Re: [Accessibility] Re: [Kde-accessibility] focus tracking

[Joseph Scheuhammer <clown utoronto ca>]

On 06/07/10 7:45 PM, Jason White wrote:
> Joseph Scheuhammer<clown utoronto ca>  wrote:
>
>    
> > >  In closing, here is something of a proposal:  the machinery that
> > >  Orca uses to track keyboard focus is not inherent to a screen
> > >  reader.  Other processes could well make use of Orca's focus
> > >  tracking machinery.  It would be very useful if these heuristics
> > >  could be carved out of Orca and published as a separate module,
> > >  library, or service that any process could make use of.
> >      
> One of the difficulties here, I think, is that Orca sometimes controls the
> focus; it doesn't simply monitor it. The leading example is in the Orca
> scripts for Mozilla, where caret movement is controlled by the Python code in
> Orca to work around limitations in Gecko.
>    

I was noting (1) that various a11y processes want to track focus, and 
(2) that Will suggested that tracking focus would be reinventing the 
wheel since that's something that Orca already does.  Taking that to the 
next step: instead of every a11y tool reinventing this particular wheel, 
create a generalized module that does it, using whatever Orca is doing 
as a guide.  Then, everyone can use this general focus monitoring 
device, including Orca (if it so chooses).

I don't see why Orca sometimes setting focus raises difficulty for such 
an effort.  It may well be desirable that the proposed independent focus 
monitoring device have the ability to set focus too, and it can copy 
that functionality from Orca as well.  Is there something about setting 
focus that makes it difficult to track focus?  Or is it that the way 
Orca tracks and sets focus is so entangled with the rest of Orca's code 
that those techniques can't be abstracted from Orca?

I don't actually know the mechanics of how Orca is doing focus tracking 
and setting -- I haven't looked at the code.  I've just seen it work, 
and it seems to work well.  Can you explain this difficulty?

Thanks.

--
;;;;joseph

'Clown control to Mao Tse Tung.'
 - D. Bowie (misheard lyric) -