Subject: Re: bug#69942: 30.0.50; Fontification of radio-button widget labels

From: Mauro Aranda <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2024 18:05:30 -0300

Stephen Berman <[email-masked]> writes:

 > In bug#69941 I reported a faulty fontification of radio-button widgets
 > and noted in passing that the labels associated with the radio buttons
 > also have unexpected faces, namely, the widget-inactive face regardless
 > of whether the associated radio buttons are inactive or active (except
 > for the label of a radio button that has been pressed, which has the
 > default face).  While the faulty fontification discussed in bug#69941
 > appears to be a real bug, the widget-inactive face assigned to
 > radio-button labels is apparently by design -- it was present in the
 > initial commit of the widget library.  But this seems to me to have been
 > a UX mistake, since it effectively ignores the semantics implied by the
 > name widget-inactive.  I think a less surprising UI would be for the
 > labels to be fontified according to the widget's activation state:
 > default face when the widget is active and widget-inactive face when
 > it's inactive.  The attached patches provide two possible
 > implementations of this UI.
 >
 > The first patch makes the change unconditionally, treating the current
 > fontification as a UI/UX bug.  But it may be argued that this aspect of
 > the widget UI should not be unconditionally changed, since it was
 > apparently a deliberate design choice and there have been (AFAIK) no
 > complaints about the semantic discrepancy till now.  The lack of
 > complaint could be because the widget-inactive face inherits the shadow
 > face, so it is not sharply different from the default face. But if one
 > uses a very different face (as I did for illustrative purposes in
 > bug#69941), the inconsistency is very obvious and (IMO) jarring.
 > Nevertheless, to allow keeping the current fontification, the second
 > patch conditionalizes the change from the current fontification by means
 > of a user option (with the default being the current fontification).
 >
 > Is either of these changes acceptable?

Thanks for working on this.  What about adding a widget-unselected face?
I think that might be the intention with using the widget-inactive face
for unselected radio items.