Summary

This request is to write the accessibility related communication exchange between JAWs and Java Application to a log file for debugging problems.

Problem

Java Access Bridge (JAB) which is a windows-only JDK native API to support accessibility, does not provide any way to enable logging of itself or an Assistive Technology using JAB. This means that debugging of problems in a user setting is impossible and it is thus hard to identify and fix problems. Since JAB communicates with an AT, both sides need to support logging to make this useful.

Solution

Define an environment variable "JAVA_ACCESSBRIDGE_LOGDIR" which when specified, and pointing to a writable file location, will enable logging of Java Access Bridge activity. Two log files will be created, namely "java_access_bridge.log" and "windows_access_bridge.log": one written by the JavaAccessBridge itself (loaded by Java), one written by AT which loads a Java provided DLL, windowsaccessbridge.dll If the variable is undefined or empty, or points to a non-writable location, no logging will be performed. This will be provided to customers on request. The logging is explicitly limited to be enabled for one application at a time, i.e. it cannot support concurrent applications, which is sufficient for its purpose as a debugging tool.

Specification

Define an environment variable "JAVA_ACCESSBRIDGE_LOGDIR" which when specified, and pointing to a writable file location, will enable logging of Java Access Bridge activity to two files namely "java_access_bridge.log" and "windows_access_bridge.log" "java_access_bridge.log" logs information from the Java process which loads javaaccessbridge.dll "windows_access_bridge.log" logs information from the AT process which loads windowsaccessbridge.dll The logging should be limited to be enabled for one application at a time, i.e., it cannot support concurrent applications, which is sufficient for its purpose as a debugging tool. The logged results are intended to be interpreted by support, not the customer. The logging format is as follows: [Log_Level]: \n, where, Timestamp is time in nanoseconds, Log_Level can be any of INFO, ERROR, WARN, message is the log text.