Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.

Hi Hugh,

Thanks for your e-mail. Let's start near the bottom.

> I suggest that you think about the issuse in this Scientific American
> article on Considerate Computing.
>
> http://interruptions.net/literature/Gibbs-SA05-0105054.pdf

That was an interesting read, and I tend to agree with it. The user
should be in control.

Research has shown that taking a break helps preventing RSI. When
requesting users to take a break, they should normally be balancing
short time interests (do I want to take a break now) with long term
interests (do I care about possibly acquiring RSI in the
future). Research then shows that people tend to overly favor
short-term interests. They will keep on working regardless of what it
means for their health. Admittedly, I am one of those people, and I
have suffered the consequences.

To help people like that, Workrave is configured by default to take
control of the system and force you to break. Hence, to allow for at
least a little bit of "user control", Workrave should not do this
unless the user has specifically requested it to do so.

This is why the (main) user of the machine should decide whether or
not to install and use workrave, and not someone else. I understand
that your situation is different, but I don't think we are the right
people to complain to. In my opinion, you should (also) complain to
the people who installed Workrave, for giving you a machine you have
less control over than you want to.

> OK.  Is it possible to avoid grabbing focus from another app, or to
> give it back to that app pretty much immediately?  That would allow
> me to click on the window to access its controls if I need to, but
> not otherwise.  This is provided that the window doesn't run away
> from the mouse.

I'm not sure I fully understand your point. The window that is running
away (we call it a "break prelude" or a "prelude" window) should not
grab focus from your app. You should be able to continue to work
normally. The window will go away after at most 30 seconds. Depending
on how Workrave is configured, a break window may pop up. A break
window may either grab focus and force you to break, or not grab focus
and allow you to continue working, again depending on workrave's
configuration. In the latter case, the break window will have a
title-bar (currently listing the break-type, not the program name - we
should look into that)

> I think the following things would help considerably:
>
> 1 Make the name of the tool more prominent in the interface, allowing
>   one to find its files in C:\Program Files, and so on;.

I think in doing so, the windows would become uglier.

> 2 Provide a help button, which displays the contents of the README,
>   but with a little text saying what the application is for, and
>   telling people to look at the system tray for the sheep icon.
>   Pointing to the web is not enough, something Microsoft need to
>   learn about for their documentation: there are plenty of reasons
>   why the internet may not be reachable;

That's something we could do, at least for the break windows. We'd
have to be careful, though, since the point is to stop the user from
using the computer, even if he doesn't want to :-)

> 3 Provide some means which is also prominent of stopping the
>   application, still allowing it to restart at next login, or
>   whatever.  I'm thinking of a stop button in the popup windows,
>   possibly with an "are you sure?" dialogue warning about the
>   risks of RSI, etc;

There are "skip" and "postpone" buttons available in the break
windows. Not in the prelude, but it doesn't interfere with your working
and jump away anyway.

> 4 Allow the resizing of the dialogue with the times in it.  I'd
>   argue that all windows should be resizable because (for example
>   in safe mode) sometimes the resolution of the display is very low,
>   and windows won't fit on the screen.  I have had this with
>   system windows which I could not close because the only close
>   or OK buttons were off the bottom of the screen when the window
>   was pushed up against the top.

That's also something that could be done. Though I sincerly hope
you're not proposing to reduce your display's resolution to the point
the current status window doesn't fit any more :-)

Groetjes,

Kees-Jan


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