Re: Orca newbi: need help on finding dependencies for orca setup for ubuntu

[Thomas Ward <tward1978 earthlink net>]

Hi,

> krishnakant Mane wrote:
> why not have those deb packages that can make accessibility work out
> of the box after installation of ubuntu?  I mean accessibility with
> all possible applications. 


Well, there are a few reasons why not. Firefox 1.5 is the most stable 
version of Firefox at current, and it makes sense why it was included in 
Dapper. However, v1.8 is more accessible all be it less stable. I'm 
certain as soon as it is stable enough to be included it will be.
Some applications require the Java access bridge. Since the Sun JRE is 
under a different license it can not be included with Linux out of the 
box, but Ubuntu is good about keeping a Universe repository for more 
commercialized apps. I am certain someone could make a 
java-access-bridge.deb package and put it in the universe repository for 
an apt-get install.

>  I had been told off the list by my good
> old friend thomas that to make openoffice accessible there are a lot
> of dependencies to be settled and also the default openoffice needs to
> be removed and replaced with 1.8 if I recall correctly.
>   

Let me clarify what I was talking about to you off list. First off, I 
find the open office compiled  by the folks at openoffice.org is more 
accessible and works better with accessibility than does the one that 
ships with Linux distributions. Not to mention you can get the latest 
versions which are better yet. The only major thing you need is the Sun 
JRE, java runtime environment, and the java-access-bridge.
As I know of know deb packages for the java-access-bridge you would 
likely have to compile which requires the build-essential and 
gnome-devel package groups as well as the Sun jdk 1.5 which are not 
installed on a standard Ubuntu 6.06 install.


> I also want to know if such default acccessibility can b be provided
> for firefox as well.
>   

Well, as I said earlier v1.8 which I think is going to be 2.0 is 
currently an unstable version. It will be out when it is ready, and I 
can't really blame them for including a version that is less accessible 
but stable.
Generally speaking if you want to stay up to date with access changes 
with Firefox it is best to build from the 1.8 nightly builds.

> in our country there are so many pockets of regions where broadband
> internet is not available so it will take years for downloading and
> installing packages with app-get or similar tool.
>   

Unfortunately for you, Ubuntu, Debian, and other like distributions seam 
to be internet-centric where you install the os and then use say apt-get 
to complete the install. There are reasons why some apps are not included.
For example, Ubuntu comes with dvd movie players, but since there is 
license restrictions on dvd decoder libraries it is not included. 
However, with an internet connection and a  couple of apt-gets later the 
decoder dependancies is installed, and the Ubuntu user can dvd away in 
his or her favorite dvd movie player.
If you don't have an internet connection things are not impossible, but 
just more difficult.


> in some places getting an internet connection is also difficult.
> in such a situation how will a blind person get total accessibility?
>   

Well, some apps like Firefox and Thunderbird are improving and it is my 
understandinb by version 3 access for those apps should be pretty well 
on it's way.
For apps like Openoffice.org, Staroffice, and the like my guess is if a 
deb package for the java-access-bridge could be made all that would need 
to be done is to download the jaba-bridge and the Sun JRE, and install 
them, and in theory appsthat need java support would work.

> and my second question is that can I use cd with app-get to install
> development tools?
>   

I suppose that is possible, but I never tried it that way.

> I got the ubuntu server cd and it seams it has all the tools like gcc,
> g++ make and the likes.
> so if I want to say have all the dependencies to even build orca from
> source can I use my server or desktop cd instead of internet to get
> all the needed tools?
>   

No, I don't believe the server cd has all the required dependancies. It 
may have the build-essential group which is a good start but you still 
need gnome-devel and python-dev. I don't know of any other way of 
getting gnome-devel other than apt-get.