[Kde-accessibility] Re: Qt and accessibility on Unix

[Volker Hilsheimer]

> Hi Volker,
> <SNIP>
> > Well, we will certainly not make Qt depend on ATK+AT-SPI+CORBA, even
> > though it's not on me to make this decision. A plugin solution seems
to
> > be a reasonable idea, but requires Qt to be present as a shared
library
> > (since the plugin will also link against Qt) - this is not a problem
for
> > KDE, but software vendors often tend to ship Qt statically linked to
> > avoid conflicts with existing Qt libraries. Plugin based solutions
also
> > tend to bring in all sort of trouble, e.g. difference in Qt versions
the
> > plugins and the applications depend on etc. Otherwise, interfacing
with
> > a plugin is technically no big issue.
>
> Why not make Qt on Unix depend on ATK+AT-SPI+CORBA? It already has
established itself
> as the standard for doing Unix accessibility and will ship with all
major versions
> of Linux and Unix. It can't see that linking to these libraries is
more controversial
> than linking to XFree for graphics or fontconfig for font access.
>
> There has been some misconceptions I think in these threads about the
nature of glib,
> but as I pointed out in my post to dot.kde.org glib is not a gui
library at all. All glib
> does is offer is data structure handling for C, portability wrappers,
and
> interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads,
dynamic loading,
> and an object system. glib do not pull in any further dependencies.
>
> In fact libraries that KDE already use like pkgconfig actually
contains code cut and pasted
> from glib, and if GStreamer ends ups being shared between GNOME and
KDE (which we are working
> with Tim Janssen to make happen), then there are also another major
component that use this
> basic utility library.
>
> So statements about depending on GNOME is not correct as these libs
live on the very bottom
> of the GNOME chain togheter with other libs like XFree, glibc,
fontconfig, scrollkeeper, libxml etc., but
> there is nothing GUI related in them at all. I mean if XFree got put
into GNOME CVS would that make
> XFree a 'GNOME' library?
>
> Hope I didn't offend anyone with this mail, I am just so tired of
Microsoft winning because
> we divide and conquer ourselves.
>
> Sincerely,
> Christian
>

We have to check this on other systems as well; in general I think a
lightweight and generic interface between toolkit and infrastructure
makes more sense than pulling heaps of dependencies into either of them,
esp. if those dependencies are not unlikely to make trouble on e.g.
commercial Unix platforms - if commercial Qt doesn't build due to
what-do-I-know with accessibility support configured we help nobody. We
have enough trouble with dependencies to other 3rd party libraries
already (including C libraries).

All this is of course something that need to be evaluated at some point.

--
Volker