Re: Orca Speaking blank lines

[Nolan Darilek <nolan thewordnerd info>]

On Nov 1, 2006, at 12:47 PM, Willem van der Walt wrote:

> Yes, I think blank lines should be spoken as the word "blank" when  
> moving
> through whatever line by line.
> Depending on punctioation settings, one will hear nothing when you get
> onto a line with e.g. dashes or underlines.
> May be there are some situations where one does not this, but i cannot
> think of any.Regards, Willem


Ah, you wrote the message I would have. :) I don't think I've ever  
seen that as a preference in any other screen-reader, and I can't  
think of a situation where I'd ever not want that behavior.

This may or may not be an issue, however, so I'll bring it up. I'm  
not sure how Orca implements its "read entire document"  
functionality. OS X seems to go line-by-line, which means that blank  
lines are spoken when you likely *don't* want them. I've had to edit  
a number of etexts because I don't want to hear "newline" between  
every paragraph. :)

Yet I can see where this might be useful. If quickly skimming a  
document for accuracy, knowing that there are extra blank lines might  
be of benefit.

So, my opinion would be, no preference for speaking blank lines when  
arrowed through, but it might be worth doing for "say all/read entire  
document" mode. Perhaps this could be enabled when punctuation mode  
is most or greater, or rolled into a separate preference, though I'd  
think that anyone reading a document at a high punctuation mode is  
doing so with an eye to accuracy so it'd make sense to announce blank  
lines.

Anyhow, just some thoughts. Hopefully I haven't simply confused the  
issue even further. :) I'll clean up the patch and send it along  
soonish.