AccessKit / AccessKit/accesskit

Synchronous API?

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Dominant language
Rust
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Description

Out of curiosity, what made you choose to design AccessKit around an internal tree shadowing the UI, instead of as a synchronous API over an existing widget/text node/... tree?

The synchronous approach has some drawbacks (e.g. I'm not sure how well it would integrate with immediate-mode UIs like egui), but does have some major advantages:

  • The ability to request details as required, instead of requiring all possible details (down to the level of glyph positions) ahead-of-time
  • Support test-driven-development: users may write todo!() impls and fill these in as required.
  • The ability to build a shadow tree (like AccessKit's current API) as an external adapter over the synchronous API. (The reverse is not possible.)

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Research direction

Start with the issue's comparison between AccessKit's internal shadow tree and a synchronous API, including the noted immediate-mode UI, detail lookup, testing, and adapter concerns. No files, tests, entry points, or concrete implementation target are named; done would require a maintainer decision about whether this design change is wanted.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
accessibility
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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