Re: gnome-panel

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Hi Julian:

juliancoca athenea umanizales edu co wrote:

> Good morning, We are developing an application that allows to manipulate
> the main menu of GNOME desktop using some speech commands "GERvoice".
>
> After making a study of the possible tools that allow the communication
> between two applications (the GERvoice Application and the main Menu of
> GNOME) we found to CORBA (Gnorba, Orbit and bonobo) like a possible
> solution.  The idea is to construct a embebed application in the panel
> GNOME, who allows to send signals to the main menu and thus to be able to
> manipulate it.
>
> Speaking with rodrigo Moya it raises to us:  "that I know, not even with
> CORBA it is possible to be manipulated.  The best form, I create, is
> through ATK, the support of accessibility.  In any case, I recommend to
> you that you try to establish contact with the accessibility people, that
> better advice will give you than I."
>
> It's for this reason that I transmit the questions to you;  these
> questions are:
> How to capture or to send signals to the main menu of GNOME.
>
> Exist some API dedicated to the programming of panel GNOME,  in such a way
> that it can send signals and interact with the same one?
>  
There is general purpose API in Gnome that allows you to control _all_ 
user interface elements, including the panel and the launch menu.  This 
API is called "AT-SPI" and it exists to support "assistive technologies" 
for disabled people.

What you are describe, voice control of the menus, is a type of 
assistive technology.

Try running the "Onscreen Keyboard" from the 'Accessibility' menus in 
Gnome.  You will see that the onscreen keyboard knows which windows are 
focussed, it can launch applications, it can focus the bottom panel and 
post the launch menu, and it can interact with other parts of the 
gnome-panel. 

(Before this will work, you must turn on 'Assistive Technology Support' 
from the Preferences->Accessibility dialog.)

To see how this works, you can look at some of the GOK source code.

Here is some documentation about AT-SPI (these docs are for a new 
version in progress, but they are more complete than docs for the old 
version):

http://gnome.org/~billh/at-spi-new-idl/html/html/index.html

Here is some documentation about the Gnome Onscreen Keyboard:
http://www.gok.ca/usermanual.shtml

Here is some documentation about accessibility in general, in Gnome:
http://gnome.org/learn/access-guide/2.10/


Best regards,

Bill

> Thanks for the attention
>
>