Browse..."  or that text is not in the source file
> (nor the structure view under Amaya). 

right--the UA renders an edit-box in response to the INPUT TYPE="file" (so
that the user can then enter a URI or filename, and which, by spec, can
contain placeholder text defined by the "value" attribute), but since you
can only declare one control type--e.g. "image" or "button"--the question
arose, from whence the "Browse" button?  it's not defined in the markup,
at least not as far as i can glean, so it must be generated by the UA in
order to provide a file selection mechanism (be it a dialog box in a GUI
environment, or a command line prompt, such as that employed by pine, or a
naked directory listing, such as that available via lynx) where such a
functionality is available...  is an explicit "Browse" button (that could
spawn a helper app) implicit in the idea of providing "file" as a
control type associated with INPUT? and if one isn't provided, but the UA
does supports HTTP PUT, is there an implicit event handler attached to the
"file" content type? HTML4 does state unequivocally that

INPUT TYPE="file"

quote
Creates a _file select_ control. User agents may use the _value_ attribute
as the initial file name.
unquote

and, as i noted earlier in this thread, the _file select_ hyperlink in the
above definition, which is located at:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-type-INPUT>
points to:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#file-select>
which references the following definition:

quote
file select
   This control type allows the user to select files so that their
   contents may be submitted with a form. The _INPUT_ element is 
   used to create a file select control.
unquote

so, i suppose, by spec, since it is the UA that is responsible for
creating a file select control (manifested as the "Browse" button in IE5
or, theoretically, a status line prompt in a text browser), the file
select control should be available to a COM DOM aware AT, if it knows what
to look for, which is what i was hoping that someone like tim, cathy, jon,
or you could tell us...

> Also, using the object inspector from MSAA (v1.3 anyway), it is unable
> to render any information about the Browse button as viewed in IE 5.5. 

do you have a URI from which one can download the MSAA object inspector?

glad that this one caught your attention!
gregory.
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Received on Friday, 20 April 2001 19:24:03 UTC