Hello,
First of all, I would like to thanks all the people that participated
in the discussion of MouseTweaks during the accessibility summit, and
especially those that made it possible to have it demoed during that
event.
At 2:24 PM -0400 10/8/07, Willie Walker wrote:
We discussed MouseTweaks at the summit at think it definitely looks
like it provides great functionality for the intended users. Overall,
we support the module proposal, though we also recommend working with
the GNOME Usablity folks (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/)
on any user interface improvements that would make its configuration
and use better for the target user base. When working with them, I
think it will be very important to remind them who the target users
are and what the typical user interaction model will be.
Do I get it right? Does the fact, that you support the module
proposal, mean that the aim is to ship it with the next GNOME release
(GNOME 2.22)?
If so, could you please tell me what are the steps that MouseTweaks
will have to do in order to get it into GNOME, and especially the date
limits for each step? (Telling me where I can find that information
may also suffice.)
I will very soon begin the discussion with the people of GUP in order
to get a user interface that corresponds more to the HIG of GNOME.
But do we have to host MouseTweaks on GNOME's site to get it shipped
with GNOME?
What about the versioning scheme? Currently MouseTweaks is at version
0.2.2. Do we have to adapt it to the GNOME version; in other words
change it to mousetweaks-2.21.n?
Do we have to submit the source to a build system in some determined
format?
Sorry if my questions may be a bit basic, but I am new to this.
As an aside, did you give consideration to making the mouse handling
portions of this an X Server Extension? The reason I ask is that
when developing AccessX many years ago, we originally did it as a
client instead of an extension. At the time, we were encouraged to
merge with the XKB Server Extension. We did that, and the result is
that AccessX functionality pretty much ubiquitous now (yeah!). Times
were different back then, however. Today, it seems like getting an X
Server Extension accepted and deployed might be more arduous and take
a bit longer. So, if MouseTweaks works great as a client-only
solution, then perhaps the server extension idea is not that important.
Yes, the ideal would have been to implement it directly into X and I
have been told that this was also adressed. But it has been decided to
develop it as a client mainly for two reasons:
- the development took place as a GSoC 2007 project for ubuntu and it
was the more direct way to get to the users
- the developer (who will continue to do the necessary coding) did not
have the necessary knowledge to develop it as an X server extension.
(to be complete, nor do I)
Of course, if some day, the fonctionalities provided by mousetweaks
will be available directly from X, that would probably be better as
they would be "pretty much ubiquitous". (to quote your words ;) )
Cheers
Francesco