Re: [orca-list] my thoughts/decisions about orca

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

hackingKK <hackingkk gmail com> wrote:
 
> For word processing I any time prefer LaTeX so I don't think I would
> ever use a word processor for any serious work (and for the kind of
> work I do with word processor, Orca is just perfect).

I'm also a LaTeX user and it's far superior to any word processor that I've
encountered. It is, moreover, possible to generate ODF using tex4ht, and then,
if really necessary, LibreOffice (using the unoconv script) can convert this
to RTF or MS-Word. However, for the work I do, PDF is entirely acceptable, and
that's what LaTeX generates so beautifully.
> Thunderbird has its own issues when you want to read another email.

The fact that Thunderbird won't read local maildir folders unless you run an
IMAP server makes it undesirable in my situation. I prefer mail software that
will integrate with my Procmail setup properly, which is responsible for
delivering messages to appropriate mail folders, filtering out spam, etc.
Also, Thunderbird won't run an external editor such as Emacs - it has its own
instead, whereas I prefer the UNIX approach that respects the EDITOR
environment variable and lets you learn/use a single text editor.

The only X-based mail user agent that looks somewhat interesting is
claws-mail, but not much work has been done on its accessibility and I see no
good reason to move away from textual mail tools that are completely suitable
to my needs.

Incidentally, for those who are downloading mail from an IMAP server,
fetchmail is an excellent choice; then you can comfortably run Alpine, Mutt,
Gnus, Vm, nmh, or a number of others while also using Procmail or Maildrop. In
fact, Maildrop is a more modern and technically superior choice, but it isn't
as well documented with examples and tutorials as Procmail. At some point I'll
probably just rewrite my mail filtering rules in Maildrop, but there's really
no urgent need to change a system that works very well.

As to Orca and the Gnome accessibility project in general, I think a lack of
developers following the decline of interest from Sun and IBM has truly taken
a toll, despite the admirable efforts of the community to keep pace with
changes in desktop environments and applications while improving Orca
significantly.

In the long term, I worry that unless more experienced and capable developers
can be attracted to these projects, they fall into a semi-maintained state in
which there are too many bugs to make them viable for daily and productive
use. At the moment, we're relying on a small number of highly committed, very
accomplished people to do most of the work, which isn't healthy over the long
run.