Re: [orca-list] Reading dialog boxes with Orca

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi Jeffrey:

Welcome to the Orca list!

The normal operating mode of Orca is "focus tracking mode".  In focus
tracking mode, you interact with any application as any user would using
the built-in keyboard navigation mechanisms of GNOME.  For example, as
you 'Tab' around the interface or interact with objects, such as
pressing 'Space' to toggle check boxes or typing text into text areas,
Orca will present the information to you via the combinations of speech,
braille, and/or magnification that you have specified.  That is, you
merely interact with applications without needing to know any extra Orca
keyboard commands.

When you use an application for the first time, or if you just want to
get a better idea of what is on the screen, you may often want to
explore a window without changing anything inside it. This includes not
even tabbing around the interface. As such, "focus tracking mode" may
not always be useful and you will need to use other features of Orca,
such as "flat review" and "where am I" that are controlled by key
bindings specific to Orca. When you press these key bindings, nothing
happens in the application. Instead, Orca just presents the information
you have requested.

To get you started, the keypad keys in the desktop keyboard layout are
used to do a lot of the flat review and where am I stuff.  Keypad keys
7/8/9 are used for exploring by line, 4/5/6 for exploring by word, and
1/2/3 for exploring by character.

Having said all that, Orca currently does not have an automatic "say
all" of a dialog window.  We're tracking the development of that via 
this bug:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354462

Hope this helps,

Will

Jeffrey Shockley wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm new to both Orca and this list.
> I just started using a Ubuntu live CD yesterday because I wanted to play 
> with it and see how it works.
> I have looked on the Gnome website in the keyboard commands sections for 
> laptops, since I'm running the live CD on a laptop.
> The one command I can not find is one to read dialog boxes.
> Does a  command exist for doing this? If so could someone please give me 
> the laptop keyboard command for accomplishing this task?
> Thanks!
> Jeffrey Shockley 
>  
> Check out my blog!
> The URL is
> http://jeffreyshockley.livejournal.com 
> <http://jeffreyshockley.livejournal.com/>
> "You learn something new every day!"
> "You can do anything if you put your mind to it!"
>
> "It is not what we see that determines who we are. It is how we choose 
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>
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