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List:       kde-accessibility
Subject:    Re: [Kde-accessibility] my crazy thoughts
From:       Olaf Jan Schmidt <olaf () amen-online ! de>
Date:       2002-11-27 10:44:31
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[Pupeno]
> Now I'm not thinking of using at-spi directly but to implement our own
> accessibility comunication method (anyway, I plan to take a lot of
> things from at-spi).

Wasn't Bill speaking of using bridging code? I think he said that both 
AT-SPI and ATK depend on certain Gnome thinks, but that the dependencies 
could go into the bridge.
If our APIs are close enough to the once AT-SPI or ATK is using, then 
bridging should be fairly easy.

> Will it be posible to make a bridge to at-spi, yes, it will, everything
> is posible and I think of that bridge while designing whatever I design.

The bridge could be easier with ATK, or easier with AT-SPI. We could write 
an ATK bridge first and change to AT-SPI later, if we find out that there 
are problems.

But before we agree on how to code the bridge, we have to agree on how KDE 
internally handles accessibility. Gunnar's and my idea was to use DCOP, 
so the bridge could be a DCOP service.

> Will we be tyranic while Gnome isn't?

I think using a new katk that is well-designed, so that it can be bridged 
to atk or at-spi, is all but tyrannic. It is rather good cooperation.

> But if I do an implementation from scratch I'll have some very good
> points that I can't another way, like, using KDE technologies as dcop
> as much as posible.

I never thought putting Gnome depedencies into kde-libs was a good idea.
That's why we talked about writing a bridge...

> Anyway, a bridge could be always built later.

I agree that the bridge only makes sense once we have that framework in 
place. But writing that bridge should have priority over writing programs 
like knopernicus or kosk, as it might help us sharing effords with the 
Gnome team.

> As SadEagle said, this is an invasibe development as we'll have to
> touch a lot of things, so, this issue should be taken to kde-core-devel
> as well before deciding anything.

What we can do is to concretely work out possible architectures and then 
ask TrollTech and kde-core to comment

> I am dreaming, but Qwidgets could be extended using something like
> QAccessible to hold all the information needed and dcop to export all
> that information.

As QAccessible and kde-libs code doing DCOP export already exist, this 
seems to be a very realistic approach.

The approaches I see are:
1. Extend existing the qt object in DCOP in kde-libs (requires big changes 
in kde-libs)
2.1 Export a new accessibility object in a) DCOP or b) MCOP in kde-libs 
(requires big changes in kde-libs)
2.2 Export a new accessibility object in a) DCOP or b) MCOP at the 
application layer. This would not be a long-term solution, but rather a 
way of trying out things before moving them to 2.1 kde-libs later 
(requires small changes in kde-libs and an extra library to be imported 
by KDE programs that wish to be accessible). 
3.1 Extend QAccessibleObject and export it to a) DCOP or b) MCOP in 
kde-libs (requires changes to Qt and kde-libs) 
3.2 Export enhanced QAccessibleObject at the application layer using a) 
DCOP or b) MCOP to get started and switching to 3.1 later (requires 
changes to Qt and kde-libs) 
4. Try to put everything into Qt, so pure Qt applications can use this as 
well

I personally would prefer to go with 3


> I think the main problem here is that the expert here, Bill, is closely
> related to ATK+AT-SPI and GAP development, even working for Sun, right
> Bill ? and on the other hand, the one in charge of making the desition,
> me, is a Pure KDE enthusiast.

I don't see a problem here. Bill suggested bridging code, which would fit 
very well with your idea. Maybe you thought of depending stronger on ATK 
then Bill ever suggested.

Olaf

- -- 
Olaf Jan Schmidt, KDE Accessibility team

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