[Evolution-hackers] our plan to do on evoltuion accessiblity work

[Gilbert Fang <gilbert fang sun com>]

Hi, Ettore

  Our main accessibilty work focus can be technically  splitted into 
two parts:
 1) ASE -- ATK Support Implementation. Generally, this part of source 
codes can be  separated from the other part , that is to say,  the new
source codes  will added in source files under the new  added
subdirectories.
 2) UAE -- UI Accessible  Experience. This is mainly the keyboad 
navigation and some other relative part, such as cursor supported. The
patches of this part may  appear in any proper files of the current
source codes. 

  It is better that the  UAE part patches are  directly into the header,
and we will be sure to  carefully create high quality patches so that
they will not reduce the stablitity.   Since  it is an open community,
we really want all the people know all the work ASAP and get active
discuss and feedback quickly.  

  Anyway, ASE part  is generally be seen as an optional feature, so we
suggest adding  an build option "--enable-accessibility=yes|no". Then
the developer can have an choice to decide whether or not to build  this
part.  It is also an general way to reduce the risks of un-stability of
the whole product while developing new feature.

  For evolution, we also need to  create an new subdirectory under the
top_level source directory for ASE. Generally, it can be named "a11y",
and under it, there may be  another level of subdirectory for different
part, like "a11y/calendar", "a11y/addressbook".  GAL and GTKHTML have
already such sub directories.

  In order not to affect the header too much and improve the efficiency,
we prefer to create an branch  out  specially for our ASE work. There
will be many patches for review.  After some time , say 2 or 3 week, we
will get the branch built and have a smoke test, if it is stable enough,
we hope the codes can be merged into the header.  

  Another issue is bug managment. Could you kindly add in bugzilla an
component named "accessibility" under the product "evolution"? That will
make us convenient file bugs and track bugs for ASE work. If you do not
want be bothered by the bugs in this component, we can be the default
owner for these bugs.

   At last,  I suggest that before the branch of evolution ,  I mean the
on current header, we add the new sub directory "a11y" and the ASE
initialization codes.  The initialzation of ASE will check whether  the 
GNOME  accessibility is enabled, and if so, check  the validity of ASE
dynamic library and load it.  It is an framework so I hope all community
developer knows that and may give us good suggestions. I will submit the
patch quickly  to the evolution-hackers.


Gilbert 
=====
Software Engineer
Desktop  Software Group
Sun China Engineering & Research Institute
Beijing, P.R.China
Tel : +86-10-82618200 ext. 82821
Mobile : +86-13910776725
Email : gilbert fang sun com