Orca A hotkey for starting / (was, Re: menu placement and setup GUI in Ubuntu)

["Al Puzzuoli" <alpuzz gmail com>]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to respond to the portion of this message concerning the process 
of starting Orca.  No specific mention was made of this , but I believe it 
would be  very helpful if in addition to the other options discussed, the 
desktop were to include a default hotkey for launching the program.  The 
problem with all the other options is that to some extent, all of them 
require navigating in the dark so to speak, and involve an element of 
uncertainty.
I've used similar hotkeys in Windows and Mac OS, and in my experience, the 
ability to walk up to any machine, knowing that there will be a quick and 
dirty way to start the screen reader has been invaluable.


--Al




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henrik Nilsen Omma" <henrik ubuntu com>
To: "Orca screen reader developers" <orca-list gnome org>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 7:07 AM
Subject: Orca menu placement and setup GUI in Ubuntu


> Hello!
>
> First of all: Orca is now in Ubuntu main and is tagged for the desktop
> seed (will be installed by default). Yay! (should be in tomorrow's live
> CD build I guess) Also see: http://blog.omma.net/?p=10
>
>
> Now I/we need to think carefully about how to best integrate it with the
> default desktop. Obviously Orca is primarily a tool for VI users, but it
> may be of some interest and use to others also. When we put it on the
> default desktop we should strive to make it accessible to non-VI users
> as well ;)
>
> There are several reasons for this emphasis: If something is in the
> default install lots more people will become aware of it and play with
> it. Developers may test it with their applications and users who just
> encounter it can recommend it to others who need it. This raises
> awareness and is good all round. We are getting good will and
> contributions from the developer and user communities when we manage to
> integrate the AT stuff in an elegant and non-intrusive way. Also, we are
> striving not just for basic accessibility but also for a good level of
> usability in the AT tools!
>
> So, with that in mind ...
>
> Menu placement:
>
> My proposal to our desktop team will be that we create a sub-menu from
> the System -> Preferences menu titled 'Assistive Technology'. The
> current entry, 'Assistive Technology Preferences', will be moved onto
> the sub-menu (and probably renamed). We will also move the Orca launch
> entry (and onBoard) from 'Applications -> Accessibility' over to this
> location. We might possibly move keyboard modifiers here as well. Fedora
> has a similar sub-menu ATM.
>
> I'd also like to consider an entry for the Orca config GUI, but I'm not
> sure it's the best way to do it. A menu item is probably not the way
> blind users would discover or launch Orca or it's config system, but
> it's a good way for others to find it and it may be a good way to make
> the configuration utility generally more discoverable.
>
>
> Starting and stopping Orca:
>
> I think this area needs some more clarity. I guess the recommended way
> of starting Orca  is from a terminal, from Alt-F2 or from the
> Applications -> Accessibility menu, all via the 'orca' command.
>
> First: how do you close Orca? I know Orca is configured to never die
> accidentally, which is good, but how do you then close it other than
> killing the watchdog script from a process list? Someone who is just
> having a casual look at it (for a review perhaps ...) would want to be
> able to close it and not have it spring to life again. I guess
> generally, this keep-alive daemon needs a bit more testing to make sure
> it is well-behaved.
>
> This also links in to the question of the configuration GUI: if Orca is
> already running, how do you launch the config GUI (other than
> Insert+Shift)? Launching orca --gui-config does not seem to work. It
> seems reasonable to start Orca first and then launch the config utility
> afterwards, looking for things to tweak (or you might want to start the
> config utility first and then close it, with the option of leaving Orca
> running or stopping everything).
>
> I'm sure it's too late for this, but it might be an idea to have Orca
> and the setup utility be separate processes that can be launched and
> killed independently. This is what we do with onBoard. There are very
> likely good technical reasons for keeping it the way it is though. In
> any case I think it would be helpful to create a more intuitive relation
> between the two.
>
> Perhaps the best option would be to write a small panel applet that
> would appear whenever Orca is started. Clicking on it would produce the
> following option:
>
> * Preferences (graphical)
> * Preferences (in terminal)
> * Help (link to local help and wiki)
> * Quit Orca
>
> That way the settings would be easily discoverable, the status of Orca
> could be indicated by the panel icon (one version for active, one for
> muted, etc.)
>
>
> Basic information:
>
> Again, some basic information like to to start, stop and configure Orca
> should be available in an intuitive place. The Help entry on a panel
> applet would be good. We can also place more information at
> access.ubuntu.com or in Yelp.
>
> The Orca Preferences window currently has 4 tabs with different
> settings. I would propose adding one more: Key-bindings. This would
> eventually let you set new key-bindings interactively, but for now could
> just contain a list of what they are and how to change them.
>
> OK, enough for now :)
>
> - Henrik
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