Loading a11y modules on runtime (was [orca-list] RFP - Guadalinex a11y edition)

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

Renamed as it started to be really offtopic.

From: trev saunders gmail com

>> You also have the problem of how signal gtk applications on
>> runtime. You would require a IPC to do that, so the best candidate
>> would be DBUS. This would mean add a new dependency to gtk+.
> 
> I'm tempted to try to do this with signals, its kind of ugly, but I believe could work.  My idea is basically have a file that contains a list of new modules you'd like gtk to load, the app could find out the name of this file from an enviroment variable or it could be determined at build time, whatever.  We'd put this file in $HOME/.new_gtk_moduels or something again the details don't really matter, but it should probably be in $HOME somewhere.  Then when you want a gtk application to load the modules specified there you can just send it a signal.  Now that I think about this you could probably do the same thing with a fifo, without the signals part.  While its far less enterprisey it seems reasonable, and fairly easy to implement.  

But here you are explaining a alternative way to put the modules to
load on runtime, but not how to send the signal itself.

AFAIU, the idea is:

  a) Press a shortcut
  b) Window manager launches orca+at-spi-registryd
  c) Gtk apps receives a signal in order to load this modules.

As far as I understand, the idea is that window manager sent this
signal to any gtk applications in order to load the modules. But the
window manager is a app and the gtk apps are different ones, so,
unless Im missing something, you need a IPC signal library, like DBUS.

BTW: probably you won't require this file. As explained here [1], when
you set the gconf properties related to accessibility, automatically
at-spi-registryd is executed, and GTK_MODULES is updated to contain
the gtk a11y related modules. So you'll have a) and b) and just
missing c).

> While dbus could work it seems to me atleast like a really big hammer for this problem.

Using DBUS was just a quick thought/straightforward of how implement
it if a external app want to ask gtk apps to load during
runtime. Probably there are other solutions to do that.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/Mechanics?highlight=%28no\_at\_bridge%29#gnome-settings-daemon

===
API (apinheiro igalia com)