Re: GTK+ Modules and GDK

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Wed, 2002-06-19 at 17:52, Joel Becker wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 05:49:09PM +0100, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 05:08:41PM +0100, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > > 	See, a braille display is a display, and likley could have a GDK
> > > representation.
> > 
> > Actually, that's where you're wrong.  It's not even remotely similar to
> > anything we usually call a 'display', for instance it's 1D not 2D, just
> > a serial device with weird input characteristics.
> 
> 	How do GTK+ objects map to this?  I'm really curious, because it
> doesn't seem obvious to me.

They don't, that's my point (regarding braille 'displays' as GDK
displays).

In order to drive something like a braille display from GTK+, one needs
an API like ATK and an assistive technology like a screenreader which
listens to AT-SPI events (bridged from ATK) and queries the AT-SPI API
(again, bridged to ATK) in order to present 1-D textual information to
the user in response to changes in the GUI.  In response to button press
events and other events from the braille display (which doubles as a
sort or auxilliary input device), the assistive technology can call ATK
API via the AT-SPI to do things like activate menu items and make
queries about text attributes, etc.

That's why things like keyboard navigation and focus tracking 'are so
important to accessibility.  A screenreader monitors the GUI events and
queries the API so that it can digest the results into a 'textable' form
and stream it, interactively, to a 1D text device.

-Bill

> Joel
> 
> -- 
> 
> Life's Little Instruction Book #182
> 
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