Re: [orca-list] braille compared to speech

[Hermann <meinelisten onlinehome de>]

On 21.09.2008 at 12:27:54 Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 03:37:18PM +0200, Hermann wrote:
> > - Why isn't it possible to increase Orca's responsiveness in braille?
> > When I perform any action using my braille display (Alva Satellite 544),
> > I have to wait a few seconds till I see a result? And when the screen has
> > a lot of content, this amount of seconds rises, so in Thunderbird with a
> > large inbox.
>
> My experience is that the braille display is updated much more quickly than
> the speech (I'm using a Baum SuperVario 40 display, also known as Brailliant
> 40 outside Europe.)
>
> On my laptop using Gnome-speech and eSpeak, I can generate delays by moving
> through a Web page quickly with the cursor keys, whereas the braille display
> is updated immediately. The problem isn't limited to Firefox and can be
> reproduced elsewhere.
>
> On my desktop system, everything - both braille and speech - is extremely
> responsive.
>
> Laptop hardware: 1.8ghz AMD Athlon64 CPU, 1gb RAM.
>
> Desktop hardware: two dual-core Intel Xeon CPUs at 2.33 ghz, 4gb RAM.
>
> Software: Debian Sid on both systems.
>
> This issue has been discussed in the past on the mailing list; I haven't
> repeated the test with a version of Gnome-speech that includes the eSpeak
> driver fix that was made available for testing a few months ago.
>
> Obviously, there is a crucial difference between Hermann's system and mine
> that explains his performance problems and my lack of them.

To accomplish the information:
Acer 1600 Laptop, 2.6 Ghz, 512 MB RAM and Ubuntu Gutsy.
However: I cannot accept that braille is only responsive on a super
computer. Moreover: I remember that quite a lot list members confirmed
iresponsiveness of braille.
Regarding FF: I can report the opposit: Rather responsive cursor keys
and slow braille reactions (no matter whether I use Brltty or Brld, that
comes with SBL (although the latter seems a little bit faster, but not
that relevant).
[...]
> > Finally: Is it possible to use Orca with braille only? 
>
> Have you tried turning speech off in the preferences?
That reduces the use of Orca. I think it could not be used in a
productive environment; that was the meaning of my question.

> A serious problem with braille support is that some information is presented
> in speech but not in braille (usually, messages that aren't currently
> focused). There needs to be a standard means of doing this, for example,
> presenting the message on the braille display with a configurable time-out,
> before returning to the focused item.
That is what Daniel asked for. There may be some situations in which
this is needed, but not to read title/status bars. There are features
like this in Jaws and Window Eyes, but one of my first actions is to
turn them off. You get brailled almost everything that's spoken, and
this is not what I need. But again: In a few situations this might be
useful.
Hermann