Re: My (ongoing) analysis of the proposed modules

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Luis:

> |gnome-mag, gnome-speech, gnopernicus & gok
> [yes]
> 
> I'd like to see a firm commitment from the a11y team to work on
> usability/HIG issues, within the obvious constraints like the
> shortcomings in theme colors and instant apply issues. I'm also worried
> about the commitment to testing releases- will gnopernicus (just as an
> example) do regular tarball releases, or at least work with a volunteer
> to help that happen, if we can identify one?

Believe it or not, the only blocker for regular gnopernicus releases ATM
is an account on gnome.org which hasn't gone through for the primary
gnopernicus cvs maintainer.  I'm doing the tarball uploads in the
meantime.  We need a gnome.org account for the GOK team also, if it's
not already gone through... I am doing tarball uploads there too.  I
expect the GOK maintenance level to increase in the near-term, and David
Bolter has indicated his willingness to resolve HIG issues to mutual
benefit.

I don't see a problem with gnopernicus HIG either, with the note that
the slightly-odd gnopernicus button-list UI has rationale behind it.  It
does theme effectively, etc. so it's IMO arguably HIG compliant but
"unusual".  But I can't speak directly for the gnopernicus team.  They
do look at bugzilla bugs pretty quickly :-)

> 
> Outside of that, I think this is all upside for everyone involved.
> 
> nutshell version:
> pro: GNOME demonstrates commitment to a11y, get additional testing,
> feedback, and hopefully new volunteers for the a11y team, obviously
> better functionality for accessibility-impaired users
> 
> cons: don't integrate with rest of desktop very well, may have
> difficulty integrating with community release schedules.

I think the community release schedule issues will largely evaporate if
community accepts gok and gnopernicus into core.  We could use some
volunteer help in spreading the work around vis-a-vis gnome-speech, etc.
for testing and build stuff.  The gnome-speech installation issues are a
bit messy since there are multiple back-ends.  But I agree that this is
mostly upside, thanks for your support Luis.  The only way we can shake
out the build/install/config bugs efficiently is to get more people
poking at this stuff.

As for desktop integration: I'm working on capplets to make enabling the
ATs easier and making it easy to add/remove them from a startup session,
etc. with the goal that the overall integration level should seem
greater.
 
regards,

- Bill