Re: Reading word at mouse pointer w/o Universal Access

FROM : Steve Christensen
DATE : Fri Feb 29 02:59:47 2008

I don't have specific knowledge but, yes, I would expect that the 
dictionary support is a trusted part of the OS, thus can be hooked 
into every application.

As far as I know, if you want to touch another application's UI, you 
have to go through accessibility. From the OS's point of view yours 
is just another application, so it seems reasonable that the user 
should decide whether or not to allow your application to see what's 
going on in another.

steve


On Feb 28, 2008, at 5:33 PM, Ryan Homer wrote:

> Let me clarify that it doesn't seem to be the Dictionary 
> application that's reading the word at the mouse pointer but rather 
> the OS itself or some daemon, perhaps, when  Ctrl-Option-D is 
> pressed. It might be the process called DictionaryPanel that seems 
> to always be running.
>
> Anyway, if anyone can point me to the appropriate functions/methods/
> classes that might be involved in doing such a thing w/o the 
> aforementioned techniques, please let me know.
>
> On 28-Feb-08, at 8:27 PM, Ryan Homer wrote:
>

>> I've read this post (http://lists.apple.com/archives/accessibility-
>> dev/2006/Aug/msg00007.html) about using the accessibility options 
>> to read the text under the cursor. However, this requires that the 
>> user enable access for assistive devices in System Preferences. 
>> The application must therefore check for that. It also seems quite 
>> complicated; I don't want to have to deal with glyphs and the like 
>> - I only want the text under the cursor, full stop.
>>
>> The Dictionary application is able to read a word under the cursor 
>> without enabling access for assistive devices.
>>
>> Does anyone therefore know of an alternative way to do this?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.