Re: Linux Window Managers and Accessibility

[cwitty newtonlabs com (Carl R. Witty)]

Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com> writes:

> >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 don't think using clients behind two NATs on one X server is
contrived at all.  Both my home network and my work network are behind
NATs, and have fast, low-latency Internet connections; I can easily
imagine being on the road and displaying clients from both my home
machine and my work machine on my laptop X server.  The contrived part
was if both machines had the same IP address and the same hostname.

> >> 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 still must not understand what we're talking about, then.  The
message that started this discussion asked whether Sawfish can provide
certain information, or whether Sawfish would have to be modified in
order to be able to provide it.  Sounds like Brian Cameron, at least,
was thinking about changing the window manager.

How are you envisioning the window manager providing this information?
What is it providing information to?  (I was under the impression that
the window manager was providing information through some side CORBA
channel to the AccessibilityBroker, which would certainly require
changing the window manager.)

Carl Witty