[orca-list] Moving forward on Firefox

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

On June 10th, Firefox switched to entirely new code for caret
navigation and focus control.  I believe this is a significant
upgrade, but unfortunately, every version of Firefox since then has
not worked correctly with Orca.  This effects version 3.6 on.

We have a chicken and the egg problem here.  Firefox has bugs that
keep the Orca guys from being able to make any progress.  However,
Firefox can't be properly patched without better feedback from the
Orca guys.  This situation has existed since June, and there has been
close to zero progress.  I've "fixed" the current bug in Firefox with
a patch that will probably take months or longer to be incorporated in
any major distro.  That patch is almost certainly not quite right, and
Orca/Firefox integration clearly has more bugs to be worked out.  If
my patch gets integrated, and the Orca devs get access to it in let's
say six months, and then I have to redo the patch, and wait another
six months... well, you see the problem.

I propose that we branch Firefox for now, and work together on
integrating Orca with the patched version.  This will allow us to
iterate on Firefox patches in days rather than months.  What I need is
for the Orca devs to compile and install the patched version, so we
can work on the same code base.  I'll sign up for making changes to
Firefox, but I need some Orca experts to figure out what needs to be
done on the Orca side, and to tell me what's wrong in the Firefox
interface.

Are there any Orca devs who are available to work with me on this?

Thanks,
Bill