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

FROM : Ryan Homer
DATE : Sun Mar 02 15:24:09 2008

Steve,

While I agree that the user should decide whether or not to allow the 
application to access another's text, to me, that's exactly what they 
are doing if they decide to use the application. It is going to be a 
dictionary-type application, so if the user installs it, s/he would be 
fully aware that its use would entail moving the mouse pointer over a 
word in another application. The application would be just about 
useless without that feature - so might as well delete it if you don't 
want that feature. It's just that I don't want to require that the 
user have to enable access for assistive devices. The first time I 
came across that, I was hesitant to enable that without knowing more 
about it and how many more services I would be keeping running all the 
time in the background, etc. This made me hesitant to even use the 
application that wanted to turn this on.

On 28-Feb-08, at 8:59 PM, Steve Christensen wrote:

> 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.

>
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