Link to issue number:

#13583

Summary of the issue:

ControlTypes was refactored, aliases were left in place deprecated and marked for removal in the 2022.1 release.
During the beta NV Access received feedback from add-on authors that updating usages of these aliases is difficult and feels unnecessary.

Description of how this pull request fixes the issue:

Upon reconsideration, assessing the maintenance cost as low, these aliases can be reintroduced.
Note, these aliases remain deprecated, and will be removed if maintenance cost becomes high.

It is still recommended that add-on authors use the new controlTypes.Role and controlTypes.State symbols instead for consistency with the NVDA core code.

Testing strategy:

Tested with a global plugin in developer scratch pad.

import globalPluginHandler
import controlTypes
from logHandler import log

log.debug("Trying to access controlTypes.ROLE_UNKNOWN")
log.debug(f"Value of controlTypes.ROLE_UNKNOWN: {controlTypes.ROLE_UNKNOWN}")

log.debug("Trying to import all")
from controlTypes import *

log.debug("Trying to access ROLE_UNKNOWN")
log.debug(f"Value of ROLE_UNKNOWN: {ROLE_UNKNOWN}")


class GlobalPlugin(globalPluginHandler.GlobalPlugin):
	# nothing required. Just ensure imports work as expected.
	pass

Known issues with pull request:

This code exposes the deprecated symbols to IDEs. Due to use of from .deprecatedAliases import *
This may be considered a feature (ease of determining the underlaying type for the alias) or a bug (the deprecated nature is not obvious from an IDEs code suggestions)

It would be possible to programmatically import the symbols, making them less likely to be exposed to the IDE.
The current approach prefers to value simplicity and the discoverability of the alias type.

Change log entries:

Adjustments required to the For Developers section.

Code Review Checklist:

• Pull Request description:
  • description is up to date
  • change log entries
• Testing:
  • Unit tests
  • System (end to end) tests
  • Manual testing
• API is compatible with existing add-ons.
• Documentation:
  • User Documentation
  • Developer / Technical Documentation
  • Context sensitive help for GUI changes
• UX of all users considered:
  • Speech
  • Braille
  • Low Vision
  • Different web browsers
  • Localization in other languages / culture than English