Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Kees-Jan Dijkzeul wrote:

> 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.

I agree with the above....
> 
> 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.

What happens to someone supporting a machine in which this has been 
configured?  Sometimes such support takes place in the absence of the
user, for various good reasons.  Even Windows allows a screen to be
unlocked by an administrator, in recognition of this reality..
> 
> 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.

I will do, but I can't do that until I have something I can offer them,
like assurances that future versions will not be a problem, so they can
afford to wait.  
> 
> > 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

No, I can't work normally if I can't see what is going on. It appears 
on top of the magnifier, and I can't see what is in it because it won't
allow me to magnify it.  I can't see how to configure how long that
delay is, at the moment, either.

> 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)

OK.  Agreed that this one doesn't run away from the mouse.
> 
> > 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.

This is an accessibility issue.  If you want it pretty, find a way to
do that.  I don't think one more line of text saying what the program
is called, within the window, or a longer title bar, will hurt anyone.

> 
> > 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 :-)

The user who wants workrave will not keep clicking the help button, 
especially once they know what it says.  The user who doesn't know
what is going on needs a way to find out.  Possible consequences of
not being able to find out could include:
"You were getting all these popups. You clearly had a virus. I
reformatted your disk and installed Windows again. You'll have to 
get your personal files off your last backup."

> 
> > 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

But it keeps coming back.  There should be a button to turn if off completely.
You may have to go through a dialogue of the "I really don't want you 
to do that, Dave" variety, but there should be some discoverable way to 
stop it interrupting.  Access to that through minute icons in the system
tray is no good: my central vision is such that I need a magnifier, my
peripheral vision is lower resolution still, so I won't see anything going
on down there. At least I don't have tunnel vision.  Most of the time
I forget about the system tray, and unless the icon is used thematically
throughout the application I won't know that any there are relevant.

> windows. Not in the prelude, but it doesn't interfere with your working

The prelude IS interfering with my work, because it always comes up over
the magnifier.  It keeps doing so repeatedly.  If this were a person doing
that, it would be considered harassment.

> 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 :-)

No, but I can's see what that window is all about because it has almost
no text in it.  If I could expand it there might be some I can look at.
The icons in it have no tooltips.
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Kees-Jan
> 
        Thank you,
        Hugh
> 
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