Re: [orca-list] Orca and Arch again

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

I agree about working with upstream projects.  Let's take Firefox 3.6
as an example.  FF 3.6 basically broke structural navigation due to a
massive caret positioning rewrite.  It's more than just one bug, too,
but we've got to take them on one at a time.  FF3.6 is now shipping in
Ubuntu Lucid.  I proposed a patch several weeks ago.  I'm getting
useful feedback, like how the patch will be cleaner if I reduce the
number of intermediate variables, and that I haven't declared the type
of a dummy variable passed to a call quite right.  I also broke two
regressions, which I have to track down and either fix the
regressions, or the bug in my patch.  Once all this is taken care of,
I'll need to write a new regression that determines when the old bug
is present, and verifies when it's been fixed.  Once all this is done,
my patch will most likely be incorporated in the 3.7, or maybe even
the 3.8 branch.  Ubuntu Lucid users who will likely stick with this
release for 2 years may never see it from Mozilla.  Also, this is just
the first patch, and I'm anticipating several will be needed.  I will
work with Mozilla, and we will get this included.

On the other hand, Vinux users already have a patched version of
Firefox, because it works better, even though two regressions fail.
With the first patch in place, user's have already reported the next
most important bugs.  Orca search is broken, both in Ubuntu Lucid, and
still in Vinux.  It's a focus/caret problem again.  The word is found,
but the caret and focus don't move.  By getting it out to users now,
I'm able to progress far more quickly.  I'm confident I can get
Firefox working pretty well with Orca within one to two months.
Without the Vinux guys to help with testing, it would not be possible.
 I will feed any improvements as quickly as I can to Mozilla.

In the meantime, the rest of the blind community has frozen
development with Firefox.  Most are still using 3.5.  Orca has trouble
because settings for 3.6 are different than 3.5.  All the old open
bugs in 3.5 filed by Orca are just sitting there, without progress.
Basically, this sucks big time.  However, the Vinux community will be
able to move forward, quickly with Orca, and then feed all that back
upstream.

Bill

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:
> Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com> wrote:
> > I think this covers so much of my discomfort with Linux, what
> > actually is it? WARNING: I have been reading some open university
> > material which actually touched on some of this, I will try and keep
> > the intellectual talk out. By what I have written I mean the whole
> > idea of Linux is freedom to choose, but its exactly that which makes
> > it so hard to work with as what works on one distro may not work on
> > another because they had another idea of how to do it. So I can see
> > why you would suggest if people don't want to deal with low level
> > accessibility issues then they may be best to group behind one big
> > distro sorting that out, but doesn't that sort of defeat the idea of
> > Linux?
>
> I think the most benefit can be gained by working with upstream projects and
> having any necessary changes incorporated at that level; these will then be
> picked up by most or all of the distributions by default, or with a little
> encouragement.
>
> Trying to get everybody, or most people, behind a single distribution just
> isn't going to work, for the same reasons that it hasn't been possible in the
> past: different distributions have different audiences, different emphases,
> and make divergent technical choices because there is sufficient community or
> commercial demand for each of them. The major advantage of software which is
> free as in freedom is that people can change and customize it as they wish,
> and trying to discourage this is ultimately not going to be a successful
> strategy.
>
> The same holds for assistive technologies and alternative user interfaces -
> this is why we have BRLTTY, Orca, Emacspeak, Yasr, SpeakUp, FireVox and
> others. Yes, it does mean that resources are fragmented, but this is
> inevitable, because people with the skill to innovate and write software
> disagree as to what the best solutions are. However, it also opens the door to
> innovations that wouldn't happen if most or all of the players were behind a
> single approach or project. There is also plenty of scope for inter-project
> cooperation, for example with respect to braille and speech infrastructure
> (Brlapi and SpeechDispatcher, respectively).
>
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