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Re: [orca-list] New Linux User

Hello,
Currently there is some work to move at-spi to using d-bus for communication and once that is done then it should be possible to connect QT with at-spi (I don't know whether it would require some work on QT to do that). I don't know the exact status of at-spi on d-bus but I think it is still very much under development and so isn't ready for most users. If you feel experienced enough with Linux, prepared for possible problems and have another way to access your system (eg. speakup, YASR, etc in a text console or remote log in via ssh) then this work is called at-spi2 and sources for it can be found on the GNOME ftp server. Please do not install this if you are uncomfortable with anything I have said about it and also I am not advising to install it, you are making the decision yourself and must take responsibility for the results.
My advice is to wait until at-spi on d-bus is said to be ready for main stream use by the authors, hopefully that won't be too far off. 

Michael Whapples
On 17/11/09 09:42, Kerneels Roos wrote:

Would it be possible to alter the internals of AT-SPI so that QT also
become accessible or is there insufficient accessible meta data
available in for example QT applications to allow speech output?

On Mon, 2009-11-16 at 13:02 +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:

Hello Keith,
Firstly I am not familiar with vinux and this is the list for orca, so
you may find that looking at the vinux website and lists may give
better answers for vinux specific issues. Visit www.vinux.org.uk for
the vinux website and list. How to start GNOME in vinux is certainly a
vinux issue.

Having said that I will briefly give you a bit of information on the
basics of Linux and how they fit together.

Firstly there are the different Linux distributions to discuss. A
distribution is a bundle of software packages already configured which
you may install. Distributions tend to provide similar software
packages, but you may find that there default settings are tweaked for
a particular use. As an example the vinux distribution has been
configured to have accessibility enabled by default. There are some
distributions like Debian and Fedora (to name two of many) which are
called general distributions which means they can be put to many uses
and possibly have some installation options to allow installation of
packages of interest for a particular use (eg. you might be able to
specify at install time that it is for a desktop or webserver and then
the most commonly used packages for that use are installed). One
distribution I will give special treatment is opensolaris. I give it
special treatment here as it is not Linux, its based on another unix
system called solaris. This means that things may work slightly
differently on it, it may support different hardware and some linux
software may not be available, although there is a significant number
of similarities between Linux and Solaris (moving Linux to Solaris is
probably less of a move than windows to Linux). I think a significant
amount of orca development happens on opensolaris and what I have seen
of opensolaris the integration of accessibility seems to be good. The
choice of distribution can be a very personal decision as all needs
are different and what suits one person may not suit another, best
advice is generally to look at what they offer, try a few and make
your own mind up.

Now I will mention gnome. On Linux (I believe also applies to
opensolaris) there are a variety of GUI desktop environments available
but currently the only one where orca works well is gnome. The main
graphical toolkit which applications written for gnome use is called
GTK and genreally if you find an application using GTK it is
accessible (some exceptions exist, those image editing applications
are not to the point where drawing an image is accessible, etc). There
are some other graphical toolkits which are accessible with orca, eg.
java swing applications when using the java access bridge (this is
planned to be replaced with the java-atk-wrapper which will also
provide access to java swing applications), gecko applications (eg.
firefox and thunderbird), etc. Unfortunately there are some toolkits
which don't make use of the accessibility API used in gnome and in
these cases the application is totally inaccessible to orca. An exampl
of this is QT and as skype uses QT the default skype interface is
inaccessible (there is meant to be some work arounds using plugins for
other messaging clients). There are plans to alter the internals of
AT-spi (the accessibility API used in gnome) to make it possible for
some other graphical toolkits to be accessible to orca, but that is
stuff for the future.

One thing you may find useful while learning about Linux is to use a
search engine effectively as there is lots of information out on the
web about Linux.

I hope this helps you in starting out with Linux.

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Keith Christian wrote:

Hi,

I am new to this list and Linux in general.  Recently, I downloaded
Vinux and tried running it.  I was able to get to the command line
prompt but there was no graphical interface.  Is there a command
that will get me there?

Since I am new to all of this, is there a FAQ available that can
explain GMRL and GNOME and what it is all about?

My interests are to do basic word processing, internet surfing,
audio recording/editing, and email.

If you have a recommendation on whether I should use Vinux or other
versions of Linux, I'd be interested in hearing about them and where
to obtain them.


Thanks for any help,

Keith




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