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Re: [orca-list] nvda under the Wine

Hi,

I think once the QT atk bridge develops a bit more and things smooth
out, a good deal of needing to run virtual operating systems or WINE
will be decreased. If QT apps are coded properly for accessibility, we
will be able to use Skype, VirtualBox's real interface and not the
commandline version,  eventually Google Chrome, not to mention the KDE
desktop environment. I personally enjoy running Windows or other
flavors of Linux in VM's to test software or compare distros, but I
think once this new bridge is a bit more developed, it will really be
a breakthrough. For once we can have a choice to run a GNOME system or
a KDE system. Or more specifically, a GTK or QT system.

As for the WINE issue, I don't really think the WINE team would be too
pumped to get accessibility working because this would require loads
of work. As Jake said, it sounds like WINE isolates each program from
each other so NVDA would have no data to spit back even if MSAA and
IA2 were implemented properly. I also think that developing bridge for
atk would probably slow down performance and would also be a big task
to take on, especially for web browsers and other such apps. Orca
would have to be able to grab the text and present it in a timely
manor and this would probably be difficult to do for dynamic pages,
e.g., facebooks' live feed or chat features.

Then comes the presentation of the screen reader. If you're browsing
the web in Chrome via WINE, would Orca behave like it does in native
Firefox, or would it be all Windowsy with forms mode and all that
stuff? I think if anything that ambicious were to be tackled, Orca
should behave as native to Linux as possible to keep apps looking
similar.

Sorry for the novel but all this stuff is very interesting! :)
thanks,
Alex

On 3/31/11, Petr Bláha <hammet pb seznam cz> wrote:

Hi, this explanation seems to be quite clear and it makes sense for me.
I use linux as a secondary OS, i am mostly windows user.
And to be honest, i have to say that few months ago, i started to use
linux more and more. I like it's filosofy as well as all the other
things that makes it so attractive for many blind, and not only blind users.
But on the other hand there are some problems which force me not to
leave windows and use only Linux.
The biggest one is absolutely no accessibility of QT applications by orca.
And my experience is so that the best applications in linux are QT based.
For example kaffeine for TV carts, skype for communication, and many
others, which we can't use at all.
I also didn't find any good quality application for book scanning, which
is quite important for me as a blind user and book fann.
In windows i use Abbyy Finereader, which is for sale, but you pay for
software which allows you to scann at great quality and in many languages.
I didn't find such an alternative in linux which can be compared with
Finereader.
The thirt reason for me is Audio games for the blind.
I use computer mostly for serious work, but sometimes, i would like to
use it for entertainment as well and i am absolutely not able to play
audio games in it.
I mean these like Gma tank commander, shades of doom three d velocity,
and many others.

So these reasons are as important for me, so i still have windows
installed in my PC and i won't uninstall it.
Dne 31.3.2011 11:30, Jacob Schmude napsal(a):

Hi
Currently, no Windows screen reader will work under wine because of
two major problems. The first problem, in a nutshell, is that Wine has
almost none of the internal MSAA or UIA hooks that they need in order
to work. Also, where the proprietary screen readers are concerned,
Wine has no facility for hooking up drivers which rules out the
display driver approach used by most of them. The second issue, though
less serious, is that Wine does not emulate a full Windows environment
(i.e. none of the Windows GUI is emulated). Wine will run a single
application in a partially-emulated Windows environment. So, saying
"wine nvda.exe" will run wine with nvda, but realize that nvda is
considered the application which Wine is to run. There's no start
menu, no desktop, nor any of that so, even if NVDA or another screen
reader were to work, you'd have no way to launch another application
within that environment where the screen reader is running.
What would be neat is if Wine could bridge standard MSAA and UIA hooks
to at-spi somehow. It could probably be done, but it wouldn't be a
quick or easy thing to do. The end result would be that Windows
applications in Wine would communicate enough to run with Orca, but
I'm not sure if everything could be emulated correctly since at-spi
and MSAA/UIA are different in their approaches.
As for Linux being able to do everything that Windows can... I wish. I
really wish it could, and we're getting there. In fact, for most
people who don't require accessibility, we're already there.
Unfortunately however, some apps are either not available or written
in QT (i.e. Skype) and we either can't use them or can only do so half
way. We're close, but we're not quite there yet as far as
accessibility goes.

On 03/30/2011 07:17 PM, Kyle wrote:

I'm currently not able to get NVDA speaking using Wine. It complains
about ALSA, Pulse and a few other things, but it does play the startup
and shutdown sounds, so ALSA and Pulse don't seem to be the real
problem. I have the portable version of NVDA in $HOME/nvda. Running

cd nvda
wine nvda.exe

plays the startup sound followed immediately by the shutdown sound.
Several errors about alsa, Pulse and a dll called winemp3.acm, which I
believe is just an mp3 codec, and shouldn't be required to start NVDA
speech, appear in the terminal, and the program dies. It looks as though
fixes are needed in Wine somewhere before NVDA can be made to speak.
~Kyle
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Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Netiquette Guidelines are at
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Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
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_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Netiquette Guidelines are at
http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp



_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Netiquette Guidelines are at
http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
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