Re: Proposal to add Orca to GNOME 2.16

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

I'd like to thank everyone for their responses to this proposal.  The
discussion has been quite informative.  Now that the initial discussion
has died down, I'd like to summarize what I think are the main points
and then work to reach a decision.

1. People generally think it is the right thing to do.  The growing Orca
user community is finding good access with Orca as it is and feel that
Orca is the right thing to focus on.

2. The "Highlander" principle is a concern, meaning that there is
question about whether or not both Gnopernicus and Orca can be options.
I describe this as a "concern" because there seem to be mixed feelings
about whether the opinions in this area should be strictly adhered to
for this case.  I propose that both ship.  With this, users will be able
to choose the one that works for them.  Note that the choice is often
based upon whether the user can actually use the system or not.  This is
much different than the choice of whether one happens to like one e-mail
application or content viewer better than the other.

3. The current gap of the Configuration GUI is an issue.  Orca
configuration currently is done via a command line setup script,
although Orca has also been designed to run w/o requiring setup.  Post
setup configuration is managed by hand editing a settings module.  We
realize the 1990's clunkiness of this, and we definitely plan resolve
this with a real GUI.  The main issue is getting the manpower and we
welcome help from the community to do it in a timely manner.  I still
need to point out the irony of requiring a screen reader to configure
your screen reader.  ;-)  I propose that we recognize that the
Configuration GUI is a much needed thing, but we realize that the users
have other accessible options for configuring Orca.  As such, the lack
of the GUI is a very small notch below show stopper status for GNOME
2.16, and is a must have for GNOME 2.18.

4. How users start Orca is a question.  The general use case for a
screen reader is that it will automatically be started when the desktop
starts.  The "System->Preferences->Assistive Technology Support" dialog
is the common thing used to set this up. This dialog currently enforces
the Highlander principle, allowing only Gnopernicus to be started.  It
seems as though improvements to the automatic starting of applications
for the GNOME Desktop in general, however, may provide a means to
obsolete this dialog.  Alternatively, this dialog could be modified to
provide the user with a choice of which screen reader to use.  I'm not
sure what to propose here.

5. There was some question about Orca dependencies on things that are
not a part of the GNOME desktop (e.g., GNOME Python, PyOrbit, etc.), but
this was deemed acceptable via general GNOME policy if I understood
correctly.

Thoughts?

Thanks again!

Will