Detect and report the status bar in Visual Studio Code

[codeofdusk]

Link to issue number:

Closes #11064.

Summary of the issue:

When invoking the standard "report status bar" gesture in Visual Studio Code, NVDA says "no status line found".

Description of how this pull request fixes the issue:

Adds logic to detect (by role or IAccessible2 ID) the status bar, caching it when found. Also added a custom text override to move the line and column to the start for speech-friendliness.

Testing strategy:

Tested in various document types (plain text, Python) in Visual Studio Code.

Known issues with pull request:

The status bar is not cached on app launch since the tree interceptor is disabled. If this override is removed, status bar accesses are always fast. With the override, the first access of the status bar takes about a second on my machine.

Code Review Checklist:

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

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds support for reporting the Visual Studio Code status bar when using NVDA's standard status bar gesture (NVDA+End on desktop/NVDA+Shift+End on laptop), addressing the issue where NVDA previously reported "no status line found".

• Implements status bar detection by role and IAccessible2 ID with caching functionality
• Adds custom text processing to filter decorative elements and prioritize line/column information
• Caches status bar objects for improved performance on subsequent accesses

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
user_docs/en/changes.md	Documents the new Visual Studio Code status bar reporting feature
source/appModules/code.py	Implements status bar detection, caching, and custom text formatting logic

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[hwf1324]

Related: #11064, #17339

[SaschaCowley]

@codeofdusk have you looked at the discussion in these issues?

Related: #11064, #17339

[codeofdusk]

@SaschaCowley Yes, is there something I should look at specifically?

Also, I think the PR build failure is unrelated, as the last commit simply updated what's new per @seanbudd

[seanbudd]

Do you know if it's feasible to create a system test for this?

I think it should be possible to install VS code on Windows with GitHub actions fairly easily.

Now that we are able to run system tests in parallel, we are free to create a more thorough set of system tests for more applications.
I think it would be worth setting up system tests for VS code, as it's easy to install software.
In future, if we can install FOSS software, I think we should create system tests for it.

name: Install VS Code on Windows

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: windows-latest

    steps:
    - name: Download and Install VS Code
      if: matrix.testSuite == "codium"
      run: |
        # Download the VS Code User Setup installer
        Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=win32-x64-user" -OutFile "VSCodeSetup.exe"

        # Install VS Code silently
        .\VSCodeSetup.exe /VERYSILENT /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES /NORESTART
      shell: powershell

[codeofdusk]

@seanbudd Do we have system tests for other third-party software? If not, I imagine we wouldn't want to run those for local users (that feels like a larger discussion).

[seanbudd]

@codeofdusk - no, mostly due to issues I've outlined in #18762. I think it's fine for these to run locally. It's rare when someone needs to use runsystemtests.bat, and when they do, they should probably be filtering to specific tests anyway. I don't think we'd ever recommend running all system tests locally, it's what our CI is for. Especially, as we plan to expand them, running them locally might take up to an hour. Our system tests are very device dependent e.g. version and language of windows.

[seanbudd]

@codeofdusk - please add a system test as requested

[codeofdusk]

@seanbudd That fixed it! I'll go ahead and remove the logging.

[seanbudd]

Thanks @codeofdusk

stale

[SaschaCowley]

@codeofdusk it The code for moving the line/column number first in the status bar doesn't seem to be working for me. When I get the status bar in VS Code, I get:

nvda-pr (Git) - Push 1 commits to origin/moreWinBindings2 remote nvda-pr (Git) nvda-pr (Git) - moreWinBindings2, Checkout Branch/Tag... Infos: 5 git-pull-request Pull Request #18860 Notifications nvda (3.13.7), d:\projects\nvda-pr.venv\Scripts\python.exe Python Editor Language Status: $(warning) 5 Spell, next: Auto-Import Completions: true, next: Ruff (native), next: $(copilot) No inline suggestion available, Inline suggestions LF UTF-8 Tab Size: 4 Ln 2, Col 39 Screen Reader Optimized git-commit Michael Curran (3 days ago)