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Re: [orca-list] orca questions

It would lock up when doing things like looking for and installing media codecs for Rhythm Box, not when just moving through menus. I am quite new to all this: what is GTK? What is Gnome? I think that Gnome is kind of like Dos running behind Windows, but am not sure. Is GTK like the Windows shell? how hard would it be to put a new "shell" on Ubuntu (or whatever Linux I go with)? Do all Linux versions use GTK, if indeed it is a shell? Thanks again for your help. 

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 12:04:49 +0100
Subject: Re: [orca-list] orca questions



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
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