mypaint
Keyboard navigation for Background Chooser
While the background chooser is open, it would be nice to be able to navigate among backgrounds with the arrow keys, to try out different backgrounds more quickly.
The widget is the same one we use for the brush choosers. Should those be keyboard navigable too? What about the palette?
(OK, we have keyboard nav. for the palette already, if you bind the keys. When I get wooly about the design, I often consider a similar matching algorithm for the brush "palette" grids involving partial (nearest) and exact matches. Practically, I've never had time for it though.)
Triage note: this may involve a major retooling of the way we do keyboard handling, but we may need to do that at some time in the next development cycle anyway. It's a lot of extra work to have a separate keyboard-focus highlight in addition to the existing selected-brush highlight.
(I want keyboard navigability to improve for accessibility reasons generally. Sure, MyPaint was created as a tool for people with artistic skill and a high level of manual dexterity, but increasing the number of ways people can interact with a program benefits everyone. Often in unexpected ways.)
I would say, yes. Background choice is a standout example, but cycling through BG or Brush is something that's quite useful when you're trying to quickly sort through a bunch of possibilities and find the right fit. Palette is (probably) less immediately useful, but does do the job of introducing the concept of moving through the palette much better than the items in the menus do, so probably good overall.
In a more pragmatic sense, I have to admit that I prefer shortcuttable functions, though. Keynav is good for discoverability, and shortcuts are good once you've decided you'll use X function and want to do so efficiently.
(This is actually a common UI failing in my opinion, the tendency to provide only one of 'discoverable' and 'shortcuttable' for a given function)
Thanks. Yes, I think it's good for everything to be keyboard navigable, because why not?
In the case of backgrounds, it has the added advantage that the changes are immediately visible -- you can see the effect on your drawing as you cycle through options with the arrow keys. For brushes and palette, the effect is only immediately visible in this way if you're in inking edit mode (useful); otherwise you're just making a selection for the next stroke.