On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:10:56AM -0500, Jacob Schmude wrote:
Hi Everyone I've run into an interesting issue with orca on Opensuse 11.1. If I load up an application that is based on a toolkit that requires scripts (e.g. Openoffice, Firefox, etc) Orca stops speaking for that application. Nothing reads at all, no menu bar, no main window, no flat review. The only thing orca will tell me is the window title, so I know the application itself has loaded. Other applications such as pidgin which is scripted but doesn't use a different toolkit are fine. I can access the app-specific preferences with orca+ctrl+space, which leads me to believe the scripts are loading. Also, when quitting or closing one of these problem applications, orca seems to have a 50/50 chance of freezing up. I've tried both with the 2.24 version of orca that comes with opensuse and using the 2.25.4 version in factory with the same results. Anyone know what's going on here? Is this an orca problem or is something else going on with my opensuse installation?
Hi Jacob, Your problem is due to the fast that openSUSE 11.1 included some GNOME-related changes that created accessibility problems. You will be interested in this thread: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2008-December/msg00319.html Specifically this: "there was a change in Gtk+ and gnome-settings-daemon that affected the accessibility of non-Gtk+ apps that use Gtk+. So that includes at least Open Office, Firefox, and Mono Windows Forms" I did say "hopefully be a matter of a few days at most," but I underestimated the time it takes to get updates through to the proper channels and out to users :( Even with the patches that my team has been working on, applications (like Open Office and FireFox), will need to implement some changes on their end. I believe FireFox has already done this in their latest code. But again, how long this will all take to get to the end user, I don't know. Unfortunately, I would recommend to anyone needing accessibility tools to use openSUSE 11.0 for now, and to not upgrade to a distro that uses GNOME 2.24 until verifying that there is a fix for your distro. Thanks, Brian
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