Re: Issues and comments arising from UA evaluations

To what extent do people think in-process DOM access is useful to AT 
vendors?

Aaron


Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:

>Aaron,
>
>I think the concept of a DOM is clear to people doing actual web browser or
>server-based document development such as XML transcoding work. In this
>arena they use the W3C DOM. Our document intends for UA developers to
>implement the W3C DOM (core, CSS, etc.) This does not preclude a UA from
>adding additional function like Microsoft for highlighting text.
>
>A DOM is simply an object model representation of a document. I don't
>understand why an AT vendor would have trouble with this. Just because the
>W3C defines a standard one that we with UA's to support does not mean that
>an office product could not use a different DOM representation. ... but if
>you think some education is needed we might be able to do this through the
>WAI.
>
>Regarding interfaces, I had pushed on the PF group to create a sub-DOM
>working group to address user interfaces and was unsuccessful. It certainly
>would be nice to extend the DOM to the chrome of a browser. Perhaps
>Netscape could be the first.
>
>On an aside: If Freedom is parsing the HTML themselves this is a major work
>effort as they have to do error correction, etc. Also, if Freedom parses
>into their own DOM and due to different error correction techniques they
>have 2 different represenations of the same document you can run into more
>problems. This is also problematic for when XML-based formats need to be
>processed.
>
>It's much better if the UA provides a W3C DOM interface so that the
>solution is in synch with what is rendered and things like the core DOM API
>can be supported independent of whether the content is XML-based or
>SGML-based in the case of HTML.
>
>Rich
>
>Rich Schwerdtfeger
>Senior Technical Staff Member
>IBM Accessibility Center
>Research Division
>EMail/web: schwer@us.ibm.com
>
>"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
>I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.",
>Frost
>
>
>
>                                                                                                                                        
>                      aaronl@netscape.c                                                                                                 
>                      om (Aaron                To:       "Ian B. Jacobs" <ij@w3.org>                                                    
>                      Leventhal)               cc:       w3c-wai-ua@w3.org                                                              
>                      Sent by:                 Subject:  Re: Issues and comments arising from UA evaluations                            
>                      w3c-wai-ua-reques                                                                                                 
>                      t@w3.org                                                                                                          
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>                      03/13/2002 03:40                                                                                                  
>                      PM                                                                                                                
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>
>Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>
>>  - AT developers may not, in practice, be interested in
>>    implementing the DOM, even though in the past they have
>>    expressed interest.
>>
>
>
>Freedom Scientific markets their products as making use of the DOM.
>However, they are not talking about the W3C DOMs -- they are talking
>about proprietary DOMs such as those that exist in Microsoft Word or
>Microsoft Excel via very powerful COM or ActiveX interfaces. For their
>Internet Explorer support they currently parse the HTML themselves.
>
>Anyway, I think what a "DOM" is, is clear to us in the context of W3C
>document, but may not be clear to AT vendors who use many different
>kinds of DOMs. They are probably interested in any kinjd of
>cross-process interfaces that give them content..
>
>In addition, the W3C DOM does not say anything about user intefaces,
>unless they are written in markup, which is not always the case. How
>does the UAAG suggest we expose information about our user interface
>widgets?
>
>Aaron
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