Re: [g-a-devel]Porting At-SPI to Mac OS X

[gnome-accessibility-devel bernard-hugueney org]

Thank you for your response.

Le Jeudi 9 Octobre 2003 17:14, Peter Korn a écrit :
> Bonjour Bernard,

>
> The two APIs for programming the Mac these days are Carbon and
> Cocoa.  In theory, you could run the AT apps on the Mac in an X
> environment with Java apps, GTK+ apps, and perhaps without too much
> work Mozilla and OpenOffice.org apps (once OpenOffice.org 1.1 is
> ported to the Macintosh). In practice, this first step would
> probably run into several hurdles. These include the Macintosh X
> window manager (which may not implement all of the modern calls
> that at-spi uses - I just don't know one way or the other),

I did not realized that at-spi talked to the window manager :-(
I thought it was only talking to the X server (for events) and with 
bridges gail and gnome-java-bridge. I hoped I would only (!) need to 
have a gnome-cocoa-bridge and a gnome-carbon-bridge.

> potential ORBit interoperability issues when it comes to use with
:-( I did not realized that either

> Java and OpenOffice.org, some minor serial port wierdness for
> Braille (and of course porting BrlTTY will be another issue),
> potential USB wierdness for GOK input devices, and a host of

I must confessed that I am not interested by input devices.

> miscellaneous things I haven't thought of
scary  :-)

>
> The second big step is integration with Macintosh applications
> (using either Carbon or Cocoa).  There is a Carbon accessibility
> API (see
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Accessibility-date.
>html) and also one for Cocoa (see
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Accessibi
>lity/).

Yes I thought it could be done one at a time. 

> Macintosh accessibility is discussed on the mailing list
> accessibility-dev lists apple com (join this list via the web
> interface at
> http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-dev). 

Did not know that, thank you for the pointer, I will certainly use it.

> There are two big issues to solve here.  #1 is reaching API parity.
>  When I last looked (quite some months ago), there was still a lot
> missing from the Apple accessibility APIs that is in at-spi and

I think that I would be satisfied even if complete parity was not 
achieved.

> that our two assistive technologies take advantage of.  #2 is
> figuring out a bridging mechanism. Do you use CORBA?  Do you use
> some other IPC mechanism for marshaling objects?

I don't use anything yet :-) I thought I'd use CORBA.

>
>
> Are you serisouly interested in taking on this project?  It would
> be a tremendous thing to have.

Well, I don't want to disappoint you. I'm quite satisfied with Linux 
for at-spi. Nevertheless people have expressed the desire to use my 
application (GUI usage tracing thanks to at-spi) on Mac. I hoped it 
would be easy enough to be tackled as a project by students in my 
university :-) (2-3 students, 4 months)
It's a kind of lottery : you can pick the best students or the worst 
:-(
The experience might still be interesting.
I must also say that the people wanting to use my application was 
ready to give some (Mac knowledgeable) help in the developpement.

Do you have any estimate of the manpower needed for a basic (no input 
devices, either cocoa or carbon (wichever is easier) bridge without 
complete parity) ?

I guessed I could at least target gnome apps on Mac Os X. The bridges 
would be done at a later stage.

Bernard