>UAA/IA2 is finally (active) work in progress now

Very good news Malte.  Please keep us up to date as you see fit.

Pete
===
Malte Timmermann wrote:
> Hi Bill,
>
> Pete Brunet wrote, On 06/28/10 22:48:
>   
>> Hi Bill. The NVDA guys are right, i.e. IA2 is defined as a COM interface
>> using COM things like IUnknown, HRESULTS, BSTRS, VARIANTs, COM's
>> definition of arrays.  Code for Linux should be using ATK/AT-SPI.
>>     
>
> COM is one thing, the other difficulty that I see is that IA2 is not a
> complete Accessibility API, but just the "missing part in MSAA/WIN32".
>
> So if you want IA2 on non-Windows, you also need to offer MSAA, and
> maybe even some other random WIN32 API.
>
> Not sure if MSAA even had a license that would somebody allow to do so...
>
>   
>>> the IA2 documentation says pretty clearly that it is intended to also
>>>       
>> run on Linux.
>> Where is that?  I need to fix that.
>>
>> Open office implements UAAPI (UNO Accessibility API).  I don't remember
>> if there is a bridge from UAAPI to ATK.  There isn't one from UAAPI to
>> IA2, at least at this time.
>>     
>
> OOo has a native UAA/ATK bridge since OOo 2.0.1.
> And the UAA/IA2 is finally (active) work in progress now :)
>
>   
>> I remember Harald did something when IA2 first came out to use IA2 (and
>> MSAA) on Linux.  I don't know any of details.  They might have
>> transposed the IA2 IDL into something suitable for Linux or perhaps to
>> an intermediate form that could then be bridged to the real IA2 and to
>> ATK/AT-SPI.
>>     
>
> It's been a while that I heard about this, maybe they stopped working on
> it. This was before Nokia bought Trolltech/Qt.
>
> They simply wanted to make porting of Qt Accessibility a little bit
> easier with this. I never thought it would be a good idea doing it this
> way...
>
> Malte.
>
>   
>> Pete
>> -- 
>> *Pete Brunet*
>>                                                                 
>> a11ysoft - Accessibility Architecture and Development
>> (512) 238-6967 (work), (512) 689-4155 (cell)
>> Skype: pete.brunet
>> IM: ptbrunet (AOL, Google), [email protected] (MSN)
>> http://www.a11ysoft.com/about/
>> Ionosphere: WS4G
>>
>> Bill Cox wrote:
>>     
>>> I've heard conflicting descriptions of what IA2 is good for.  Some
>>> NVDA guys seem to think it's a Windows only interface, designed to get
>>> around some limitations in the old Microsoft interface, and that
>>> because of COM objects and other windows-specific stuff in IA2, it
>>> will never run in Gnome on Linux.  However, the IA2 documentation says
>>> pretty clearly that it is intended to also run on Linux.
>>>
>>> What's the actual case?  Does it make any sense to port IA2 to Linux?
>>> What would the game-plan be, and is anyone actually working on it?
>>> Exactly which applications should we consider accessing through the
>>> IA2 interface?
>>>
>>> Thunderbird and Firefox both have better maintained and tested IA2
>>> interfaces than atk interfaces.  It might be a pretty good thing to
>>> access these applications through IA2.  I hear mixed stories about
>>> OpenOffice, but a similar argument may apply.
>>>
>>> QT is a different story.  I've heard they don't use IA2 in Windows,
>>> and that the IA2 interface is their effort to support Linux.  Is this
>>> the case?  The lack of an atk QT interface may be the single strongest
>>> argument for supporting IA2 in Gnome.  However, if the QT IA2
>>> interface is unfinished, and only meant for Linux support, wouldn't it
>>> be simpler to modify it to use atk, rather than write an IA2 to at-spi
>>> plugin?
>>>
>>> So, in short, exactly what is the vision of IA2 for Linux?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Bill
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Accessibility-ia2 mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-ia2
>>>
>>>       
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