Re: Seeing the open issues

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Steve Faulkner wrote:
> 
> For assistive technology users who cannot make use of modern browsers it is
> unreasonable.
> Why can't all AT users make use of current browsers?
> Because of the versions of assitive technology they use due to
> interoperability contstraints or monetary constraints (upgrading is
> expensive).
> 
> So are we saying now that you cannot fully participate in the WG activities
> unless you use "approved" browsers?

It is extremely sad to me that accessibility tools aren't standards
compliant. However, I would be happy to help you author a version of this
page that is compatible with the tool you use.

The system uses a set of CGI scripts as a backend. Each CGI script
(except 'listen', see below) responds to POST submissions that have
content sent using the MIME type text/plain. Each submission has one
line of text per parameter. The CGI scripts all return XML documents
with no namespaces. If the document consists of a single element
<error>, then the contents of that element are the error message, as a
theoretically human-readable string. Otherwise the document is the
data requested, as described below.

The CGI scripts and their parameters are as follows:

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/register
   This CGI script allows a user to obtain their password.
   First and only parameter: the e-mail address of the user.
   Returns: just <ok/> for success.
   On success, an e-mail is sent to the e-mail address.

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/login
   This CGI script allows a user to confirm their credentials.
   First parameter: the e-mail address of the user.
   Second parameter: the password of the user.
   Returns: just <ok/> if the credentials are correct.

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/getdata
   This CGI script is what returns the data.
   First parameter: one of "folders", "emails", "top-emails", "body".
   The subsequent parameters and return value depend on the first.
   For "folders": No other parameters. Returns an element <folders> 
     containing zero or more elements <folder> whose contents are the name 
     of each folder (one per element).
   For "emails": One more parameter, the folder. Returns an element 
     <emails>, containing zero or more <email> elements whose contents are
     the subject lines of each email (one per element). The <email> 
     elements also have "id" attributes and "date" attributes; the "id"
     attribute gives the message-id for that message and the "date"
     attribute givs the date of the message in seconds since the Unix 
     epoch.
   For "top-emails": One more parameter, the number of emails to return. 
     Returns up to that many e-mails in the same way as the "emails" case 
     described above, except that the <email> elements also have a 
     "folder" attribute giving one of the folders in which the e-mail is 
     found.
   For "body": One more parameter, the message-id. Returns a <message> 
     element with a <body> elements whose text is the text of the message 
     and zero or more <vote> elements each of which has the e-mail address 
     of someone who has voted for that e-mail as its contents.

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/vote
   This CGI script adds, removes, or toggles votes. It takes four
   parameters:
   The first parameter is the mode, either "add", "remove", or "toggle".
   The second parameter is the user's e-mail address.
   The third parameter is their password.
   The fourth parameter is the message-id they are changing their vote for.
   Returns: Just <ok/>, assuming the parameters were valid.

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/listen
   This CGI script sends a continuous stream of <script> blocks with 
   notifications. The notifications are numbered sequentially, and the 
   server remembers the last 100 messages. This script must be invoked as 
   a GET request. The query string must consist of a single number, 
   indicating the number of the last message received plus one. The server 
   will immediately send any messages with that number or higher.
   Each notification is passed to 
      "window.parent.handleMessage()"
   ...and consists of the message ID and one of:
      "server retstarting" -- meaning the listener should be closed and 
      reopened and the numbering is about to reset to zero.
      "vote add X Y" -- where X is an e-mail address and Y is a 
      message-id, indicating that X has just voted for Y.
      "vote remove X Y" -- where X is an e-mail address and Y is a 
      message-id, indicating that X has just removed his vote for Y.
   Once the script terminates, it calls "window.parent.listenerDied()".

As you can see, it's quite a simple system. Form this information, you 
should be able to create a page that works pretty well with accessibility 
tools; I would be happy to host this version on the WHATWG site to make 
it accessible to others.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 08:35:23 UTC