Re: [g-a-devel] [gdm-list] onboard and mousetweaks for gdm and gnome

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Francesco:

> > I am glad to hear that there are more options for users with a11y
> > needs.  I'd be happy to accept patches that would allow GDM to be
> > configured to startup these new applications via the gesture listener
> > mechanisms.
>  
> Much will probably depend on whether they will be part of the GNOME 
> Desktop or not:
>
> 1. If they are going to be part of GNOME, I think that GDM only needs 
> to provide a userfriendly way to start them

Right.  It might make sense to provide configure options so users can
configure whether they want GOK on onscreen to be the
on-screen-keyboard.  This way distros could easily pick between them
at configure time.  This would basically cause the gestures in the
keymouse and dwellmouse gesture listeners to get set to the right
command to launch each program.

> 2. If they are not going to be part of the GNOME Desktop, I think 
> that it would be odd to have some accessibility feature during the 
> GDM session, but not during the subsequent GNOME session. I am saying 
> this because I am assuming the following: the normal use of GDM is in 
> conjunction with the GNOME Desktop (even if it also works with other 
> Desktop environments). If this correct?

Some people use GDM with other desktops, such as KDE.

> To 1: For this, I would say that bug 443873 and bug 463713 should be 
> considered.

Yes, it would be nice to have better ways to allow users to launch
custom commands that require a GUI.  However, as I said before, I
think we should focus our efforts in the new D-Bus GDM branch
to support such features.

The fact that the new GDM uses D-Bus could probably be taken
advantage of to more easily support launching desired programs
at login time.  I know that Jon has already added code to the
new GDM to make it possible to launch power management code
at login time, for example.  So perhaps this sort of approach
would work well with a11y programs as well?

> To 2: Otherwise, it would probably make sense to automatically 
> activate in the GNOME session, the a11y features that the user 
> activated during the GDM session (I think that there is already a bug 
> filed for this, but I cannot find it anymore).

You are thinking of bug 411501.  There is a patch that needs a bit
of work attached to that bug report.  However, to make this work,
I think gnome-session would also need a patch to honor the other
side of the interface.

Again, the new D-Bus interfaces may make it easier to manage
communication between GDM and the session to inform the session
what AT programs to launch when the user logs in.

> > If you also are interested in enhancing GDM to launch AT programs
> > in more novel ways (e.g. by directly integrating them into GDM), then
> > we should discuss.
>
> Yes, I am still interested in something similar to bug 463713. But I 
> think that I will first try to enhance the dwellmouselistener.c code 
> to add the killing of the app started by a pointer gesture (as we 
> discussed few weeks ago). Is there any documentation about the 
> dwellmouselistener.c code beside the few comments within the code 
> itself?

There has been some discussion on this mail list about getting the new
GDM D-Bus branch working.  There also is some documentation in the code.
You should be able to access it via this SVN GDM branch:

  svn+ssh://svn.gnome.org/svn/gdm2/branches/mccann-gobject

At the moment a11y is disabled in this branch.  We need to plug back
in the logic to launch the GUI's with the modules as configured in
the GDM configuration file, and also need to plug back in the code
to start the at-spi-regisitryd.  This shouldn't be too difficult
since the existing code in the stable GDM release should port reasonably
well to the new code.  However, the new simple-greeter would need to be
tested to ensure it is well written from an a11y perspective.

It would be great if someone with an interest in GDM a11y were to help
with this.

> If you want to discuss about any other enhancements, please feel free to do so.

At the moement, I think it makes the most sense to try to get a11y
plugged back into the D-Bus GDM branch and get it working.  Once that
is done, it should be easier to talk about how we want to add new a11y
features to GDM.

> > Since GDM is currently being rewritten, it might make sense to hold
> > off on more tightly integrating with GDM until its more clear how to
> > do this in the new GDM rewrite, though.
>
> Is there any place where I can learn more about what is being done?

I'd read the gdm-list email archives.  There have been a few status
updates over the past few months, and calls for help.  There is also
some docs in the code.  If you read all this and have specific
questions, I'd ask them here on the gdm-list.  It's hard to know
exactly how we should update the docs unless people let us know what
information they think is missing.

As I said, a11y is currently broken in the D-Bus branch, so there
is plenty of work to do if you want to get involved.  Or if there
are others with an interest in a11y, it would be helpful to get
more people involved with the new branch.

Brian