Re: Linux Window Managers and Accessibility

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com>]

>Well, let me give a hypothetical example.  Suppose I'm a system
>administrator, and I'm responsible for running two semi-private
>networks (both networks use 192.168.*.* IP addresses).  I have a
>machine of my own in each network.  Both machines happen to be
>192.168.3.7, and both machines happen to be named "cwitty".  This
>doesn't cause problems, because neither the name nor the IP address is
>exposed to the global Internet.  I have X clients on both machines
>running on my X server (over NAT gateways).
>
>Obviously, this is an extremely contrived example.

What, using two different NATs on one X server ?  Bleaggh.  Maybe this 
example is too contrived to be useful.  Anyhow I think a char* param 
could be used, even if "hostname" has to be further qualified.


>> I agree with the first part, but what (existing) API for the window 
manager 
>> would one use to pass this info to the window manager?  

>Why do you care if it's an existing API?  You're going to have to
>change the window managers and the applications (or at least the
>toolkits) anyway.

We care a lot. We do *NOT* want to change the window manager, and we 
haven't time to wait for a new WM_* property if that's what it takes.  
If you are correct that a program cannot unambiguously identify itself 
with a window manager then we are in trouble, I agree... but I am not 
convinced that's the case.  Toolkits, yes we have inserted the hooks 
into GTK+ and Java (which had them already).

I (personally) am not familiar enough with the ICCCM WM spec to say, but 
I find it hard to believe that one cannot come up with an unambiguous 
token of some kind that is knowable by both application and WM.  However 
I could use help in determining it :-)

-Bill

>I think you're going to have to come up with a new protocol to give
>this information to the window manager.  (Something as simple as
>setting an ACCESSIBILITY_ID property on top-level windows would be
>fine.)  There just is no definitively identifying information which
>applications currently pass to the window manager (I'm pretty sure).
>And if you're coming up with something new, it seems like you might as
>well use something truly unique (an ID from the AccessibilityBroker)
>as your identifier, instead of using things like IP addresses,
>hostnames, and PIDs.
>
>Carl Witty
>
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------
Bill Haneman x19279
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland