[a11y] Incorrect absolute/relative position for launcher/unity panel items

[Nischal Rao]

The absolute/relative position for launcher items is incorrect.
For instance the absolute position of "Dash home" as shown in accerciser is (-1240027148, 1) even though the dash home is visible on the screen.

Refer the attached screenshot for details.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Can you be sure that the value being reported by that program is correct? Because I'm pretty sure that the launcher is composed of gdk windows with the values properly set in relation to the top left corner pixel.

[Nischal Rao (rao-nischal)]

Hi Billal,

Just to be sure I wrote a python program that would get me the a11y co-ordinates of the elements unser the "unity" app. Attached is the python program.

Here is the output I got after running the code:

Launcher Location(Absolute): X: 0, Y: 24
 Location(Absolute): X: 0, Y: 0
Launcher Location(Absolute): X: 0, Y: 0
Dash home Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Home Folder Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Firefox Web Browser Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Terminal Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Eclipse Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Chromium Web Browser Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Oracle VM VirtualBox Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Text Editor Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
LibreOffice Writer Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Skype Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Empathy Internet Messaging Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Ubuntu Software Center Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
System Monitor Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Tomboy Notes Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Meld Diff Viewer Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Synaptic Package Manager Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
panel Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Calculator Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Accerciser Accessibility Explorer Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Workspace Switcher Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
OS Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
DATAPART Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
READER Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1
Trash Location(Absolute): X: -1239928844, Y: 1

[Nischal Rao (rao-nischal)]

I also found that the origin (0, 0) is at the location as shown in the attached image. Since the launcher is to the left and unity-panel is above the origin point, the positions are coming out to be negative values.

I think the fix to this issue would be to set the origin appropriately.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

The logical way would be to set the origin to the top left. But I'm not sure why this was done. Subscribing Luke to this bug, who might know the reason

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

xwininfo still returns the correct co-ordinates. This could mean two things:

1) This has been fixed in Precise-updates
2) pyatspi is at fault.

Can you check if updates have fixed this?

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

This is probably more a case of the extents code not being implemented properly/completely/at all for the launcher icons, so more an a11y code issue in Unity itself.