Re: [orca-list] orca questions

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
> From what you just said, I suspect that we might be talking about
different situations with orca locking up. I was meaning that it might
lock up slightly while opening and application, opening a dialog inside
an application, etc. Basically where the controls available are varying.
If you can imagine, when a window/frame/dialog/etc is opened, the
program is doing things like add button, add treeview, add button, add
combo box, etc, orca is trying to track some of these changes
(particularly if there is focus changes). I wouldn't expect orca to lock
up while navigating the menus on the desktop.

As for trying to get an interface like you suggest, I can't imagine that
a build your own linux (could it be "Linux from scratch") would help
here, as the alteration you would make probably would be easily (just as
easily if not easier) made to an existing distribution. The reason for
this thought is that orca is using GTK and is fairly gnome specific, so
the desktop system you would be using would need to be gnome and would
be an alteration to gnome. That is making one assumption that you would
want to be sticking with gnome and orca, which you probably would as
firefox is probably your best web browser available if you want things
to just work online. If you were considering breaking from using just
gnome and orca, then there might be such a system. I think that oralux
(www.oralux.org) did such an interface if you chose to use YASR as the
screen reader, although I felt such an interface (that particular
implementation, felt very restrictive).

Should there still be nothing, I am sure that it would not be too hard
(I am meaning for someone like me, and if you really felt it needed
doing I might even do it for you) would be to create a GTK application
which could provide a list of applications which you could choose from.
I would imagine that you would want a way to add new commands to it.

Michael Whapples
On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 06:40 -0400, Alex Hall wrote:
> Thank you for your answers.  As to my third question about the 
> menus, I am thinking that the desktop is just a menu of options, 
> each with a hotkey that launches it.  Each option either runs an 
> app or presents a submenu of options for a specific app.  If you 
> have ever used an adaptive notetaker such as the braillenote or 
> braille/voice sense, I am looking for a similar menu structure to 
> that, but expanded and more customizable (such as a "locations" 
> option where icons of media you insert are placed, like they are 
> placed on the desktop now).  You said that Orca is scrambling to 
> keep up with accessibility framework information, which I take to 
> mean that it has to filter a lot.  The interface I am talking 
> about would not do this, unless you were in actual applications, 
> because the interface would be quite simple and have no frames or 
> images.  Again, I have no clue if anything like this exists or if 
> that homemade linux site could help; I have to look at that more.
>
> Have a great day,
> Alex
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com
> > To: Alex Hall <mehgcap gwi net
> > Date sent: Fri, 23 May 2008 11:09:00 +0100
> > Subject: Re: [orca-list] orca questions
>
> > On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 00:43 -0400, Alex Hall wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > Here are the questions I promised in my previous post.
> > > 1.  I am starting out with Ubuntu 8.04.  Orca keeps randomly not
> > > speaking for several minutes.  It comes back, but I can hit
> > > alt-f2 and type "orca" to get speech back faster.  Why is this
> > > happening, and would going to an earlier version of Ubuntu
> > > resolve this?
> > What probably is happening is that orca is recieving a lot of
> > information from the accessibility framework and is taking time 
> to
> > process it.  Most of this information is probably not going to be 
> output
> > as it might be due to a window being altered (eg.  controls being 
> added,
> > etc),so the observed will be orca not responding.  If you press 
> alt+f2
> > and type orca and press enter, it restarts orca, so probably 
> stopping
> > the processing of all that information and then starting it at a 
> point
> > where it doesn't need to catch up.  Going back to an earlier 
> version
> > probably won't solve it, in fact it might be worse in earlier 
> versions
> > as orca has recieved some performance improvements (I know 
> certainly in
> > firefox).  I don't know if it is just my imagination, but I feel 
> orca
> > runs slightly better on some other distros, although you still 
> will get
> > some cases where a restart of orca helps it along.
> > > 2.  I am going to try a bunch of Linux versions tomorrow, most
> > > designed for thumb drives, including a few types of Puppy Linux,
> > > Breezy, Slax, and DSL, among others (sorry for the spelling,
> > > someone told me about them; I did not see the names myself).  
> Can
> > > I put Orca, or some sort of screen reader on any of these?
> > Potentially yes, but I will give the longer answer as well.  The 
> short is
> > yes as it should be possible to compile everything needed for 
> orca if it
> > doesn't exist for a distro, but that might be a bit much 
> (particularly
> > if you are new to Linux).  If we are going with do they come with 
> orca or
> > another screen reader by default, then it is some.  I don't know 
> about
> > the ones you mentioned, but a simple rule about orca is that if 
> it comes
> > with gnome (I think it is gnome version 2.16 or higher) then orca 
> should
> > be there, although I have known situations where orca is there 
> but the
> > distro hasn't included a speech synthesiser.  One distro I can 
> garantee
> > has a screen reader, speech synthesiser, and everything you need 
> to get
> > going is GRML (www.grml.org).  The difference here though is that 
> the
> > screen reader I am thinking of is speakup, which is a command 
> line based
> > one and so will mean you are working in a full text console.  It 
> might be
> > possible to get orca working on it as GRML is debian based and I 
> believe
> > can take debian's packages, but this will need installing (if 
> things
> > haven't changed from when I read about it).
> > > 3.  This is not Orca-specific, and let me know if I should take
> > > this to another list, but is there a menu-based linux around?
> > > They all have GUIs, but I would like one closer to Windows 3.1
> > > setup (if I remember it correctly; I was very young when I used
> > > it).  Basically, all the applications are in one menu, which
> > > replaces the desktop, and each app either launches or brings up
> > > its own menu when you hit enter on it or press its letter to
> > > launch it.  Could I make something like this with the "build 
> your
> > > own linux" project I found? (I know that name is wrong, I cannot
> > > remember the actual name off hand).
> > I am not quite sure what you mean, do you mean absolutely every
> > application in one single menu rather than the gnome categorised 
> submenu
> > way? If so, I am not sure.  One possibility might be that I think 
> gnome's
> > menu system can be reorganised by editing a file (I don't know 
> much
> > about it, but I remember seeing a comment in a slackware gnome 
> project
> > document saying about if your menus weren't correct then look at 
> certain
> > files).  I can try and find that comment out again for you so as 
> to give
> > an indication of which files.
> > > Thank you for any help!
> > I hope it has been of help.
>
> > > Have a great day,
> > > Alex
> > Michael Whapples