Steve Lee wrote: > Out of interest do assistive technologies (AT) get to use an API or > library (similar to ATK for the server applications) or do they use > direct CORBA calls? They use CORBA bindings, which on the client side are usually fairly straightforward. For instance, the python AT-SPI bindings are just python methods on python objects. The only place where the client needs to implement any CORBA methods is in the event listener interface, which is pretty small (one method). > AT is very unlikely to use a particular GUI for any UI they present > as that UI has to be accessible. What do you mean by this statement? Most ATs are using the same mechanism for enabling the accessibility of their own APIs as other apps on the desktop; e.g. orca's GUI uses pygtk, and thus appears like any other accessible app.
Bill > > -- > Steve Lee > www.oatsoft.org <http://www.oatsoft.org> > www.fullmeasure.co.uk <http://www.fullmeasure.co.uk> > > > On 11/8/06, *Bill Haneman* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Ian Pascoe wrote: > > Hi all > > > > Some thoughts that have been kind of troubling me over the past. > > > > There have been various postings in the past about compatability > , or lack > > of it, with various applications. The most notable being that > of Firefox > > just recently. In my ignorance, should the community be aiming > to get those > > projects that run and maintain development languages to provide the > > necessary interfaces in the output so that the wheel doesn't > need to be > > re-invented each time for the application development projects? > > > Firefox is using ATK as its accessibility interface (or, rather, it is > including ATK as its exported accessibility interface on > Linux/Unix/Solaris). Because Firefox is cross-platform, and also > needs > to speak MSAA on the Windows platform, is uses a different > accessibility > interface based on something called nsiAccessible > internally. However, > by design, nsiAccessible maps rather well onto ATK, and ATK has > been a > major influence in the evolution of the mozilla-specific nsiAccessible > interface. > > To clarify - ATK itself is available on Windows, but it not a standard > part of a Windows installation, so in that respect ATK is already > "cross-platform". However, existing Windows assistive > technologies use > a mixture of Microsoft's MSAA and proprietary interfaces to do their > job, so Firefox needs handle the export of its accessibility info > differently on the two platforms. On Linux/Unix/Solaris, the > information is exported via ATK. > > OpenOffice.org also uses ATK as its accessibility interface now. > > ATK is an "in process" interface, so in order for the ATK > information to > be available to assistive technologies it must be "exported" via some > interprocess communication technology. AT-SPI is the standard > interface > for this, and a component called "atk-bridge" takes care of the > details > of turning in-process ATK calls into their equivalent AT-SPI > equivalents. > > I am aware that this is a GNOME list, but is the basic API used > to drive > > accessability the same that other projects are using or is it GNOME > > specific? > > > In the above sense, this technology is not Gnome specific, since the > same technique is used for Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and some other > components such as recent RealPlayer and (I believe) recent > versions of > the Acrobat PDF reader. > > However, the existing atk-bridge does rely on some "gnome > technologies", > i.e. it uses Gnome libraries which are present on most > distributions but > may be missing from some distros, for instance some KDE-centric > distros. > > KDE 4 is planning to support AT-SPI, but they wish to do so without > using Gnome libraries or CORBA. This will take some effort to > sort out, > since it means sacrificing binary compatibility with existing AT-SPI > implementations. I know they wish to do this in a way that preserves > the functionality of existing AT-SPI clients like orca, LSR, GOK, > Dasher, gnopernicus, as much as possible, but it is not clear when > this > work will be readily available. > > Lastly, are the accessability modules like Orca specific to > GNOME or will > > they work cross GUIs? I ask only out of curiosity as I'd like > to try out a > > few of the mainstream, and some of the backwater distros that > are out there. > > > In theory orca could work with any distro which provides the necessary > dependencies, and can work with other GUIs as well; however the > distros > need to do the work to make sure the necessary components are bundled > and tested. ATK is not bound to any specific GUI toolkit - while > it is > a dependency of GTK+, it does not require GTK+ in order to work, > so any > GUI toolkit is free to implement ATK as Firefox and OpenOffice.org > have > done. > > Best regards, > > Bill > > Ian > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list > > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org > <mailto:gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list > <http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list> > > > > _______________________________________________ > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org > <mailto:gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list > _______________________________________________ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
