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Seeking advice/mentor for my Google Summer of Code idea

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darchons

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Mar 18, 2008, 10:43:42 PM3/18/08
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Hi everyone!

I'm a college freshman and I'm applying to Google Summer of Code this
year. My idea is to implement Windows XP/Vista's Text Services
Framework (TSF) API natively in Gecko. TSF is kind of the successor to
the Input Method Editor API which Gecko implements natively, except
TSF is more robust. So it's logical if Gecko also implements TSF
natively.

I got this idea when I found out that Firefox doesn't work well with
my Tablet PC which I'm using for classes. There's an outstanding bug
about this problem here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244119
. There are hacks around but the best way to fix the bug is to
implement TSF. The bug exists because Firefox (and Gecko) doesn't have
TSF support.

Last summer I wrote a extension to add TSF support to Firefox, but I
feel the implementation would be better and more complete if it's
implemented directly in Gecko instead of as an extension.

So that's my idea, and I guess it's accessibility-related. Please
offer any advice or if you would like to mentor that would be great!
Thanks! :)

Alexander Surkov

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Mar 19, 2008, 9:45:47 PM3/19/08
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Hi, could you provide more details? Unfortunately I'm not familiar
with TSF therefore could you give an idea what advantages will Gecko
get implementing TSF natively and how is it related to accessibilty?
Alexander.

On Mar 19, 10:43 am, darchons <jim.n.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone!
>
> I'm a college freshman and I'm applying to Google Summer of Code this
> year. My idea is to implement Windows XP/Vista's Text Services
> Framework (TSF) API natively in Gecko. TSF is kind of the successor to
> the Input Method Editor API which Gecko implements natively, except
> TSF is more robust. So it's logical if Gecko also implements TSF
> natively.
>
> I got this idea when I found out that Firefox doesn't work well with
> my Tablet PC which I'm using for classes. There's an outstanding bug

> about this problem herehttps://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244119

Marco Zehe

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Mar 20, 2008, 7:37:42 AM3/20/08
to
Hi Alex,

Alexander Surkov wrote:
> Hi, could you provide more details? Unfortunately I'm not familiar
> with TSF therefore could you give an idea what advantages will Gecko
> get implementing TSF natively and how is it related to accessibilty?

Here's some info from MSDN:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms629032(VS.85).aspx

It allows handwriting recognition, inputs for different languages, is
sensitive to the language bar of XP and later, etc.

Marco

darchons

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Mar 20, 2008, 5:00:03 PM3/20/08
to
Hi thanks for the reply :)

Like Marco said, TSF allows far more integration with handwriting
recognition, speech recognition, and international language support
than Gecko currently has. For example, right now, Firefox doesn't work
well at all with Windows handwriting ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244119
) and speech recognition ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395484
). If we implemented this, Gecko apps would be more accessible to
those who use nontraditional forms of text input such as handwriting
and speech.

As for why it should be implemented in Gecko natively, Gecko has a
native implementation of the old Input Method Manager (IMM) API from
the Win9x era. And TSF is the successor to IMM. So since IMM is native
in Gecko, TSF should also be native.

Thanks again!

Jim


On Mar 19, 9:45 pm, Alexander Surkov <surkov.alexan...@gmail.com>
wrote:

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