[g-a-devel] GAIL questions

[Mike Gorse <mgorse mgorse dhs org>]

Hi all,

I am trying to add ATK support into Abiword's document window.  The window 
is a GtkDrawingArea onto which text is drawn, so I have created a 
sub-class called AbiDocView and am trying to create a corresponding class 
for an ATK object.  It seems appropriate to base the ATK class on 
GailWidget since GtkDrawingArea is based on GtkWidget, but I'm not sure 
how best to do this.  I can't just link directly against libgail.so since 
it is not on the standard link path, and I haven't found a way to check 
whether it has been dynamically loaded as a module and, if so, retrieve a 
symbol from it.  Do I need to have the AT support in a separate module 
from the program which I am trying to make accessible?  (It would seem 
simpler to be able to keep the atk code in the main Abiword binary, but 
the documentation I've found suggests that I do need to create a module.) 
If so, then is there any documentation in particular that I should look at 
for doing this?  Would I then link the module directly against libgail.so? 
I haven't found an example of a program doing what I'm trying to do.  I 
presume that the application should look at the value of GTK_MODULES and 
append the name of the module that I create if it finds that gail is being 
loaded.  Can GTK_MODULES specify a path to a module, or would the module 
need to be installed in the standard directory for gtk modules?

Thanks,

-- Mike Gorse / AIM:linvortex / http://mgorse.freeshell.org --