Re: [g-a-devel] [Accessibility-atspi] AT-SPI and D-Bus

[Olaf Jan Schmidt <ojschmidt kde org>]

[ Bill Haneman ]
> In theory they could of course be addressed, but the only advantage that I
> can see to the migration would be increased acceptance by KDE.  That of
> course would be a very positive development which I have no wish to impede,
> but I have doubts about the practical value to the end-users who should IMO
> be the focus of our efforts.

Making Qt and KDE applications accessible via AT-SPI has clear benefits to end 
users.

See
http://lists.freestandards.org/pipermail/accessibility/2006-July/001702.html
http://lists.freestandards.org/pipermail/accessibility/2006-July/001705.html
http://lists.freestandards.org/pipermail/accessibility/2006-August/001716.html
for an explanation of the glib- and ORBit2-related obstacles that make it 
clear that D-Bus is the only option for Qt and KDE.

> Frankly I'd rather see us putting engineering resources into other more
> pressing work on the existing infrastructure, which is sorely needed.

Sure, going the D-Bus route requires work, but not doing this work means Qt 
and KDE applications will not support AT-SPI.

No one on the Qt/KDE side is willing to put significant engineering resources 
into code that is difficult to handle, includes unwanted dependencies and is 
claimed by one of its key developers to be underdocumented, unfinished 
("subset") and virtually unmaintained:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dbus/2006-July/005214.html

> As I see it the D-BUS work is mostly orthogonal to end-user needs.

I see the D-Bus work as crucial for Qt and KDE end users.

If GNOME is not willing to make the changes to AT-SPI that are needed to do 
this, then this is unfortunate, but our plan is to go with AT-SPI in any 
case.

Olaf

-- 
Olaf Jan Schmidt, KDE Accessibility co-maintainer, open standards 
accessibility networker, Protestant theology student and webmaster of 
http://accessibility.kde.org/ and http://www.amen-online.de/