Re: [orca-list] Some of my thoughts about what has been difficult for getting into orca development and orca scripting

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>]

Hey Rui.

> I'm Here I'm here!!

Hee hee. :-) There you are. Thanks for chiming in, and thanks for the
work you've done to implement this feature.

> The problem is that with the corrent audio code (wich uses a systemcall
> aproach to call gstreamer) it sounds a bit strange sometimes, with beeps
> one over another. Maybe I'll try again wrting some gstreamer stuff and
> see if it works... 

Cool. In the meantime, perhaps this patch could get some testing love by
the user community.

I'll try to make some time to take a look at it on OpenSolaris (still my
personal OS of choice) tomorrow or Monday.

Speaking of OpenSolaris....

> I recall problems with that on solaris and working
> fine on Ubuntu... Is solaris still a priority? :)

Perhaps not quite to the degree it was before. :-) After all, we've gone
from being a Sun-funded project to an un-funded project.

Having said that, I would like to point something out, just in case it
hasn't been clear from my most recent blog post and announcement on the
list: There are a number companies shipping the GNOME desktop. I can
even think of one which purports to hold accessibility amongst their
core values. Of those companies, there is only one at the moment which
has given any indication whatsoever that it valued Orca enough to
support it in the form of engineering time. That one company would be
Oracle, who is allowing Li Yuan and Ke Wang to add working on Orca to
their plates.

In addition, even if I weren't personally an OpenSolaris user, I would
be bothered, quite a bit actually, by our community taking the stance of
relegating a particular distro or OS as being "not worth supporting."

By the same token, I don't think it's reasonable to deny the majority of
users a desired feature because one distro/OS has an especially unique
environment.

All a long way of saying the following: Let's give Rui's patch the
testing love it deserves. If the patch is sound and works in the way you
all feel is fit, let's get it committed. Hopefully it will also work in
OpenSolaris as-is, or with a minimum amount of effort. If not, I propose
we open a new bug specific to getting Rui's feature working in
OpenSolaris. Then, when I meet with Li and Ke next and we divvy up bugs
that need to be addressed, I'll suggest one of them take on the
OpenSolaris implementation. After all, Oracle engineers should work on
issues specific to Oracle products. As a volunteer, I can work on
whatever.

Make sense?

Thanks again Rui!
--joanie