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Re: Mostly for Javi (proposal): incorporating Explorer Enhancements to Windows App Essentils ad-don

Joseph Lee
 

Hi Javi,

Thanks for considering this proposal. I’ll do as you suggested – Explorer Enhancements will be part of Windows App Essentials – likely between March and June 2023. It is likely that I’ll take the entire add-on, mostly the app module portion with you receiving credit for code coming from your add-on. I’ll also look at what Alberto wrote in Columns Review so empty folder announcement can be made with selective UIA registration enabled, and hopefully propose a pull request or perhaps mentor someone (I’ve been wanting to mentor someone through NVDA pull requests for some time, and I think this is a good opportunity to do it).

Thanks for your permission and your hard work on Explorer Enhancements add-on.

Note to others: in case you need justifications for this proposal, the reason for incorporating Explorer Enhancements to Windows App Essentials is because File Explorer (explorer.exe) is a major component of Windows, and it can receive some more love from NVDA. I just committed a series of changes to the latter add-on that will prepare it to receive Javi’s code and to properly support detection of taskbar icons. In addition to empty folder announcement, this will bring two significant changes: announcing rearranged taskbar icons when Alt+Shift+left/right arrow keys are used to rearrange taskbar icons in Windows 11, and announcing taskbar icon position in at least Windows 11 (backporting this to Windows 10 will require some NVDA object inheritance tricks; I cannot guarantee that this will be made available to older Windows releases, or rather, let’s just say that I plan NOT to test position announcement changes on anything older than Windows 10; the immediate impact is that position announcements for taskbar icons won’t be made available to Windows 7 and 8.x for the reason discussed for many months now).

Cheers,

Joseph

 

From: nvda-addons@nvda-addons.groups.io <nvda-addons@nvda-addons.groups.io> On Behalf Of Javi Domínguez
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2023 12:41 PM
To: nvda-addons@nvda-addons.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda-addons] Mostly for Javi (proposal): incorporating Explorer Enhancements to Windows App Essentils ad-don

 

Hello, Joseph.

 

I really had this addon a little abandoned. You can take code that you find useful and add it to Windows App Essentials if you want.



Greetings

El 21/01/2023 a las 14:26, Joseph Lee escribió:

Hi Javi and users of Explorer Enhancements,

In 2021, a discussion arose on this forum about a conflict between two add-ons – Windows App Essentials and Explorer Enhancements – regarding bundling of File Explorer app module (explorer.py) in our add-ons. One of the results was a solution where Explorer Enhancements can add additional events after detecting the presence of the app module from another add-on.

Recently I found myself patching File Explorer module from NVDA Core to add various Windows 11 enhancements, the latest being touch and mouse support for upcoming Windows 11 22H2 features. Also, while not strictly a patching routine, I added an overlay class in the global plugin portion of Windows App Essentials to introduce enhancements for taskbar icons (position announcements being one of them). Although taskbar icons are defined in File Explorer, I’m using the global plugin route in order to avoid conflicts with Javi’s Explorer Enhancements.

After looking at Javi’s code and comparing it with that of NVDA Core, I realized that both add-ons can use a single app module for File Explorer (NVDA Core does not define name change and focus entered event in File Explorer, and Windows App Essentials do not add these events either). Therefore, if Javi is willing and the community agrees, I would like to incorporate Javi’s app module into Windows App Essentials. This resolves the app module conflict, and if the code is ready, submit empty folder announcement to NV Access as a pull request, likely targeting 2023.2 at the earliest (Javi, if you want, you can also submit a pull request asking NV Access to incorporate your File Explorer app module changes to NVDA Core). If the proposal is accepted, I’ll add File Explorer enhancements to Windows App Essentials in February at the earliest.

By the way, the last tested version recorded in Explorer Enhancements manifest is 2021.3 (hope the add-on is not abandoned at the moment…).

Cheers,

Joseph
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