Re: Orca on laptops.

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 16:43 +0000, Bill Haneman wrote:
> Rich Burridge wrote:
> >
> > Orca doesn't care what kind of key it uses for its modifier key. It 
> > can be anything.
> Yes, but I think there is some agreement that finding a reasonable 
> default modifier is a worthwhile goal.

I think the main goals are not technical, but are more about what users
want and expect.  These include things such as the following:

1) Users don't want to have to keep moving their hands away from the
home row (ASDFGHJKL) and away from the braille display.

2) User's do not want contortionist chording, and chording with one hand
is preferred (though on the laptop this may be difficult)

In Orca, we can take care of turning almost any key into the Orca
modifier key.  Keys where we cannot control their locking behavior
(e.g., Caps_Lock) are the current exceptions.  These exceptions,
however, are more along the lines of the fact that users don't expect
the key to latch.  That is, they expect to use chording with the
modifier key versus having it lock.

The Orda modifier key does not have to be a standard modifier key, and I
think we should gear our discussion towards the user centered point of
view versus the technology point of view, and then adjust if the
technology cannot meet the desires.  For example, the Caps_Lock key is
causing us to adjust.

Will