[Accessibility-ia2] next changes to IAccessible2

[Carolyn MacLeod]

> James Teh wrote on 28/06/2011 08:09:16 PM:
> > On 29/06/2011 4:54 AM, Pete Brunet wrote:
> > AT devs, do you use IAccessibleEditableText?
> No.

I don't think any screen readers use IAccessibleEditableText.
When we were implementing it for Eclipse, the only test tools we had were 
inspector-type tools.
(Maybe GOK uses some of it - Peter, do you know?)

> > Is there a kind of AT that can't use the GUI for clipboard operations?
> Maybe an AT implementing an alternative input method for those that 
> don't have the use of their hands? They might still be able to use the 
> GUI, but it might be far less efficient for them. However, we'd need to 
> see a use case from users or developers who specialise in this area, as 
> my knowledge of this area is sadly virtually non-existent. Note that 
> this isn't necessarily support for IAccessibleEditableText; see below.

I believe the intent was that it could be useful for speech recognition 
systems.
As I understand it, speech reco systems are currently masters at stuffing 
characters onto the event queue to simulate typing.
Maybe this is less efficient and/or maybe error prone - I don't know.

> I'd argue that copy, cut, paste, etc. should actually be implemented on 
> the object using IAccessibleAction, rather than having a separate 
> IAccessibleEditableText. This would use the current selection within the 

> object as is normally the case. However, in order to have quick access 
> to these actions, we might need to introduce a way to activate 
> predefined action constants, rather than having to iterate through all 
> actions and check their names.

Jamie, I like that idea. I have always had the feeling that the clipboard 
operations didn't belong on IAccessibleEditableText. Having them on 
IAccessibleAction makes more sense to me, too, because as others have 
pointed out, clipboard operations are not just for text objects. And I 
agree that these actions do merit some kind of quick access mechanism - 
either they can have their own method names or predefined action 
constants. They can operate on the current selection, thus removing the 
need for those pesky offset parameters <grin>, and allowing 
multi-selection-capable applications to define their own semantics for 
clipboard "actions". Also, as Malte pointed out, paste and pasteSpecial 
are boolean in nature, so they can be 2 actions. The clipboard format for 
pasteSpecial can (I think?) be handled on the application's side, i.e. ask 
the user whether they want to paste html or rtf or plain text, etc 
(depending on what is on the clipboard).

Carolyn
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