[Kde-accessibility] Features of KMag

[Frederik Gladhorn]

Hi all,

I just discussed with Martin about KMag, and I think it's time to re-think the 
application a bit.

Of course the main issue is to find someone willing to work on the project. 
Short of that, blogging about it would probably be a nice start (make sure it 
ends up on planet.kde.org).

For now we have KWin which has a mangification plugin which is not suitable 
for accessibility purposes since it wasn't designed with that in mind.
On the other hand we have changes coming up when transitioning to wayland, 
which means that KMag will simply stop working since it's currently completely 
tied to X11/XCB.

We think the way forward would be to rewrite kmag to talk to kwin via dbus.
1) kwin gets a new plugin for magnification with a dbus api
2) kmag talks to kwin and relies on it to do the actual mangnification
3) kwin draws the right window/region where it is told by kmag

This is important because on wayland we'll have actual security and cannot 
just grab parts of the screen and repaint it somewhere else.

The upside of this approach is that it will be much more efficient and clean, 
less code in kmag.

There is one downside: this will only work when running kwin, not with other 
window managers.

Martin and I are happy to work with anyone interested in working on this.

Since it's a big rewrite, now would be the time to also gather which features 
make sense, so this is a not very technical thing where anyone could help.
In addition we should get in touch with the visual design group to help with 
UI design and usability. Their main point of contact is the kde forum.

Feel free to re-use this email as you see fit to get others involved.

Cheers
Frederik