Re: [orca-list] date and time keybindings

[Isaac Porat <isaac porat me uk>]

Hi

There are two free screen readers (that I know about) in Windows, both 
came out roughly at the same time.
The first took the pragmatic approach and decided to emulate good 
practice (or perhaps familiarity) with other established screen readers 
with lots of user experience behind them. At the same time   certainly 
it has its own distinct way of doing things.
The second one has implemented its own user interface very different 
from established practice.  Although the second one is still a lot 
better with Microsoft products than the first one the first one 
practically established itself as the most popular.
There are of course other reasons for this but the above I believe is a 
major factor.

The ratio of Windows desktop to Linux users is about 90 to 1.  The scene 
changed a lot since Orca came on the scene; there is an increasingly a 
good free screen reader for Windows and many more free (and open source) 
applications available, and of course the Mac screen reader came along

I argue that the opinion of members of this list (me included) many of 
whom used Linux before Orca came along is not so important - it is the 
experience of those from other OS who might like to use it who will find 
comfort with familiarity which is the issue.

Speaking of gnome itself, I actually like the key bindings many of which 
sensibly map to Windows the most stupid I find is F10 and Shift + F10 
for the menu and context menu a feature used a lot more than finding the 
time and date which I find stupid - it easy enough to get to function 
key in either side of the keyboard but more difficult to get to a 
function key in the middle.  .

Regards
Isaac


On 01/05/2010 18:48, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> Hi Glenn.
>
>
> > I prefer the JFW key bindings, as they seem most intuitive to me.
> Intuitive or familiar?
>
>
> >   I wish
> > someone would make a JFW-like set of key bindings that could be loaded into
> > Orca.
> Do you also wish that someone would make a Windows-like set of key
> bindings that could be loaded into GNOME?
>
> As a reminder, the GNOME desktop is not Windows; Orca is not JAWS. There
> is not a one-to-one correspondence between Orca commands and JAWS
> commands, nor is there a one-to-one correspondence between Orca "modes"
> and JAWS "modes".
>
> But even if we didn't care about that and figured we'd slap together
> something that kinda sorta mapped for the sake of being familiar for
> JAWS users, we're leaving out a bunch of folks. In order to be fair, we
> should probably do the same thing for Window-Eyes and NVDA users. And
> since Orca also has magnification functionality, we really need to do
> mappings for folks coming to us from ZoomText and MAGic. Oops, almost
> forgot: VoiceOver users.
>
> So that means we'd require the following layouts:
>
> 1. Orca Desktop
> 2. Orca Laptop
> 3. JAWS-like Desktop
> 4. JAWS-like Laptop
> 5. Window-Eyes-like Desktop
> 6. Window-Eyes-like Laptop
> 7. NVDA-like Desktop
> 8. NVDA-like Laptop
> 9. ZoomText-like Desktop
> 10. ZoomText-like Laptop
> 11. MAGic-like Desktop
> 12. MAGic-like Laptop
> 13. VoiceOver-like Desktop
> 14. VoiceOver-like Laptop
>
> More if we need to also ensure a smooth transition for Hal/SuperNova
> users. ;-)
>
> Then there's the maintenance: Even if we decided to discriminate against
> all screen readers but JAWS in this loadable-layout scenario, that would
> give us four keyboard layouts. Currently, when creating new Orca
> commands, it's hard enough to find ideal, intuitive, available
> keybindings. Now we also have to ensure that we find them for two
> additional layouts? And I'd bet money that if we went to all the trouble
> to do so, one of the things we'd see is confused and frustrated users
> posting questions here to the effect of "I'm using the JFW-like set of
> keybindings. So why isn't Orca working like JAWS?"
>
> Having said all that, there's nothing stopping you from binding Orca's
> commands to whatever you'd like them to be.
>
> --joanie
>
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