Thanks. I understand what you are saying. Does this mean that there would not be a fix for X-Windows like the MSAA in Windows? Would we need some kind of major off-screen model? -- charlie Crawford. At 11:09 AM 1/22/02 -0700, you wrote: >Actually, being familiar with X myself, I'll answer this one. > >Xwindows, is a misnomer, in reality, it's just an X server, and clients. The >server draws to the screen, and sends user input to the clients. The clients >are the applications, the clients are usually on the same machine as the >server, but they don't have to be. > >X itself is nothing more than a network protocol for sending graphic data to >an X workstation, the X protocol has no provisions for button, text box, or >any widgets for that matter, it has: line, circle, filled circle, rectangle, >filled rectangle, pixmap, etc... > >X also sends keyboard input and mouse click locations to the applications >that own the windows they occur in. Beyond that, X's only other capability >is to send text glyphs (rendered in a given font) back to applications that >request them. > >As for widgets, and controls, and a nice unified API for writing programs, >you need a "toolkit library". What's a toolkit library you ask? A better >question might be "what isn't a toolkit library?" >First of all, there are a lot of toolkit libraries out there, some are very >simple (Athena) while some have a full-blown callback API and can be adjusted >with themes (GTK, GTK+) and some are object-oriented C++ based APIs (QT). >They all basically do the same thing, provide functions/objects/structures to >the application to draw typical GUI widgets, and send draw requests to the X >server. Here's the hairy part, each toolkit has its own look and feel, has >its own API, has its own conventions, and basically has its own everything. > >There's also the seperate window manager, which is simply another X client >which registers a few special functions with the X server so it can get the >location and owner of each window and add decorations and task switching >behavior. Some (most) window managers do more than this, but they all do at >least this. > >Windows, on the other had, has the equivalent of the toolkit library and >window manager built into the kernel (sort of) and most applications either >use that, or a custom one that is very similar to it. > >I'm sure this is incomplete, but I've already been wracking my brain for an >hour over it, so I'll close here, feel free to ask questions or tell me about >parts that are unclear. > > Good to see you on this list. I wonder if there are some folks > out there > > familiar with XWindows to share the kind of navigation that goes on with > > it? I have no idea. Is it the same icons and rdio buttons and all of > > tht? How is it different than windows and how much more easy would access > > be to develop in the XWindows environment? These are important questions > > to your point I imagine. > > > >_______________________________________________ >Speakup mailing list >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
