[compiz] Accessibility: mouse guides for Compiz, and forthcoming contributions

[Luca Saiu]

Hello.  [Resending the message from a subscribed address]

I'm Luca Saiu.  I'm part of a small but very motivated team in France,
working on accessibility; you might have already exchanged some messages
with my colleagues Jean-Philippe Mengual, Ksamak and Raphaël Poitevin.

We are developing a customized version of debian using Compiz with
Emerald and MATE.

I've developed a relatively simple addition to the "Show mouse" plugin
to (optionally) draw what we call "mouse guides": horizontal and
vertical lines crossing near the mouse pointer to make its position more
visible to visually impaired users.

The user can configure the guide thickness, color (including
transparency) and distance from the mouse, using CCSM.

A patch is attached.  Please feel free to tell me about any problems,
including about the repo we should be using; we have based our work on
the debian repository on alioth.  It was not completely clear to us what
repo is considered "official" for compiz, as several look abandoned.
I'm also slightly concerned about CPU use.  Shall I separate the guides
functionality into a new plugin?

A random questions: we are having problems seeing any effect of the
Compiz configuration in gsettings after installation, even if configured
with -DUSE_GSETTINGS=ON; as far as I can see compiz stores its
configuration in gconf.  However some code supporting gsettings is
obviously there.  Is the functionality not completely implemented, or
are we doing something wrong?

Another patch containing a new plugin for mouse cursor themes is
forthcoming.

Thanks,

commit d23ca3dba5882ffaab222f68ff50704caf842e97
Author: Luca Saiu <lsaiu at hypra.fr>
Date:   Sun Mar 15 22:48:07 2015 +0000

    add mouse guides to the "Show Mouse" plugin
    
    Add functionality to the "Show mouse" plugin for drawing guide lines
    to highlight the mouse pointer.  The user can choose the guide
    thickness, color and transparency.
    
    Change the minimum number of emitters from 1 to 0, for the case where
    we have guides only.
    
    CPU use is high (at least on my VirtualBox machines).  I don't think
    the particle engine gets used by mistake.
    
    The code is easy enough, but unfortunately we have to manually
    synchronize a constant in plugins/showmouse/showmouse.xml.in and in
    plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.cpp to have the same value.  The code
    generated from the XML file seems to keep the datum private, so I
    can't easily query it.
    
    * plugins/showmouse/showmouse.xml.in: Configuration interface.
    * plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.cpp, plugins/showmouse/src/showmouse.h: Here.

-- 
Luca Saiu
Hypra team (Accessible website in construction)
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