Re: character Input -- Checkpoint 2.1 (revisions from Jan 8 Telecon)

This is an interesting discussion. My concern, however, is that it is
moving in circles. What I mean is that we are covering old ground that
has been well trodden several times in teleconferences, reviving the
same arguments and counter-proposals that have been considered in the
past without making any progress.

We agreed twice (in two different teleconferences) that "character
input" is really what we mean, as it covers everything from keyboards
to speech systems to single switch input devices to on-screen
keyboards to interfaces that allow one to select words/characters from
a displayed list, etc. What the application receives in each case is
some form of character input, whether in Unicode or an
application/platform-specific encoding.

I personally think "character input" is sufficient. Nevertheless one
could say "character input and commands that move the focus among user
interface controls", or some variation on the above wording. I think
this is ultimately what we want to say. To make the sentence shorter
we could coin another technical term such as "discrete focus event",
defined as an event that assigns focus to a specific component of the
user interface. If this is too broad we could be more restrictive by
defining the minimal actions (move back, move forward, activate...)
with which it should be possible to operate the user interface in
addition to the provision of actual characters.

The point is to define "focus event" for this purpose so that events
specific to a pointing device which include coordinate values, don't
qualify. This should then cover exactly what we want.

Received on Friday, 7 February 2003 19:15:06 UTC