[orca-list] Getting started with Orca scripting

[Nolan Darilek <nolan thewordnerd info>]

Hello. I recently attempted to switch to Ubuntu full-time, and am trying
to get into Orca scripting. I'm having a few issues, though, and am not
entirely sure what to do next. My challenge is to improve access to
rhythmbox, as there are a few things about it that annoy me.

How do I set up Orca for debugging and logging its output? I've changed
the debugging level, which gives lots of useful output, and I've seen
lines in user-settings.py for opening a file. Seems that setting the
debug level only sends the data to stdout, though, which isn't quite
what I want. I can certainly redirect the output from a terminal, but
since there appears to be a logging mechanism available, I should
probably use that. And it'd appear that I've uncommented one of the
output file creation lines. Is this all that is necessary to start
logging?

Now for the actual scripting questions. My first challenge is to
actually pronounce the source column name correctly. Debugging seems to
indicate that the column name is being sent as "S_ource" which isn't
particularly aesthentically pleasing. :) What would be the best way to
change this? I've copied the rhythmbox scripts into my .orca scripts
folder, but in studying the debug output, I'm getting the following
debug log:

GENERATOR: _getSpeechForTableCellRow
           obj             = 
           role            = table cell
           already_focused = False
           utterances:
               (Music)
SPEECH OUTPUT: ''
SPEECH OUTPUT: 'S_ource column header'
SPEECH OUTPUT: 'Music'
SPEECH OUTPUT: 'tree level 2'
So from this I'd gather that I need to override
the ï_getSpeechForTableCellRow function in the rhythmbox-specific
generator, only in looking at the default function I'd expect to find a
recursive call to a method for speaking a column header, and that I'm
not getting a GENERATOR line in the debug output indicating this has me
thinking that changing this behavior won't be very easy. Is this
accurate? Is there any easy way of catching speaking of a column header
labeled "S_ource" and changing that to "Source"?

Also, here's something else that confuses me. I'm trying to hack the
rhythmbox source to display more useful information on podcast feeds,
but I'm getting some disparity between what Orca speaks and what's
displayed when I flat review the screen. Specifically, when I view my
list of podcast feeds, I first get a column containing the feed URL
titled "Feed," then get an identically-named column containing the
podcast title. When I navigate this area with flat review, I don't see
the first "Feed" column containing the URL. Can anyone help me figure
out just what's happening here? I spent a bit over an hour digging
through the rhythmbox source with the intention of removing this useless
field from the list of those displayed and adding in the podcast's
description, but if it isn't appearing on screen then I'm guessing the
problem is in how Orca is reading the table.

Thanks a bunch.