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

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2006-08-03 at 22:54, Olaf Jan Schmidt wrote:
> [ 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.

This need not be the case.

Qt and KDE can do what OpenOffice.org and Mozilla have done, which is
write to the ATK interface.  The external libatk-bridge is then loaded
at runtime as a strictly soft dependency which would make KDE apps fully
interoperable with our existing full-features linux ATs.

> 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

No engineering resources from Qt/KDE would need to touch the
CORBA/Bonobo stuff at all, in order for this to work.  The only
"undesirable" dependency would be glib, which is very well maintained
and documented.

> > 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.

If it doesn't interoperate with AT-SPI, how can it "be" AT-SPI?

Bill

> 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/
> 
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