On 06/07/2011 03:36 AM, Isaac Porat wrote:
Hi
I was asking the same question a couple of years ago. My
understanding after looking a bit into the issue is that IBM consulted
at the time key people in accessibility in Linux (there still some
minutes of these meetings) to make both interfaces as close as
possible which as indicated it is somewhat the case.
Reading between the lines, iAccessible2 was not accepted for Linux
because of both companies and Linux vs Windows politics. the
interfaces are close but not the same. At the time perhaps if
somebody on the Linux side took a more favourable approach the
communication layer in iAccessible2 implementations would have been
properly separated. As it happened my understanding from Bil Cox who
looked at the issue in more details in the Windows world the
implementation and communication layers can be mixed with vendors who
want to support both Windows and Linux so in practice they need to a
good extend maintain two separate stacks and with the ratio of Windows
to Linux users of something like 90 to 1 Linux support not suprisingly
is always behind.
It is true that there are people that thinks that moving iAccessible2 to
Linux should be the path. But AFAIK, the reason of why it wasn't done
was not due politics. It was in order to avoid to "reinvent the wheel".
Linux had already a working accessible interface, ATK, implemented by a
lot of actors on Linux (gtk, firefox, etc). So moving to iAccessible2
means to change all in order to move to a (as already said) really
similar technology, with similar features.
But I also understand that having "just one thing" would have a lot of
advantages.
BTW: AFAIK, this is not "one is better that two". AFAIK MacOS doesn't
use ATK or Ia2:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXModel/OSXAXmodel.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001078-CH208-TPXREF101
Or I'm wrong?
BR
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Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias (API) ([email protected])
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