Subject: Re: bug#35435: 26.1; Gnome magnifier not following cursor when typing in emacs

From: Eric Danan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2020 10:49:15 +0000

Hello,

For the record, it seems that cursor tracking does not work with the Mac 
OS magnifier ("zoom") either when typing in Emacs. I tested this with a 
Mac OS 10.15 virtual machine and installing Emacs from the following 
sources:

* emacsformacosx.com

* Homebrew:
** brew cask install emacs: I was not able to complete the installation 
for some reason but it is the same as emacsformacosx.com if I understand 
correctly
** brew install emacs-plus
** brew install emacs-mac

* Mac Ports
** sudo port install emacs-app
** sudo port install emacs-app-devel
** sudo port install emacs-mac-app

On the other hand, cursor tracking worked correctly in e.g. the Safari 
browser. So I guess the Mac port of Emacs does not have the "special 
code to move the system caret in sync with the cursor" that the Windows 
port has.

Eric

On 2019-05-02 09:17, Eric Danan wrote:
> Thanks for your reply. I don't have the knowledge (neither on the emacs 
> code nor on X) to prepare such a patch, and I of course understand if no 
> one else can do it, but I an otherwise happy to test things if that can 
> help.
> 
> (Also cc'ing Alex Arnaud, which I forgot to do the first time.)
> 
> On 2019-04-26 13:14, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> From: Eric Danan <[email-masked]>
>>> Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 13:05:41 +0200
>>>
>>> Due to a visual impairment I constantly work with a screen magnifier
>>> turned on (in full screen mode), and I need it to track the cursor/caret
>>> to follow what I am typing.
>>>
>>> So far I am using emacs 26.1 on cygwin on windows 10, and the windows 10
>>> magnifier does the job of tracking the cursor.
>>>
>>> I am considering switching to gnome on linux and therefore installed the
>>> fedora (version 29) distribution to try it out. The gnome (3.30) shell
>>> magnifier supports cursor tracking and it works in other applications
>>> but not emacs (26.1).
>>>
>>> I previously sent this message to the gnome accessibility list (that was
>>> a long time ago in 2015, so with earlier versions of emacs and gnome)
>>> and got a reply from Alex Arnaud stating:
>>>
>>>   > I've tried to test Emacs with Accercicer (a accessibility debug 
>>> tool)
>>> and my conclusion are Emacs doesn't connect it to AT-SPI (accessibility
>>> stack).
>>
>> The Windows port of Emacs has special code to move the system caret in
>> sync with the cursor.  I guess the X build should have something
>> similar, patches are welcome to implement that.
>>