[Accessibility-ia2] ia2poke as a firefox extension

Steve Lee steve at fullmeasure.co.uk
Sat Feb 10 01:45:40 PST 2007


On 2/9/07, Michael Stewart <mstewar at us.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
> Does pyxpcom.xpi let you create XPCOM components in Python and not
> just use XPCOM components from Python?
>
> I am not sure I understand the question, but my undestanding is that
> through comtypes, we can create COM objects.
>
> http://svn.python.org/projects/ctypes/trunk/comtypes/docs/comtypes.client.html(if you figure out a way to view this other than saving it locally, please
> lmk)
>
Yes you are right. I was getting rather architecturally excited and thinking
of using XPCOM to create components as part of the design. Best to ignore
that as a distraction for now.

That doc is getting served as text/plain so I think the only way is to save
and open locally.

We should find out the status as
> that must include some XPCOM support if not full pyXPCOM with
> component creation in Python.
>
> I agree! How nice that would be, maybe Aaron knows...
>
> If this is not available we would not
> require the *user* to build as you suggest but would distribute a
> custom XULRunner
>
> how would one come by this custom version? that is, shall I make it? If
> so, do you what exactly that would entail?
>
Yes., you'd build as required and that seems to be where the fun lies from
your experience so far.
For Jambu I really want a standalone AT not a Firefox addon, at least in the
long term. I was planning to work on that later but I'll spend some time
investigating next week as it's useful for ia2poke aswell.

> pyXPCOM comes from Active State as part of Komodo so does that not use
> XULRunner? If not how do they encapsulate XUL and what about the other
> projects like songbird and democracy? Can we leverage that?
>
> great points all, I will try to investigate this further.
>
> Thanks for your response Steve
>
> [image: Inactive hide details for "Steve Lee" <steve at fullmeasure.co.uk>]"Steve
> Lee" <steve at fullmeasure.co.uk>
>
>
>
> Hi Michael, boy I'm thinking I'm glad you picked this up before I did
> (for the rest of you, Aaron spotted common ground between ias2poke and
> Jambu and I've had extremely limited time till now).
>
> I have a couple of points to flesh out the issue.
>
> Does pyxpcom.xpi let you create XPCOM components in Python and not
> just use XPCOM components from Python? You'll want that or otherwise
> create c/c++ components to interact with IA2. That's less homogeneous
> but not a complete show stopper and could be done equally in XULRunner
> or Firefox (I assume).
>
> There are/were plans to add Python as a native language alongside
> Javascript at least in XULRunner. We should find out the status as
> that must include some XPCOM support if not full pyXPCOM with
> component creation in Python. If this is not available we would not
> require the *user* to build as you suggest but would distribute a
> custom XULRunner (and hope for the main line support to appear RSN).
>
> If XULRunner becomes a standard deployment mechanism it could get
> bundled with Mozilla products including Firefox and so becomes less
> restrictive than a dependency on Firefox.
>
> pyXPCOM comes from Active State as part of Komodo so does that not use
> XULRunner? If not how do they encapsulate XUL and what about the other
> projects like songbird and democracy? Can we leverage that?
>
> Steve
>
> On 2/8/07, Michael Stewart <mstewar at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Just to ensure we are all on the "know who Michael is page," I just
> wanted
> > to remind everyone that I am Michael Stewart, and I am working on a poke
> > tool for IA2. The plan is to write this in Python, and I have been
> exploring
> > some technologies recently to handle the display. A neat suggestion
> (thanks
> > Aaron) was to try to use xulrunner so that not only would the source of
> the
> > functionality be more readable and maintainable (and modular and...) by
> > being written in Python, but then the UI source would also be more
> > accessible by being written in xul. The major problem with this approach
> has
> > been that it is nearly impossible to build PyXPCOM against xulrunner,
> which
> > would be necessary in order for Python to communicate with xulrunner.
> >
> >  So there have been many hurdles along this path that are not the focus
> of
> > this email, I am on the pyxpcom activestate list and  Alex Badea posted
> > http://vamposdecampos.googlepages.com/pyxpcom
> >  to the list, and I installed Minefield (FFox 3) and tried out his
> > extension, which works well. I am not sure of the practicality or even
> the
> > possibility (that's why I'm writing you all!), but what if the IA2 Poke
> > tool, (by the working name ia2poke) were a firefox extension? I mean,
> this
> > would require that developers using the tool install firefox of course,
> > but...would that actually be something installed just for this tool? The
> > other possibiliity we were investigating (xulrunner) would have required
> the
> > installation of xulrunner anyway, so I am not sure that this is much
> worse.
> > Also, depending on licenses and IP stuff, distributing an xpi (firefox
> > extension) that depends only on firefox, as opposed to distributing some
> > package that is dependent on the user having built PyXPCOM against
> xulrunner
> > (read above about the impossibility of this) seems optimal.
> >
> >  Michael
> > _______________________________________________
> > Accessibility-ia2 mailing list
> > Accessibility-ia2 at lists.freestandards.org
> > http://lists.freestandards.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-ia2
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Steve Lee
> www.fullmeasure.co.uk
> www.oatsoft.org
> www.schoolforge.org.uk
>
>


-- 
Steve Lee
www.fullmeasure.co.uk
www.oatsoft.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
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