Re: Thoughts on magnification

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Willie,

Good summary, and I love your name (CIMSITY).  From my imperfect vantage 
point, the only thing I would suggest changing in your summary is the 
priority of Metacity vs. Compiz in our magnification API ordering.  I 
think we have with gnome-mag a tool that will work with COMPOSITE & 
Metacity as it stands now.  It might be better to focus our API efforts 
first in two areas:
1. a gnome-mag++ that gives us something more general and can work with 
non-COMPOSITING window managers (but on systems that use COMPOSITE)
2. a Compiz extension that handles magnification for us

I'd put a COMPOSITING edition of Metacity in third place.

Also, I think from the point of view of user experimentation, we'll find 
Compiz a much more productive place to be - as we figure out what video 
effects are must valuable to which user needs & user scenarios. 


Regards,

Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

> Hi All:
>
> This is to follow up on the nice IRC discussion we had in IRC yesterday 
> regarding magnification.  I think the main points were:
>
> o The COMPOSITE extension opens the world for us to do lots and lots of 
> really cool manipulation of what's being displayed on the desktop.  This 
> goes well beyond bit zooming and lets us get into really neat and useful 
> stuff that can benefit a larger number of disabilities.
>
> o The architecture of the COMPOSITE extension seems to be that the most 
> effective use of it is if you are in the process of the thing acting as 
> the COMPOSITE manager.
>
> o As we see with Compiz and Metacity, people seem to be centering on the 
> window manager as the COMPOSITE manager.
>
> o We have a desire to for external processes (e.g., Orca) to communicate 
> with features provided by the COMPOSITE manager, such as magnification.
>
> o We need to consider systems where COMPOSITE may not be available.
>
> Given this, I think we agreed that the 'magnification' task is larger 
> than magnification.  Maybe we need to rename it something like CIMSITY 
> (COMPOSITE Interface for Magnification Services and other Interesting 
> TechnologY ;-)).  Given this, I think we also tended to agree that we 
> should create a growable API that starts off by supporting at least what 
> we need for magnification, but which will also eventually allow us to do 
> other really really cool stuff.  This API (most likely DBus based?) 
> would need to be supported by at least Metacity and ideally Metacity and 
> Compiz.
>
> Does that sound about right?  If so, this still seems like a pretty 
> tractable problem that seems to fit well within the GNOME Outreach 
> Program and which also provides great support for a large number of 
> assistive technologies.
>
> What are your thoughts?
>
> Will
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