[g-a-devel] At-spi, and adding support for other display servers/desktop environments.

[Luke Yelavich <luke yelavich canonical com>]

Hi folks,
Another topic that I originally intended to raise at the last meeting is about at-spi, and refactoring it to 
be more easily extendable for use with other display servers/desktop environments. As is likely known by most 
people reading this list, the beginnings of this work have been started by Mike Gorse in at-spi2-core 2.9.90.

I have a couple of questions with regards to the roadmap for at-spi2-core going forward:
1. What is the roadmap for at-spi with regards to supporting Wayland?
2. Has any thought been given to detecting what backend to use at runtime?


Finally, given Ubuntu's divergence somewhat with the use of Mir and Unity, I am wondering whether upstream 
would be willing to carry any code that concerns this desktop environment and display server. An alternative 
is to refactor at-spi2-core such that the backend mechanism allows for pluggable modules to be loadable, thus 
allowing the Unity and Mir interface to be maintained out of tree.

There is currently no API for at-spi2 to interface with Unity and Mir, but the hope is to get that 
implemented within the next couple of months.

I'd be interested in learning about at-spi2 plans as per my above queries, and will be implementing the 
at-spi2 to unity interface, so I am happy to help with the refactor as well.

Thanks

Luke