[orca-list] Another Suggestion for OpenOffice/Orca Improvement

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

This suggestion may seem wacky, but I am most earnest. So, I articulate
my thought here wondering whether I'm alone in my insanity.

I would dearly love to "gene splice" OpenOffice && { vim | emacs }

Since I've been a vim user mostly, I'll make my examples vim specific.
But, the same would hold for emacs.

Having now worked with Orca and OpenOffice (off and on) for the better
part of a year, I still find myself hampered by the inherently
mouse-oriented "highlight and click" nature of the editing process. I'm
sure it's great for mouse users, but it's [expletive deleted] for me.
Yes, I feel pretty strong about this.

If I want to delete one, or maybbe 4 lines, I have to carefully
highlight that block before deleting in OpenOffice. In vim I simply do
d$, or dd, or d4d, depending.

Please note the difference between vim's D$ and dd. Achieving that in
OpenOffice requires care to include the end of line char in the
highlighted block.

There are many more examples, including many for which I don't believe
OO provides real equivalents--such as vim's bookmarking 'm' capibility
and all the functionality that goes along with it.

The reason I have such strong feelings about this is that the
operational difference ends up taking a very significant amount of time.
If I could be convinced that I simply need to be more proficient with
OO, I'd drop my argument then and there--but I don't believe that's the
case. It's simply more efficient to drive editing the vim (or emacs) way
if you have to do so from the keyboard. Am I wrong?

Nor is ignoring OO and sticking with latec an option. I need to work
with documents that come to me through the mail from others, and those
will often by Ms Word (and increasingly OO).

So, how possible is a vim-style overlay for OO? Clearly if it existed,
it would need a command (vs. insert) mode--just like vim itself. Else,
how would one insert 'dd' into a doc, as opposed to deleting a line?
Fortunately, unlike Speakup which never gained the ability to identify
command mode vs insert mode programmatically, Orca, could easily switch
voices for that in speech, and probably find a suitable indicator in
braille.

So, am I alone in my pipeless dream? Have I completely lost my marbles?

Janina