[Kde-accessibility] Some AT-SPI questions

[Bill Haneman]

Olaf Jan Schmidt wrote:

>Hi Leo!
>
>Leo Spalteholz:
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>>I've been looking into AT-SPI lately,
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>Great!
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>>and have some (very basic) questions about writing an accessibility client
>>that gathers information from AT-SPI compliant applications (much like GOK).
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>It is possible to talk AT-SPI directly, but this has the disadvantage that it 
>will be more difficult to bridge once we move AT-SPI from CORBA to DBUS.
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I must disagree strongly.  AT-SPI is THE client interface for our 
accessibility infrastructure.

I do not recommend using cspi, especially if you are not writing pure 
C/GObject based applications.

>Most Gnome assistive technologies currently use libcspi for accessing AT-SPI, 
>and our plan is to provide a similar KDE-style library later. On the 
>application side, all applications currently use either atk or the Java 
>Accessibility bridge. This has the advantage that it is easy to switch the 
>underlying RPC mechanism as long the API is the same.
>
>Our plan is too move AT-SPI onto DBUS once the DBUS code is in the repository 
>for the KDE4 development version. This will probably also be the time when we 
>start to work on the KDE equivalent to libcspi, but it might take a while to 
>write all the necessary bridges to the CORBA version.
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The correct way to proceed here is to move the Bonobo/ORBit2 back-end to 
use DBUS as the communications/wire protocol, or to provide an IDL 
compiler which generates the equivalent client stubs for AT-SPI which 
the AT-SPI client can link to. 

The agreed-upon plan going forward anticipates that multiple back-ends 
for AT-SPI are to be developed, but the client interface will continue 
to be AT-SPI.

Best regards,

Bill

>I don't know how much time I will find to work on this, so if you wish to help 
>us with this, then you are highly welcome to do so. Please contact Harald 
>Fernengel if you have more questions regarding AT-SPI in KDE4.
>
>Olaf
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