focus visualisation for KDE 4

[Thomas Zander]

On Wednesday 21 September 2005 10:26, jan.muehlig wrote:
> it seems that there is no consistent way (or any at all) how the area
> that has the focus is visualised in KDE. Take e.g. Kontact, and you use
> the tab key: How do you know where the current focus is, and thus:
> where e.g. your arrow keys effect.

Hi Jan.

I think you are mixing certain things making it hard to talk about 
specifics; so here is a little background.
First; all widgets have a focus indicator option; they show an outline 
around a checkbox to an outline around the selected item in the tree.  Or 
outlines on things like the buttons.
keyboard navigation using tabs show this quite nicely.

Second; keyboard navigation using the arrow keys is not, or only very 
limited implemented by design. The list and trees typically use arrow up 
and down, and sometimes left and right, but most of the time they do not.
This is true for the low-level widgets which are interchangable between 
all the applications.

Note that most kontact applications attach actions to the arrow buttons 
that do _not_ follow these defaults, they are programmed specifically for 
those applications.

What you seem to ask is a visual feedback standard that developsers can 
use for the cases where they hack in new connections between focus owners 
and other widgets.
For example; kwords main frame (the one that contains everything) has 
connected all the arrow keys to the headers (for arrow left/right) and 
the email-preview (arrow up/down).
But if you go to the combobox you will note that arrow up down do 
something different.
Same in the search-text-line arrow left/right do their local thing.

What this means is that the frame you want highlighted is different 
depending on which key you press.

So, in the example above; where would you draw the frame-highlighter?  And 
would you still draw it there if your combobox has focus?
-- 
Thomas Zander
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