Re: [orca-list] orca questions

[Alex Hall <mehgcap gwi net>]

Thank you for your answers.  As to my third question about the 
menus, I am thinking that the desktop is just a menu of options, 
each with a hotkey that launches it.  Each option either runs an 
app or presents a submenu of options for a specific app.  If you 
have ever used an adaptive notetaker such as the braillenote or 
braille/voice sense, I am looking for a similar menu structure to 
that, but expanded and more customizable (such as a "locations" 
option where icons of media you insert are placed, like they are 
placed on the desktop now).  You said that Orca is scrambling to 
keep up with accessibility framework information, which I take to 
mean that it has to filter a lot.  The interface I am talking 
about would not do this, unless you were in actual applications, 
because the interface would be quite simple and have no frames or 
images.  Again, I have no clue if anything like this exists or if 
that homemade linux site could help; I have to look at that more.

Have a great day,
Alex

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com
> To: Alex Hall <mehgcap gwi net
> Date sent: Fri, 23 May 2008 11:09:00 +0100
> Subject: Re: [orca-list] orca questions

> On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 00:43 -0400, Alex Hall wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > Here are the questions I promised in my previous post.
> > 1.  I am starting out with Ubuntu 8.04.  Orca keeps randomly not
> > speaking for several minutes.  It comes back, but I can hit
> > alt-f2 and type "orca" to get speech back faster.  Why is this
> > happening, and would going to an earlier version of Ubuntu
> > resolve this?
> What probably is happening is that orca is recieving a lot of
> information from the accessibility framework and is taking time 
to
> process it.  Most of this information is probably not going to be 
output
> as it might be due to a window being altered (eg.  controls being 
added,
> etc),so the observed will be orca not responding.  If you press 
alt+f2
> and type orca and press enter, it restarts orca, so probably 
stopping
> the processing of all that information and then starting it at a 
point
> where it doesn't need to catch up.  Going back to an earlier 
version
> probably won't solve it, in fact it might be worse in earlier 
versions
> as orca has recieved some performance improvements (I know 
certainly in
> firefox).  I don't know if it is just my imagination, but I feel 
orca
> runs slightly better on some other distros, although you still 
will get
> some cases where a restart of orca helps it along.
> > 2.  I am going to try a bunch of Linux versions tomorrow, most
> > designed for thumb drives, including a few types of Puppy Linux,
> > Breezy, Slax, and DSL, among others (sorry for the spelling,
> > someone told me about them; I did not see the names myself).  
Can
> > I put Orca, or some sort of screen reader on any of these?
> Potentially yes, but I will give the longer answer as well.  The 
short is
> yes as it should be possible to compile everything needed for 
orca if it
> doesn't exist for a distro, but that might be a bit much 
(particularly
> if you are new to Linux).  If we are going with do they come with 
orca or
> another screen reader by default, then it is some.  I don't know 
about
> the ones you mentioned, but a simple rule about orca is that if 
it comes
> with gnome (I think it is gnome version 2.16 or higher) then orca 
should
> be there, although I have known situations where orca is there 
but the
> distro hasn't included a speech synthesiser.  One distro I can 
garantee
> has a screen reader, speech synthesiser, and everything you need 
to get
> going is GRML (www.grml.org).  The difference here though is that 
the
> screen reader I am thinking of is speakup, which is a command 
line based
> one and so will mean you are working in a full text console.  It 
might be
> possible to get orca working on it as GRML is debian based and I 
believe
> can take debian's packages, but this will need installing (if 
things
> haven't changed from when I read about it).
> > 3.  This is not Orca-specific, and let me know if I should take
> > this to another list, but is there a menu-based linux around?
> > They all have GUIs, but I would like one closer to Windows 3.1
> > setup (if I remember it correctly; I was very young when I used
> > it).  Basically, all the applications are in one menu, which
> > replaces the desktop, and each app either launches or brings up
> > its own menu when you hit enter on it or press its letter to
> > launch it.  Could I make something like this with the "build 
your
> > own linux" project I found? (I know that name is wrong, I cannot
> > remember the actual name off hand).
> I am not quite sure what you mean, do you mean absolutely every
> application in one single menu rather than the gnome categorised 
submenu
> way? If so, I am not sure.  One possibility might be that I think 
gnome's
> menu system can be reorganised by editing a file (I don't know 
much
> about it, but I remember seeing a comment in a slackware gnome 
project
> document saying about if your menus weren't correct then look at 
certain
> files).  I can try and find that comment out again for you so as 
to give
> an indication of which files.
> > Thank you for any help!
> I hope it has been of help.

> > Have a great day,
> > Alex
> Michael Whapples