[orca-list] Want to Skim Read in OOo Writer, Firefox, Gedit, Evolution? Try this patch.

[Dattatray Bhat <bhatdv gmail com>]

Before reading a document containing a large quantity of text, the user may first want a quick overview. Or, if he has already read the document once, he may want to navigate quickly to a specific point.

The sayAll command in Orca reads the document from the current cursor position to the end. Orca provides another way of moving through the text, by using the Up/ Down arrow keys. Both these methods read each line encountered along the way. So they are not useful in quickly accessing a specific portion of the text.

"Skim Read" feature meets the above requirement. When a user issues "Skim Read' command (Ctrl + KP_Add in desktop, Orca + Ctrl + semicolon in laptop), Orca skims through the entire document. It starts at the current line/ sentence, and then reads only the first line/ sentence of each subsequent paragraph. Whether it reads the lines or sentences depends on the Say All By setting. If the user presses the  Ctrl key, then skim reading stops  at the line/ sentence just read.

 JAWS has this feature. Orca users have requested the feature for quite some time now (bug https://bugzilla.gnome. org/show_bug.cgi?id=577481 dated 31.03.2009).

I have uploaded a patch to add skim reading to Orca. The patch works with OOo Writer, Firefox, Gedit, Evolution and Thunderbird.

Please try the patch http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=175316 and tell me if you find it useful. Kindly address your response to <orca-list gnome org>.

Regards.

Dattatray Bhat