Re: Proposed external dependency: WebKit/GTK+

[David Bolter <david bolter utoronto ca>]

Well I think the elephant in the room here is WAI-ARIA support for
accessible DHTML (i.e. accessible Web2.0 applications). Last I checked
this work is being done for WebKit by Apple engineers, and a Google
engineer. Although the Firefox accessibility hackers have trail blazed
this work and even provided a helpful implementor's guide [1], it is
still a significant effort indeed.

Other that that, I think over the past year work was done to move some
of Safari's (non-ARIA) accessibility into a platform agnostic
architecture. I think Alp then put in the GNOME atk bindings.

I know WebKit is fashionable these days, but I don't think we should be
too hasty here. If we going to switch let's do it for the right reasons.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/ARIA_User_Agent_Implementors_Guide

cheers,
David



Willie Walker wrote:
> For me, one of the most important problems we face with WebKit is its
> lack of accessibility support right now.  I have a great fear that Alp
> may have grossly underestimated the scope of the work.  I have some
> confidence, however, that the WebKit folks who were at GNOME Boston
> should be able to do a decent analysis of what it will take to add it.
>
> I so wish I wrote down all the names of the WebKit folks that were at
> GNOME Boston.  I'd like to follow up to see how their exploration is
> coming along.
>
> Will
>
> On Thu, 2008-11-06 at 18:48 +0100, Richard Hult wrote:
>   
>> Frederic Peters wrote:
>>     
>>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2008-August/msg00001.html
>>>
>>>  + WebKit/GTK+ (external dependency):
>>>    - lots of community support
>>>    - accessibility support might not be good enough (no reply from
>>>      WebKit/GTK+ people)
>>>    - epiphany will still use Gecko for 2.24
>>>    - yelp is still using Gecko at the moment (there's a WebKit branch)
>>>    - devhelp trunk is WebKit-only
>>>    - evolution people intend to use WebKit in 2.26
>>>    - we'd prefer to avoid depending on both Gecko and WebKit at the same
>>>      time
>>>    => rejected for 2.24, but we'll propose a general switch for 2.26
>>>       
>> Ah, thanks. I'll keep hacking away in trunk and hope we can ship that 
>> for 2.26 then (and fall back to the old branch again if not).
>>
>> /Richard
>>
>>     
>
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