compiz - Mar 2015 - Accessibility: mouse guides for Compiz, and forthcoming contributions

Hello.  [Resending the message from a subscribed address]

I'm Luca Saiu.  I'm part of a small but very motivated team in France,
working on accessibility; you might have already exchanged some messages
with my colleagues Jean-Philippe Mengual, Ksamak and Raphaël Poitevin.

We are developing a customized version of debian using Compiz with
Emerald and MATE.

I've developed a relatively simple addition to the "Show mouse"
plugin
to (optionally) draw what we call "mouse guides": horizontal and
vertical lines crossing near the mouse pointer to make its position more
visible to visually impaired users.

The user can configure the guide thickness, color (including
transparency) and distance from the mouse, using CCSM.

A patch is attached.  Please feel free to tell me about any problems,
including about the repo we should be using; we have based our work on
the debian repository on alioth.  It was not completely clear to us what
repo is considered "official" for compiz, as several look abandoned.
I'm also slightly concerned about CPU use.  Shall I separate the guides
functionality into a new plugin?

A random questions: we are having problems seeing any effect of the
Compiz configuration in gsettings after installation, even if configured
with -DUSE_GSETTINGS=ON; as far as I can see compiz stores its
configuration in gconf.  However some code supporting gsettings is
obviously there.  Is the functionality not completely implemented, or
are we doing something wrong?

Another patch containing a new plugin for mouse cursor themes is
forthcoming.

Thanks,

commit d23ca3dba5882ffaab222f68ff50704caf842e97
Author: Luca Saiu <lsaiu at hypra.fr>
Date:   Sun Mar 15 22:48:07 2015 +0000

    add mouse guides to the "Show Mouse" plugin
    
    Add functionality to the "Show mouse" plugin for drawing guide
lines
    to highlight the mouse pointer.  The user can choose the guide
    thickness, color and transparency.
    
    Change the minimum number of emitters from 1 to 0, for the case where
    we have guides only.
    
    CPU use is high (at least on my VirtualBox machines).  I don't think
    the particle engine gets used by mistake.
    
    The code is easy enough, but unfortunately we have to manually
    synchronize a constant in plugins/showmouse/showmouse.xml.in and in
    plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.cpp to have the same value.  The code
    generated from the XML file seems to keep the datum private, so I
    can't easily query it.
    
    * plugins/showmouse/showmouse.xml.in: Configuration interface.
    * plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.cpp, plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.h:
Here.

-- 
Luca Saiu
Hypra team (Accessible website in construction)
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On 15-03-30 01:30 PM, Luca Saiu wrote:
> Hello.
Hi.
> I've developed a relatively simple addition to the "Show
mouse" plugin
> to (optionally) draw what we call "mouse guides": horizontal and
> vertical lines crossing near the mouse pointer to make its position more
> visible to visually impaired users.
> 
> The user can configure the guide thickness, color (including
> transparency) and distance from the mouse, using CCSM.
OK.
> A patch is attached.  Please feel free to tell me about any problems,
> including about the repo we should be using; we have based our work on
> the debian repository on alioth.  It was not completely clear to us what
> repo is considered "official" for compiz, as several look
abandoned.
> I'm also slightly concerned about CPU use.  Shall I separate the guides
> functionality into a new plugin?
The official upstream repo for Compiz 0.9 (the version you're targeting
since you're writing C++ code) is at [1].  The
preferred way to submit changes is to submit a merge proposal, so you can get
and respond to feedback from upstream
developers.  If you're unfamiliar with bzr I can do that for you, but there
may be delays as I try to find the time.
> A random questions: we are having problems seeing any effect of the
> Compiz configuration in gsettings after installation, even if configured
> with -DUSE_GSETTINGS=ON; as far as I can see compiz stores its
> configuration in gconf.  However some code supporting gsettings is
> obviously there.  Is the functionality not completely implemented, or
> are we doing something wrong?
Gconf support in compizconfig was deprecated a couple of years ago and was
supposed to have been removed in favour of a
gsettings back end using dconf.  Gsettings is used by Ubuntu's Unity
desktop, so it should be well-supported.
Unfortunately I'm really not an expert on that area of things, so I
can't offer much in the way of suggestions.
> Another patch containing a new plugin for mouse cursor themes is
> forthcoming.
Nice.

[1] https://code.launchpad.net/~compiz-team/compiz/0.9.12

-- 
Stephen M. Webb  <stephen.webb at canonical.com>

Hello Stephen, and thanks for your feedback.

On 2015-03-30 at 14:07, Stephen M. Webb wrote:
> If you're unfamiliar with bzr I can do that for you, but there may
> be delays as I try to find the time.
I know the basics of bzr but I've never worked with branches; I'll try
and get back to you in case of problems.

By the way, shall I write to this list or to dev at lists.compiz.org when
speaking of development?  I'm temporarily including them both.
> Gconf support in compizconfig was deprecated a couple of years ago and was
> supposed to have been removed in favour of a
> gsettings back end using dconf.  Gsettings is used by Ubuntu's Unity
desktop, so
> it should be well-supported.
I am a little confused about this since I'm seeing a different behavior
(on debian), but it's not directly relevant to the two features I've
developed up to this point; I've just added options and let compiz save
them like any other, and indeed it does.
>> Another patch containing a new plugin for mouse cursor themes is
>> forthcoming.
> Nice.
That's a long story.  I'm writing a separate message.

Regards,

-- 
Luca Saiu
Hypra team (Accessible website in construction)

Hi Luca,

On Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:46:54 +0200, Luca Saiu wrote:
>> Gconf support in compizconfig was deprecated a couple of years ago and
was
>> supposed to have been removed in favour of a
>> gsettings back end using dconf.  Gsettings is used by Ubuntu's
Unity desktop, so
>> it should be well-supported.
>
> I am a little confused about this since I'm seeing a different behavior
> (on debian), but it's not directly relevant to the two features
I've
> developed up to this point; I've just added options and let compiz save
> them like any other, and indeed it does.
Which version of Compiz do you use? It was removed from Debian more than
a year ago [1], because its maintainership turned out to be a very difficult
task.

The latest version of Compiz is available in lp:compiz Bazaar branch
(if you don't like Bazaar, you can use git-bzr to clone it).

[1]: https://bugs.debian.org/719870

--
Dmitry Shachnev
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