Re: Proposal: extending LINK for more general controls

   From: Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
|
| ACCEL and ABBREV are problematic. You don't know if the browser allows
| accellerators, or, if it does, what key strokes are already taken
| up. Besides, it has nothing to do with document structure, it's a
| style issue (though a rather difficult one). I think I would prefer if
| the browser reserved some keystrokes for the controls of known type
| (REL=parent, REL=next, etc.) and simply numbered the rest 1, 2, 3,...
---

That's why I said the browser would be allowed to require a prefix
before the author-specified accelerator.  The problem is that the
browser has no way, in general, to generate meaningful mnemonics for the
document-supplied controls.  So it's useful to let the author indicate
mnemonics that make sense for the document and allow the browser to do
something sensible with those mnemonics.  So, I *do* think it's an issue
of document structure and not simply of style.  The document author is
explicitly specifying the structure of a set of controls supporting the
document; this is inherently an author-side activity.

For example, if the browser
provided a menu "Document Controls" which it used as the root for a set
of cascading menus corresponding to the paths in the document-specified
controls, and if the browser used escape-D as a prefix for controls
located in the document menu, then if the author provided a Search
control with the mnemonic "S", the browser could respond to escape-D-s
by going to that control.

Another browser might put the document controls in a floating pallette,
using the mnemonics to label little buttons.

A test-based browser might use the mnemonics to identify entries in a
textual list of options.

The browser is *not* required to provide the mnemonics, it is simply
informed that they are a set of short identifiers for the
document-supplied controls that made mnemonic sense to the author.

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com

Follow-ups

• Murray Altheim (murray.altheim@nttc.edu )
• Bert Bos (bert@let.rug.nl)