2024.1 Add-on API changes

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

NVDA 2024.1 is an API breaking release.

Reminder, this mailing list is read only, please provide feedback by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.
This list is intended to notify of changes to the add-on API, for confirmation of the latest state for breakages or deprecations, please refer to the 'changes file' for the NVDA release you are interested in.

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:
"Remove SecureDesktopNVDAObject, replace with extension point #14488"

Deprecations:
IAccessibleHandler.SecureDesktopNVDAObject has been removed.
Instead, when NVDA is running on the user profile, track the existence of the secure desktop with the extension point: winAPI.secureDesktop.post_secureDesktopStateChange.

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove scheduled deprecations for 2024.1"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

• braille.BrailleHandler.handlePendingCaretUpdate has been removed with no public replacement. (#15163)
• bdDetect.addUsbDevices and bdDetect.addBluetoothDevices have been removed.
  Braille display drivers should implement the registerAutomaticDetection classmethod instead.
  That method receives a DriverRegistrar object on which the addUsbDevices and addBluetoothDevices methods can be used. (#15200)
• The default implementation of the check method on BrailleDisplayDriver now requires both the threadSafe and supportsAutomaticDetection attributes to be set to True. (#15200)
• Passing lambda functions to hwIo.ioThread.IoThread.queueAsApc is no longer possible, as functions should be weakly referenceable. (#14627)
• IoThread.autoDeleteApcReference has been removed. (#14924) 
  

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Depend on supported command for capital pitch change #15433"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

To support capital pitch changes, synthesizers must now explicitly declare their support for the PitchCommand in the supportedCommands attribute on the driver. 

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Move getFormattedStacksForAllThreads from watchdog to logHandler, to fix build of developer documentation. #15616"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

Deprecations:

Using watchdog.getFormattedStacksForAllThreads is deprecated - please use logHandler.getFormattedStacksForAllThreads instead.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove deprecated speechDictHandler.speechDictVars. #15629"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

speechDictHandler.speechDictVars has been removed. Use NVDAState.WritePaths.speechDictsDir instead of speechDictHandler.speechDictVars.speechDictsPath.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Update to Python 3.11 #15544"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

• NVDA no longer supports Windows 7 and Windows 8.
  Windows 8.1 is the minimum Windows version supported.
• NVDA is now built with Python 3.11.
• Updated pip dependencies:
  • configobj to 5.1.0dev commit e2ba4457.
  • Comtypes to 1.2.0.
  • fast_diff_match_patch to 2.0.1.
  • py2exe to 0.13.0.1dev commit 4e7b2b2c60face592e67cb1bc935172a20fa371d.
  • robotframework to 6.1.1.
  • SCons to 4.5.2.
  • sphinx to 7.2.6.
  • wxPython to 4.2.1.
• Removed pip dependencies:
  • typing_extensions, these should be supported natively in Python 3.11
  • nose, instead unittest-xml-reporting is used to generate XML reports.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Update to flake8 4.0.1. #15636"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

• Updated pip dependencies:
  • Flake8 to 4.0.1.

Please note that that linting system is likely going to change from flake8 in the near future: GitHub Discussion.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove deprecated app module aliases. #15639"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

The following app modules are removed. Code which imports from one of them, should instead import from the replacement module.
List is in the format of "Removed module name: Replacement module name":

• azardi-2.0: azardi20
• azuredatastudio: code
• azuredatastudio-insiders: code
• calculatorapp: calculator
• code - insiders: code
• commsapps: hxmail
• dbeaver: eclipse
• digitaleditionspreview: digitaleditions
• esybraille: esysuite
• hxoutlook: hxmail
• miranda64: miranda32
• mpc-hc: mplayerc
• mpc-hc64: mplayerc
• notepad++: notepadPlusPlus
• searchapp: searchui
• searchhost: searchui
• springtoolsuite4: eclipse
• sts: eclipse
• teamtalk3: teamtalk4classic
• textinputhost: windowsinternal_composableshell_experiences_textinput_inputapp
• totalcmd64: totalcmd
• win32calc: calc
• winmail: msimn
• zend-eclipse-php: eclipse
• zendstudio: eclipse

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove remaining support for Windows 7 start after logon #15644"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

Deprecations:

easeOfAccess.canConfigTerminateOnDesktopSwitch has been deprecated, as it became obsolete since Windows 7 is no longer supported. 

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"NVDA source code and user guide: remove Windows 8 constant mentions #15666"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

Deprecations:

winVersion.isFullScreenMagnificationAvailable has been deprecated - use visionEnhancementProviders.screenCurtain.ScreenCurtainProvider.canStart instead.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"winVersion: Deprecate Windows 7/8 constants #15669"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

Deprecations:

The following Windows release constants has been deprecated from winVersion module:
  - winVersion.WIN7
  - winVersion.WIN7_SP1
  - winVersion.WIN8

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Update poedit appmodule for version 3.4+ #15313"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:

The app module for Poedit has been changed significantly. The fetchObject function has been removed.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"bdDetect: swap KEY_* constants with enum #15772"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

Deprecations:

• The bdDetect.KEY_* constants have been deprecated. Use bdDetect.DeviceType.* instead..
• The bdDetect.DETECT_USB and bdDetect.DETECT_BLUETOOTH constants have been deprecated with no public replacement.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"bdDetect: Enrich USB serial data with info about USB device #15764"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:
The following redundant types and constants have been removed from hwPortUtils:

• PCWSTR
• HWND (replaced by ctypes.wintypes.HWND)
• ULONG_PTR
• ULONGLONG
• NULL
• GUID (replaced by comtypes.GUID)

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove legacy add-ons manager #15834"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:
gui.addonGui.AddonsDialog has been removed.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Add plural forms for needed strings in NVDA's code base #15864"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:
TouchInputGesture.multiFingerActionLabel has been removed with no replacement.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

Add-on API changes have been merged, planned for inclusion in the 2024.1 release:

"Remove a demo script #15904"

If API breaks or planned future breaks (deprecations) will cause difficulties for the ongoing development of an add-on you maintain, please let NVDA developers know by replying directly to emails, or via GitHub.

API breaking changes:
NVDAObjects.IAccessible.winword.WordDocument.script_reportCurrentHeaders has been removed with no replacement.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

2024.1beta1 has been released, this means the add-on API for 2024.1 should be relatively stable.
When 2024.1rc1 is released, the API will be considered final (given emergency exceptions).
Add-on authors are now encouraged to test their add-on with the 2024.1 API using 2024.1beta1.
As this is an API breaking release, please check API breaking changes in this mailing list thread and test your add-ons with the beta.
Authors should also consider making a beta or dev add-on release to the Add-on Store, for users to test their add-on with the beta.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

2024.1beta12 has been released.
This is the last planned beta for 2024.1.
This means the add-on API for 2024.1 should be almost final.

When 2024.1rc1 is released, the API will be considered final (given emergency exceptions).

Add-on authors are now encouraged to perform final testing for their add-on with the 2024.1 API using 2024.1beta12.

As this is an API breaking release, please check API breaking changes in this mailing list thread and test your add-ons with the beta.
Authors should also consider making a beta or dev add-on release to the Add-on Store, for users to test their add-on with the beta.

[NVDA Add-on API Announcements]

2024.1rc1 has been released.
This means the add-on API for 2024.1 is final.

Add-on authors are now encouraged to perform final testing and release their add-on marked as compatible with the 2024.1 API.
Add-ons marked as compatible with 2024.1 can now be submitted to the add-on store using the stable channel.

As this is an API breaking release, please check API breaking changes in this mailing list thread.