Re: [orca-list] ATK vs iaccessible2 (again)

[Luke Yelavich <themuso ubuntu com>]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:51:25PM EST, Bill Cox wrote:
> Qt has a dbus interface, since qt4.3, though I can't figure out how to
> enable it!  So, the default plan, which no one is working on as far as
> I can tell, is to write an iaccessible2 to ATK converter.  That way,
> Orca can continue to work as-is without modification, and we'll get
> some support for Qt apps like Skype, and maybe Adobe Acrobat Reader.
> I assume we'll continue to interface to Firefox throught their buggy
> and poorly maintained ATK interface, and continue to work with Gnome
> applications through the buggy ATK widget interface.  We can fix bugs,
> so we can make this work.

Orca listens to at-spi, not atk. Atk is the library that is responsible for talking to GTK and passing the 
accessibility information onto at-spi. Thats why for at-spi version 2, there is an atk component. When QT 
at-spi tie-in work starts, I dare say we will see a similar at-spi2 component for QT.

I think longer term, if at-spi needs to be extended to get the improvements that IAccessible2 has for area 
markup, then this is the best way forward. If firefox could also expose an IAccessible2 interface for the 
webpage display area under Linux, it probably wouldn't be too much work to write an IAccessible2 component 
for at-spi2. The beauty of at-spi2 is that it is now broken up into several pieces, allowing for a more 
modular design.

Luke