Re: few questions

["Jason Grieves" <jasongrieves hotmail com>]

> Jason Grieves wrote:
>
> > Hi Bill (and all),
> >
> > I am not quite sure if my last emails went through as I had some major 
> > email problems.  If these are repeats, pardon me.
> >
> > 1) Has an accessibility "options" center been discussed in Gnome before?  
> > Similar to what Microsoft has in the control panel, along side with a 
> > wizard?  I know older and less technical welcome the wizards and 
> > configuration assistants.  It would not seem to hard to do, but I realize 
> > it could provide some discrepencies with non-accessible users.  Would 
> > there be 2 places to change the same feature?  I.e. keyboard accessibility 
> > via Preferences> Keyobard versus lets say a tab with the AccessX features
>
> We have resisted, for the most part, the temptation to put all of the 
> features that are of interest to accessibility into a special 
> "Accessibility" section.  There are many reasons for this, including the 
> fact that many relevant features are of general interest, the fact that 
> some users don't self-identify as disabled, and our desire not to 
> "ghettoize" accessibility.   However, some sort of wizard or user-config 
> helper would be useful, I agree.  I think the best way to do this is via a 
> general purpose "user profile" capability for the Gnome desktop, but this 
> is still a project for the future.  In general Gnome's Human Interface 
> Guidelines say one should avoid having two separate dialogs which change 
> the same feature.

Interesting take on this.  I was discussing this with a friend and I guess 
we can both see the pros and cons to having an accessibility "center".  You 
hit the two major problems we talked about.  Most people do not want to 
identify as "disabled" to change features that might not even be considered 
accessibility and 2, it interferes with the Gnome Guidlines.  Your idea 
about a profile for setting accessibility/profile settings is a great idea.  
I look foward to seeing how that pan's out.  Its just hard trying to 
convince friends/disabled community (especially older folks) that Linux is 
beginning to provide FREE assistive technology for blind, low vision, or 
mobility impaired users.  They don't see some of the same tools they have 
been using for many years.
> > 2) Bill does the magnifier need to be recompiled to work with the 
> > extensions (i.e. Damage) you spoke of?
>
> Yes, it must be built on a system that has the extensions, in order to use 
> them.  On most OS'es this should be true, because most distros will 
> probably be running a recent XOrg server when building.  However there is 
> no guarantee that this is true.  If the magnifier was built without DAMAGE 
> or COMPOSITE support, it will report this when started from the console in 
> standalone mode, i.e. if you run "magnifier -v -m" the magnifier should 
> report if it was compiled without DAMAGE or XFIXES support.

Great thanks for the info.
> Bill

Jason