Re: [orca-list] Firefox caching

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>]

Hi Michael, all.

> So can I just check, does this mean orca will still directly access the 
> page

Correct.

>  rather than virtual buffers (or whatever you want to call it),

Correct.

> but just offer an additional layout mode?

More or less, yes. Basically, due to Gecko's native caret navigation
being broken, Orca has had to implement its own version. That requires
that we decide things like:

1. Where do lines start and end?
2. What is the content of a line?
3. What should we present when a line is moved to?

In other words, Orca already is defining "line" by looking at the text
(for new lines), by looking at character extents (to see if spatially
character 1 and character 2 are on the same line), and so on. All we
need to do is add an option which causes lines to also be defined by the
start or end of a link. It's really pretty trivial.

> I would have to say that the direct access to the page seems to work far 
> better than my experience with windows screen readers using virtual 
> buffers (many of the reasons given, the main one being how orca handles 
> dynamically changed pages) and so I would not like to see the current 
> behaviour of orca change.

We have no plans to change that behavior -- other than make the
experience more performant, and provide an option (which users will have
to explicitly enable) to present one link per line.

> If there's a demand for a given presentation then why not have it 
> as an option particularly if it won't affect your preferred presentation?

I agree.

> Regarding performance of orca and firefox, I wonder if some of the 
> problem really comes from some of the work arounds and checking has to 
> do because of firefox issues.

I'd bet money on it, having put many of those work-arounds in place
myself. There is a *bunch* of special casing. What I'm hoping to have
time to do before long is revisit those various work-arounds to
ascertain if they are indeed still needed.

Take care.
--joanie