[g-a-devel] FocuCaretTracker issues

[Joseph Scheuhammer <clown alum mit edu>]

Recently, Magdalen uploaded a patch to bugzilla 
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647074#c16), that defined a 
mechanism whereby any gnome shell object could request notification of 
focus and/or caret change events as monitored by AT-SPI.

It has been reviewed and that has led to a number of AT-SPI related 
questions.  These were discussed at this weeks #a11y-meeting, and I was 
asked to summarize them here.

1.  Should the tracker be a singleton?
The tracker is currently implemented as a singleton, and is referenced 
through Main.  As such, it registers for the relevant AT-SPI events 
once.  Nonetheless, it allows multiple clients to request notification 
of those events.

The alternative is for each client to create their own instance of the 
tracker.  In that case, each client registers for AT-SPI events, and 
it's likely that there will be multiple registrations for the same event.

Mike Gorse is looking into whether AT-SPI event registration is limited 
to once-per-process, and may have answered on bugzilla by the time of 
this writing.

2. Where should Atspi.init() be done?
This is equivalent to calling atspi_init() from libatspi.  Currently, 
nothing in gnome-shell calls it.  Since the tracker needs AT-SPI 
initialized, it calls it within its constructor, the logic being that if 
the tracker is needed, it will insure initialization.  Note that if 
AT-SPI is already initialized, calling init() again has no effect.

Generally, there is reluctance to initialize accessibility if it is not 
needed.  This is to avoid DBUS messages unless an assistive technology 
is actually making use of AT-SPI.  The tracker's way of initializing 
AT-SPI is consistent with this reluctance.  The alternative is for 
AT-SPI to be initialized when gnome-shell is launched, most likely in  
shell_a11y_init() in main.c.

3. Should event registration happen in the tracker's constructor?
Currently, the tracker does not register for the relevant AT-SPI events 
until at least one client has requested notification. Clients request 
such notification through a call to the tracker's connect() method.

The alternative is for the tracker to register for all of the events in 
its constructor and be "prepped" to handle those events when a client 
connects.  (Note:  the three AT-SPI events in question are 
"object:state-changed:focus", "object:state-changed:select", and 
"object:caret-moved").

4.  Is try/catch required when registering/deregistering with AT-SPI?
Where the tracker registers/deregisters an event with AT-SPI, the code 
is wrapped within a try/catch block.  This is because when it was first 
written, registering/deregistering sometimes resulted in an exception.  
However, these exceptions occurred in the same time frame as the "freeze 
problem" (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681276).  Since 
that freeze issue has been fixed, it may be that the try/catch block is 
now superfluous, and can be removed.

Looking at the documentation, it appears that registering/deregistering 
does not throw an exception, and the try/catch can be removed:
https://developer.gnome.org/libatspi/unstable/AtspiEventListener.html#atspi-event-listener-register


5.  Should clients have the opportunity to respond to focus events 
independent of select events?
Currently, as far as a client is concerned, the tracker notifies them of 
focus changes.  However, on the AT-SPI side, the focus changes are 
represented by a combination of 'object:state-changed:focus" and 
"object:state-changed:select".  The standard example is arrowing through 
a menu:  the user perceives this as moving focus from menu item to menu 
item.  However, under the hood, there are no focus changes.  Rather, the 
system is emitting select changes.

IMHO, as far as user experience is concerned select changes and focus 
changes are the same thing, aka perceived changes in focus.  I can't 
think of a use case where a client (AT) would want to track only 
"object:state-changed:focus" and not "object:state-changed:select", or 
vice versa.

Thanks for any input.

--
;;;;joseph.


'A: After all, it isn't rocket science.'
'K: Right. It's merely computer science.'
             - J. D. Klaun -