Re: Mozilla - like JAWS or like Hal?

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Luke,

>> ...
>>
> >  2. In addition to your suggestions, think about how to implement 
> > them; and for the programmers out there, consider submitting patches to the
> > mozilla or gnopernicus code bases (or both) to implement the features you
> > would like to have.  This is an open source, community effort;
> > contributions of patches are most welcome!
>
> Both code bases are quite big, especially Mozilla. How do we know where 
> to start looking for the code that we need to work on?

Excellent question!  A good place to start is to ask, in the bug.  E.g. "I 
think Gnopernicus Braille should do such and such.  I'm happy to do that work; 
can you please tell me what module(s) I should look at to work on a patch for 
this?"  Similarly "I think Gnopernicus should offer a command to list all of 
the hyperlinks in a document, and activate them by number.  I'm happy to do 
that work; can you please tell me what module(s) I should look at to work on a 
patch for this?"

Note: you should always file a bug before sending in your patch, and attach 
the patch to the bug.  Also, for some of these features you might want to see, 
another alternative is to start by writing a little test program that does 
what you want to do in a stand-alone app.  E.g. an app that waits for focus to 
go to an object implementing ATK_Hyperlink, enumerating all of the other 
hyperlinks in that parent/container (going up a few levels), and displaying 
them in a list.  Look at at-poke for some code to crib from, and also 
especially GOK's UI Grab feature when used with a Hypertext-containing 
application like gnome-help.  In fact, something like this could even 
profitably be done as a standalone app that you use beside Gnopernicus (a sort 
of helper application).


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team