Re: D-Bus replacement for AT-SPI Accessibility

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

CC'ing gnome-accessibility-list.

This is a must-fix for GNOME 2.30/3.0 as ORBit and Bonobo will be
removed (as already written).

It would be great if this could be discussed in the a11y community and
if you (plural) could come up with a plan (technical + schedule) in the
next weeks (before 2.27.1) defining how to achieve this goal in the next
13 months.

andre


Am Dienstag, den 17.02.2009, 11:34 -0800 schrieb Peter Korn:
> Mark,
> 
> Thank you for all of your work (and your continuing work) in this area.
> 
> In addition to the list you enumerate below, we should also include on 
> the to-do list:
>  - modifying the Java to AT-SPI bridge which uses CORBA
>  - validation against other AT / AT tools which use AT-SPI in one form 
> or another - Dasher, accerciser
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Peter Korn
> Accessibility Architect & Principal Engineer,
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> 
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > For a long while now I have been working on a D-Bus version of the Gnome
> > accessibility framework, AT-SPI. The project has taken longer than
> > expected, but much of the functionality is now in-place.
> >
> > As everyone knows ORBit and Bonobo have been on the deprecated list for
> > a long time. I believe that the accessibility framework is one of the
> > last hold-outs using the CORBA libraries, so I'd be interested in
> > feedback about using D-Bus AT-SPI in future versions of Gnome.
> >
> > One of the major goals of the project was not to break API of the client
> > side libraries. These are the accessibility libraries used by ATs such
> > as Orca and GOK. The idea was to provide a seamless transition to D-Bus
> > for the existing accessibility code-base. This aim has been somewhat
> > successful.
> >
> > So far an Atk-Bridge Gtk module has been completed, allowing ATK
> > applications to expose their accessibility information over D-Bus
> > AT-SPI. The pyatspi client side libraries have been completed and are
> > API compatible with the existing pyatspi library. The AT-SPI registry
> > daemon has also been translated to D-Bus.
> >
> > Missing from this picture are the cspi client libraries used by GOK and
> > LDTP. Cspi bindings have been started by Mike Gorse, but I am not sure
> > if he will have the time to continue working on them.
> >
> > There is still a decent amount of work to do in making D-Bus AT-SPI
> > ready for Gnome. As well as the CSpi issue there is a large problem
> > regarding object lifetime. The AtkObject and CORBA AT-SPI Accessible
> > interfaces expected remote reference counting of accessible objects. For
> > good reasons AT-SPI D-Bus removed remote reference counting meaning it
> > is not possible to access the children of some containers. The proper
> > solution to this involves defining new interfaces for exposing large
> > containers. There has been much discussion on g-a-devel regarding this,
> > but, as yet, there has been no resolution.
> >
> > In the far future I would like to see changes to the client side
> > accessibility APIs. I'm not a fan of Cspi, its a Glib library that
> > unlike ATK is not GObject based. Pyatspi is a fine API, but both have
> > the problem that they make synchronous method calls to remote processes.
> >  Possibly causing deadlock, or forcing us to re-enter the main-loop.
> >
> > My involvement in D-Bus AT-SPI is going to continue, but as funding is
> > not guaranteed in the future, my time on the project may decrease.
> >
> > I would like to know:
> >
> > How important is the removal of ORBit / Bonobo to Gnome plans?
> >
> > When moving to D-Bus AT-SPI how amenable are people to killing the Cspi
> > library?
> > (This is a nasty one. It would require major changes to GOK)
> >
> > When moving to D-Bus AT-SPI how amenable are people to deprecating Cspi?
> >
> > What do we need to do to get this in to Gnome 3.0?
> >
> > I'm also looking for any suggestions as to how I can encourage other
> > people to help with this project. I think it could be important to
> > Gnome, and as already stated, I may not be able to continue working on
> > it full-time.
> >
> > The repository is available at:
> >
> > http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/at-spi2/at-spi2-core.git
> > or
> > git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/at-spi2/at-spi2-core.git
> >
> > A page detailing the current status of the project and instructions for
> > testing is located at http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/AT-SPI_on_D-Bus.
> >
> > The mailing list for the project is
> > accessibility-atspi lists linux-foundation org 
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Mark
> > _______________________________________________
> > desktop-devel-list mailing list
> > desktop-devel-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
> >   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
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