[orca-list] Orca and XFCE: A quick howto

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
As out of LXDE and XFCE I seem to be having more success with XFCE, I 
thought I would jot down a few notes for those who can't wait for a full 
tutorial. As these are quick notes I would recommend (I expect) you will 
want to read more information. These notes are for an archlinux system 
and the archlinux wiki (http://wiki.archlinux.org) has lots of useful 
information and was the main source I used to get this far.

Just before I start saying what was done, I have put at the end a 
section on possible problems and possible fixes, some of which I don't 
have a complete solution, so if anyone knows the answer I would be 
pleased to learn what to do.

First starting with a basic install of archlinux (in fact my system 
wasn't fully clean as I had already tried looking at LXDE, however I 
doubt that any of the LXDE stuff was needed). Install and configure 
Xorg, there is quite a detailed page on the archlinux wiki about this so 
at the moment I won't go into too much detail. Now install XFCE, again 
the archlinux wiki has details on this (NOTE: on that page it discusses 
how to start XFCE using startx and a ~/.xinitrc, I will use this way but 
as there are a few extra things to do I will discuss this particular 
part in more detail). Now use pacman to install orca. You can run the 
initial orca set up in text mode, may be do that, so run:
orca -t
Orca will ask you a load of questions, answer as you feel right for you. 
There are a couple of questions I am not fully sure how they apply to 
XFCE (eg. the bit regarding enabling accessibility for gnome and logging 
out and back in), I possibly suggest answering no. Also I am assuming 
for the question of start orca automatically you have answered yes.

Now for configuring the system, please remember these are quick notes 
and only deal with the accessibility side of things. First thing having 
the GTK_MODULES variable set. As we are going to use startx to run XFCE 
when we want it (IE. text mode is where you get booted to, if you want a 
GUI you start it manually) we need to write a ~/.xinitrc file with the 
following two lines:
export GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge
exec ck-launch-session startxfce4

The other thing we need to do to make XFCE accessible is get 
at-spi-registryd started automatically. For this we need a .desktop file 
for at-spi but archlinux doesn't seem to provide one in the at-spi 
package. So create the file /usr/share/applications/at-spi.desktop with 
the following content:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=at-spi
GenericName=The at-spi-registryd
Comment=The accessibility framework
Exec=/usr/lib/at-spi/at-spi-registryd
Type=Application
Terminal=false

Now we need to ensure that XFCE starts at-spi and orca when we log in, 
so create the folder ~/.config/autostart and then create links in that 
folder to the at-spi.desktop and orca.desktop files.
ln -s /usr/share/applications/at-spi.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/orca.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

Now I think we are ready to run the startx command and XFCE should load 
and orca should load (assuming orca has not been used before you should 
get the orca main window).

Now for the possible problems:
* The menu doesn't seem to have a shortcut key. Solution: press alt+f2 
for the run dialog and enter the command xfce4-popup-menu and press 
enter. The menu will appear. If you want to set a keyboard shortcut then 
go to the settings menu and select the keyboard settings option. In the 
keyboard settings choose the application shortcut tab and press the add 
button on that page. Now enter the command xfce4-popup-menu and tab to 
the OK button and press space, orca won't say anything but it is now 
waiting for the keypress to associate with that action, I pressed the 
windows key (may as well make use of it) and I then got placed back on 
the page with the defined keyboard shortcuts and the xfce4-popup-menu 
one should have been added. Select close and try your keyboard shortcut.
* The desktop itself and the file manager doesn't seem accessible. I 
think XFCE uses thunar for the file manager but this doesn't seem 
accessible. You can install another file manager such as pcman (NOTE: 
change pcman to have the view as detailed list). I am unsure how you 
would set a different file manager for the desktop icons, any suggestions?
* When you alt+tab between applications nothing is spoken until you let 
go of the keys (IE. you don't actually know what application you are at 
when alt+tabbing). Solution: Use metacity for the window manager. 
Unfortunately I don't know how to permanently change the window manager 
used (for a given session you can run metacity --replace in a terminal 
but this will be lost on logout). There seems to be instructions on the 
archlinux wiki for changing the window manager to compiz, when I had a 
look at compiz some time ago metacity was better, has things changed?
* Don't set it to save the session on logout, if you do you may want to 
make alterations (eg. when I changed that I ended up with two orcas 
running, one from the start up and one being restored from previous 
session).
* Some of the applications don't seem to work perfectly with orca. This 
may be a matter of scripting in some cases (eg. the terminal application 
doesn't get orca echoing what it prints but all output is accessible 
with flat review) but others are much worse (eg. xfce 4 settings manager 
as far as orca knows only has a panel and two buttons).

OK, so its not perfect but the general experience is good.

Michael Whapples