Re: [orca-list] orca/braille

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi Dan:

> So, how does orca handle things when a cursor routing button is pressed?
> Could it be made to simulate the press of the right or left arrow keys,
> x amount of times depending on what routing button was pressed, and
> where abouts the cursor is. Like brltty does I think. 
> Being able to do this from within emacs
> would be really handy.

For text objects, Orca depends upon the text object to honor the 
setCaretOffset method to position the cursor.  The terminal is kind of 
ill-behaved in this regard.

One work around might be to modify default.py's setCaretOffset method to 
find the (x,y) position on the screen and force the mouse to move and 
the click on that position if it knows it is dealing with an object of 
ROLE_TERMINAL.,  Take a look at default.py:setCaretOffset and 
eventsynthesizer.py:clickCharacter as potential starting points. 
clickCharacter would need to be modified to accept an optional 
caretOffset parameter.

> 2. Would it be possible to impliment functions such as:
> - cut and paste using the display
> - Skip blank/identical lines like in brltty
> - Freeze/don't_follow_cursor functions

Potentially -- are you using the fallback flat review mode or are you 
navigating using the normal keyboard navigation keys all users would use?

> 3. Messages that are voiced such as, where am I, "Run" when the run
> dialog is launched, and other important pop up messages, could these be
> displayed in braille? Perhaps for a certain amount of seconds before the
> display would return to standard output, eg. the document that is in
> focus. Perhaps as a setting that can be adjusted on reading speed, etc.

Orca has some support for "flashing" braille messages, and it's 
currently used for flashing locking modifier state.  Take a look in 
orca.py:keyEcho for a call to braille.displayMessage around line 631 for 
an example usage.

> These are just suggestions, I'm not sure if any of this has been
> implemented, but has it been considered? If no one else is working on
> such features, I would be happy to have a go at it, what files would I
> start looking at once I familiarise myself with python?

Please do help!  We're a very small team and our current focus is more 
on the larger changes happening in GNOME at the moment.  So, we're 
unable to focus on Orca as much as we'd like.  A new member of the team 
would be fantastic.

Thanks!

Will