Comment 2 by vrdhn on 2013-12-03 18:56
Hello,
I've created a 'Cell List' dialog box, very much like the Links list dialog box which comes up when NVDA+f7 is pressed in Internet Explorer.

The changes are in repository: https://bitbucket.org/manish_agrawal/nvda.git, branch: in_t3680_texcel

The behaviour is as follows:
Pressing nvda+f7 in Excel sheet will popup the Cell List dialog box.
The Cell-List popup dialog box will have a tree view, and two choice selections. The first choice box is for selecting type of cells to display e.g. with comments, formula etc.
The Other choice box will be a view mode. This will let user change the hierarchy in the tree, like viewing in Row/Col, or Col/Row, or Area / Row / Col etc.

Hitting enter will take back to excel sheet , with cells selection shifting to the selected line in the tree.

I'm looking for more feedback on this feature.
Thanx

Attachment t3680.patch added by vrdhn on 2014-04-26 06:07
Description:
patch generated using 'git format-patch --stdout master'

Comment 4 by vrdhn on 2014-04-26 06:07
Hi,
Resubmitting the patch. This has been generated using 'git format-patch --stdout master'
This includes a generic files 'msoffice_constants.py' which contains several constants from MS Excel, and a binding for NVDA+f7 to popup the dialog.
Right now the dialog is not doing any caching of data, so can be a little slow for large files. This will be fixed when this patch is approved
Thanks

Comment 5 by jteh on 2014-04-28 06:04
Thanks for your work!

While I'm sure this might be useful for some, I'm not sure all of it is appropriate for a screen reader. Where a sighted user can perform something more efficiently, a screen reader should certainly provide functionality which yields equivalent efficiency for a blind user.

In the case of formulas and comments, I imagine a sighted user can quickly skim the sheet for formulas, which suggests we do need a way to quickly navigate to them. However, I wonder whether this is better sutied to quick navigation commands similar to what we have on the web, rather than a list. Can you explain why you feel a list is necessary for a blind user, given that a sighted user can't "list" formulas or comments?

Comment 6 by manish (in reply to comment 5) on 2014-04-28 23:55
I am not sure if I understand your comment correctly but currently there is no "browse" mode in excel. So, for quick keys to work, we will either use a modifier key like "nvda +f" for formulas or introduce a "browse" mode.

In both cases above, the user cannot find out the various formulas on the sheet without loosing their current place in the sheet because the quick key will actually move their caret to the formula cell. While in case of popping up a list, I can just escape out of the list without loosing my place in the document - this is closer to how a sighted user also works because they can just scroll around and see where the formulas are without loosing their current place.

there is also the question of having that many more key combinations to remember in case we go with the modifier key approach.
Thoughts?

Replying to jteh:

Thanks for your work!

While I'm sure this might be useful for some, I'm not sure all of it is appropriate for a screen reader. Where a sighted user can perform something more efficiently, a screen reader should certainly provide functionality which yields equivalent efficiency for a blind user.

In the case of formulas and comments, I imagine a sighted user can quickly skim the sheet for formulas, which suggests we do need a way to quickly navigate to them. However, I wonder whether this is better sutied to quick navigation commands similar to what we have on the web, rather than a list. Can you explain why you feel a list is necessary for a blind user, given that a sighted user can't "list" formulas or comments?

Comment 7 by jteh on 2014-04-29 06:18
Sorry for not being clearer. I was suggesting that we consider a quick navigation mode, sort of similar to browse mode but only providing quick navigation commands for non-web situations.

Your argument concerning losing your place is a good one. It might make sense to consider having browse/quick nav mode move the review cursor rather than the caret/focus. This way, the user can have the caret move with the review cursor if they choose or not if they don't.

Anyway, your argument suggests it's worth proceeding with this approach. Sorry it's taken so long to get to this. We're devoting some focus to our Office support at the moment, so we'll try to get to this sooner rather than later.

Comment 8 by manish (in reply to comment 7) on 2014-04-30 13:00
Replying to jteh:
Thanks for your comments.
Also, following up on our discussion on using this dialog for cells with data in the current row/column/visible on the screen. What we last discussed was that if excel natively provides key strokes like "ctrl+left" and "ctrl+right" to move to the next filled cell, then we perhaps do not need a dialog listing the filled cells.
However, these keys only work to move between defined regions in excel. This is definitely not sufficient for what we need here. I am trying to list down what I think we should be able to achieve:

1. Find out if there are any cells with data in the current row or column or the whole sheet.
2. Review the values of any filled cells in the current row, column, sheet without losing your place
3. Move to any filled cell in the current row, column, sheet.

Comment 9 by jteh (in reply to comment 8) on 2014-04-30 21:42
Replying to manish:

Also, following up on our discussion on using this dialog for cells with data in the current row/column/visible on the screen. What we last discussed was that if excel natively provides key strokes like "ctrl+left" and "ctrl+right" to move to the next filled cell, then we perhaps do not need a dialog listing the filled cells.

However, these keys only work to move between defined regions in excel.

I just tested this and my findings don't seem to agree. I created two rows. In row 1, I filled only columns A and E. In row 2, I filled columns A through E. In A1, control+right always takes me to E1. Can you provide an example where this doesn't work as expected?

Comment 10 by manish (in reply to comment 9) on 2014-05-02 02:25
Replying to jteh:
You are right. ctrL+arrows do correctly take me to the next filled cell in the current row or column.
However, if the first cell with data is in cell k10, I have to keep doing ctrl + arrow in at least as many rows or columns as do not have data before I can find the first cell with data.
Similarly, for a sheet sparsely filled with data, in different columns with several empty rows, it is very time consuming to find all the data on the sheet.
Is there some technique you use to tackle such worksheets or should we perhaps look at building a key stroke to get to the next or previous cell with data that spans rows and columns?
so, nvda+ctrl+right will get to k10 from a1 in a single keystroke and if the next piece of data is in n18, the next key stroke will take me there. Sort of a skip blank I guess.

Comment 12 by Michael Curran <mick@... on 2014-06-03 03:09
In [953d6f4]:

Implement an NVDA+f7 Excel cells list for listing comments and formulas by area. From patch on #3680 with fixes to whitespace and movement of excel type constants into excel.py. Re #3680

Comment 13 by mdcurran on 2014-06-05 04:11
Official branch t3680 provides a Cell list dialog, basedon code from the patch on this ticket. It can show cells with formulas or comments, and can show them grouped by region, or just flat.
Are there any other specific features needed?
Possibilities would be showing any cell with content, and grouping by column or row within or not within regions.
Cell with any content is a little bit of work as specialCells(type) would need to be called for both formulas and constants, and then the ranges merged, as there is no type for filled cells.
Supporting rows and columns is possible, but we may want to abstract grouping code a bit more. ranges do have a rows and a columns property. Plus I'm not sure how the UI should work. Perhaps a group by area checkbox, and some group by dimension radio buttons (rows, columns and off)?

Comment 14 by vrdhn on 2014-06-05 05:29
Hi,
Thanks for taking this forward.
When I worked on the patch, the wxPython version was older.
if we are on wxWindows version 2.9 or later, the tree with columns can be used
for the main tree. The comment / content
formula then become columns. Depending on the view, columns can be made visible.
http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/WxTreeListCtrl .

-Vardhan

Comment 15 by nvdakor on 2014-06-05 05:38
Hi,
We're using 2.8.12.1 for a while until some issues are resolved in 3.0.0.1 (hopefully soon).
I have also added translator comments and updated spellings.

Comment 16 by jteh on 2014-06-23 04:37
I just had a chat to a sighted user about this. Apparently, a sighted user has to click in a cell before they can see the presence of a formula. This is equivalent to the experience of a screen reader user and thus removes the need for the formulas part of this dialog. Has anyone sighted been able to confirm otherwise?

In contrast, the presence of comments is indicated by a mark without first needing to click in the cell.

Comment 17 by nishimotz on 2014-06-28 14:09
If the content of a cell is a formula (such as '=1+1'), usually the result value (such as '2') is shown in the cell.
When the 'Formula Bar' in the Excel application window is visible and a cell with a formula is selected, the formula bar shows the formula, and the cell still shows the result value.
When the cell is activated by double click or f2 key is pressed, now the formula itself is shown in the cell, and it becomes editable.

Sighted person can ignore the formula, just by not seeing the formula bar, or not trying to edit the cell.

Some Japanese NVDA users are requesting the feature of 'disabling automatic reporting of formula.'
They say it is difficult to work with some worksheets which contain many many formula, without disabling the formula announcements.
Is that related to the issue, or something similar to #1680?

Comment 19 by jteh (in reply to comment 17) on 2014-08-28 03:32
Replying to nishimotz:

Some Japanese NVDA users are requesting the feature of 'disabling automatic reporting of formula.'

They say it is difficult to work with some worksheets which contain many many formula, without disabling the formula announcements.

Is that related to the issue, or something similar to #1680?

Please file a separate ticket for this. Thanks.

@nvaccessAuto commented on Jun 4, 2014, 10:11 PM MDT:

Comment 13 by @michaelDCurran on 2014-06-05 04:11
Official branch t3680 provides a Cell list dialog, basedon code from the patch on this ticket. It can show cells with formulas or comments, and can show them grouped by region, or just flat.
Are there any other specific features needed?

As we are now able to access formulas using NVDA+F7, is there anything else that needs to be done with this issue?

This is a gentle request for @michaelDCurran to kindly consider responding to @ehollig's #3680 (comment).

Comments and formulas can easily be displayed in a tree view when pressing nvda+f7. I vote for closing.

Closing because of reasons pointed out above.