Re: [orca-list] Firefox3 and sayAll broken with latest trunk update

[Hermann <meinelisten onlinehome de>]

am Mi 05. Mär 2008 um 09:23:47 schrieb Gaijin <gaijin clearwire net>:
[...] 
>       I'm not sure I mean virtualization, per-se'.  I'm thinking more
>       about better intercommunication between the browser and screen
>       reader, regardless of make and plateform.  Standardizing the way
>       future software can communicate with assistive technologies via
>       something like Microsoft's DDE, or Dynamic Data Exchange.  I'm
>       thinking of something like:
>
> 1) You press the Tab key.
>
> 2) the screen reader notes the key, sees it's not one of it's
>       own keys and passes it to Firefox.
>
> 3) Firefox cursors to the next link and reports to the screen reader
>       what    kind of object is currently highlighted and what is
>       printed 
>
>       Firefox could be left pretty-much as is, as everything could be
> implemented in the GTK libraries and Orca could just phaze in the new 
> routines, or linked into more specialized libraries for       each piece of 
> soft or hardware., much like modules.  Right now, there seems to be this
> major war going on to get two pieces of software to work together (Orca
> and Firefox), and I'm thinking we're going to have this battle for each
> and every program out there.  I sincerely believe there needs to be a
> translator between the two "interfaces," I guess you would call it.  I
> sincerely believe there should be a unified assistive technology
> language that can be implemented with the least hassle possible.
> Concentrate on makeing the libraries aware of the new communications
> standard and everything else should just fall right into place without
> affecting currently written software.  Just add a couple extra variables
> to the end of the current library routines and you kill four birds with
> one stone.  (I also think it should be don at the X11 level, rather than
> at the Gnome level of things.)
                        
You're absolutely right, but this requires common standards for all 
Linux programers on every Linux interfaces. Remember, there are at 
least half a dozen interfaces, and we are dealing with open source here. 
Do you really believe you can convince them all to use the same 
standards? I doubt, since this is open source, and that means, everyone 
can program like he/she preferes.
I'm sorry to say this, but I think that one of the big advantages of 
propritarian software is, that such things are much much easier to 
implement, and so that's why MS and the related AT developers still are 
miles ahead.
Note: Orca has made remarkable progress since the last 2 years, but 
remember that FS and GW-Micro don't sleep too.
Hermann