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

[Olaf Jan Schmidt <ojschmidt kde org>]

[ Samuel Thibault ]
> > > I'm just wondering: can't any corba implementation (other than ORBit,
> > > omniORB or TAO for instance) be used by Qt instead ?

We used TAO for KDE1 and abandoned it. Their website says: "Whereas compliance 
with OMG specifications is a design goal of TAO, it is also a continuing 
pursuit." This sounds similar to ORBit2 having implemented a 
"subset" (according to Michael Meeks) of the OMG spec.

omniORB does not compile on all platforms we are targeting for KDE 
applications and KDE-based assistive technologies (e.g. FreeBSD).
D-Bus support will be part of Qt 4.2 and be easily available on all our target 
platforms.

> But less than using ORBit (and bare with bonobo dependency), right? That
> might meet everyone's need: keep at-spi in a CORBA protocol, so that
> gnome and Qt accessibility work together, but avoid ORBit dependencies.

As I said, Trolltech is writing the bridge, and I accept the rule "Those who 
do the work decide".

Besides, the GNOME accessibility team has been arguing against every single 
change to AT-SPI that would make interoperability with Qt and KDE easier on  
thegrounds that it would not benefit their end users. I simply stopped 
listening to this line of argumentation.

> > It would also be no solution for the libbonobo dependency.
>
> I don't understand this. Doesn't Qt using another CORBA implementation
> would let it be free from bonobo?

No, bonobo activation would still be used for dealing with the AT-SPI 
registry, and the GNOME Accessibility team have made it clear that they do 
not plan to change it in the CORBA-based version. This means going directly 
for D-Bus is a better approach.

Also, you would still have ORBit2 etc as runtime dependencies because of the 
at-spi registry. This only a problem for the suggestion to push the 
bonobo-based AT-SPI into the LSB, because the LSB only accepts maintained 
code.

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/