What we seem to be discovering with Orca is that the AT-SPI model works well, but we might be relying upon very fast cross-process communication (i.e., orca querying the application for many things via many different API calls before deciding what to present).

In addition, we also have the desire to switch between logical mode and screen presentation mode for braille (bug #400732).

Finally, we have a whole bunch of users just plain accustomed to JAWS and expect to use flat review mode as their primary operating mode.

Creating an off screen model (OSM) may help us a lot with all of the above.  And is something that could use other sources of information besides the AT-SPI, such as perhaps other remote access API's to applications such as FF, OOo, and Java.  In addition, it *might* be something we consider making a whole separate system service (i.e., a DBus service) for use by other assistive technologies and/or applications).

So, we should first discuss what an OSM should look like from an API perspective.  For example, what kind of operations would an assistive technology such as Orca expect to do on the OSM and what kind of event notifications would it expect to receive?

NOTE - this is just for thinking for now.