Re: [g-a-devel] status of cspi?

[Mark Doffman <mark doffman codethink co uk>]

Hello Mike,

Firstly, my apologies for sending an e-mail to the list previously with
the wrong subject. I really must turn "digest" mode off on all mailing
lists. It only leads to failure.

> As part of the Mono accessibility work that we are doing at Novell, we 
> need to implement the UIA client api and bridge from at-spi.  This means 
> that an AT written in UIA should have access to applications exposing 
> information through atk.  As I see it, we have two options for using 
> at-spi in C# / .net:
> 
> (a) Use cspi, possibly writing a wrapper in C#, or
> (b) write a native C# binding for the dbus-based at-spi.
> 

I'm highly in favor of Novell using the D-Bus protocol directly.

Perhaps up until the past couple of days it wouldn't have made sense for
Mono to depend on the D-Bus protocol. We, as a project, were intending
to continue with Cspi, and there was no firm date for the completion of
D-Bus AT-SPI. Indications on the desktop-devel lists are that Gnome
wishes remove ORBit and Bonobo, meaning that AT-SPI D-Bus is will get
much more attention over the next 13 months.

I understand that your timescales mean that you need to complete the
project before the release of Gnome 3.0. If you were to depend on AT-SPI
D-Bus then we would have to make a firm schedule for the project that
meets your timescales.

AT-SPI D-Bus up until now has been run somewhat ad-hoc (Much to my
shame) and I can understand why Novell would be weary of depending on
it. The bus ratio was a little low, (Just you and I mostly) and there
were more dependable options.

Novell depending on D-Bus AT-SPI probably means that they would have to
spend some time working on it. (As always with non-mature code bases)
But could also have some advantages. Novell could write the UIA client
side bindings to a fixed API that was never intended to provide UIA
functionality (Cspi). The D-Bus AT-SPI protocol is more flexible and
there may be cases where the input of Novell would both improve the
protocol and the ease to which it is translated to the UIA interface.

I consider it my duty right now to turn AT-SPI D-Bus into something that
 Novell feel comfortable depending on. We shall see how that goes before
you start work on the client bindings.

Thanks

Mark