Re: [g-a-devel] GTK and ATK

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Brian Cameron
<brian cameron oracle com> wrote:

> Another example is that the ATK abstracts common characteristics of
> widgets in a way that is useful to AT programs.  All widgets that deal
> with text (labels, entry fields, combo boxes, etc.) all implement the
> same AtkText interfaces, providing AT programs a common way to provide
> alternative UI's for the end user.  While not trivial, adding ATK code
> for a custom widget is a more reasonable approach to making a custom
> widget accessible than having to update every AT program like orca to
> support it.  If we did not have the ATK, the AT program suddenly needs
> to know how to interact with each stock and custom widgets directly
> and separately.  This adds a lot of code to the AT program, you see.

I would argue that if all the widgets dealing with text really have
the same needs, they should really support the same interface in GTK+,
and there should be no need to write n adaptors for widget-with-text
to atktext, but instead just one for text-widget-interface to atktext.
And ideally, text-widget-interface and atktext would be so close to
each other that that would be trivial.