Re: issues with X Window

[Ryan Shugart <ryan lothlorien nfbcal org>]

A few questions about what you have just said.
1.  What is the likelyhood that an application developer would use the 
toolkit instead of the low-level protocols?  I equate the statement, and 
yes I do admit to beeing new to this, of tool kits and low-level 
protocols the same as standard controls and custom controls designed in 
Windows.  A lot of programmers use custom controls for whatever reason, 
I'm wondering how often that happens in Linux?  
2.  The toolkits you described are primarily used on the Gnome desktop 
environment.  I recently read a survey published by Borland International 
saying that  KDE and the QT tool kits were the prefered environment, and 
GTK was second.  I'm not saying which is better, as I would have no clue 
or experience, but this issue does need to be addressed if KDE is this 
popular.  When you say that GTK has accessability features in it, how do 
you mean?  Are you talking about GSpeech or is there actually something 
in the toolkit libraries, perhaps equivilent to MSAA?  
Thanks a lot.
Ryan


On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Paolo Molaro wrote:

> 
> There are several issues for an eyes-free access to the X Windows System
> that need to be discussed:
> 1) The low-level protocol
> 2) The window manager
> 3) The applications and the toolkits thay are bulit upon
> 
> 1) The low level protocol
> The applications that run on an X Window System use the X protocol
> to send to the server commands such as draw this line here, draw this 
> string there etc.
> This is useless from the visually impaired point of view because
> there is no context or structure: these are low-level commands that
> are impossibile to translate to speech or audio output.
> This means that blind users will not be able to use all of
> the applications that run in X.
> 
> 2) The window manager
> Because the X server provides only for low-level access, there is 
> the need for another program that handles the windows and their
> decorations (the title bar, the close button, etc.).
> The window manager handles also the focus changes between windows
> and the position of the window on the desktop.
> Different window managers use different focus policies: the policy
> suited for blind access is usually called "Click to focus": this means
> that to change focus from one window to another you have to click
> with the mouse. This isn't so bad because you can use keyboard 
> shortcuts to do the same. The important bit of information is that
> the focus windows doesn't change if you accidentally move the mouse.
> The problem with the other window manager functions (moving a
> window, changing desktop, closing a window) is that the user needs
> an audio feedback: this can be easily done by an external program
> if the window manager supports the Gnome window manager hints.
> Anyway, there are at least a couple of window managers in
> development that use the Gtk+ library and so can be easily adapted to
> work with GSpeech.
> 
> 3) The applications
> The applications that work in an X Window enviroment can use the
> low-level X protocol or a toolkit that provides high-level
> interfaces. The former are not accessible for the blind.
> There are many different toolkits for X Window.
> The issues here is that there will be very few applications
> developed with the blind user in mind, no matter what, so the
> accessibility features must be built into the toolkit. This way
> the applications don't need changes (they need to be well designed,
> though, but that is required even for sighted people:-).
> Currently, the toolkits that provide the features needed for
> blind access are Xt/Motif and Gtk+.
> 
> These issues and the implementation of GSpeech will be presented
> in a talk at the Atlanta Linux Showcase in October.
> 
> lupus
> 
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