Re: [orca-list] Possibly Forking Gnome 2

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Hi Jason,

Yeah, I'm afraid you have a good point there. As Gnome 3 etc improves
the libraries aren't going to remain static, and distributions like
Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, you name it aren't going to want to install
older libs if they can help it. So in order to maintain a fork for the
long hall would require a lot of effort spent on making sure the fork
would keep up with APIs and libs which would be an insane amount of
manpower. So that does pretty much shoot down the idea for me.

What you suggest like helping out with individual projects such as
LibreOffice accessibility, Firefox access, or helping out with KDE 4
accessibility does seem like a more realistic goal than maintaining a
Gnome 2 fork. Plus by hitching myself to an existing desktop or app I
can insure my work actually makes it into the major distributions, and
isn't just some optional desktop that may or may not get packaged for
distribution x. There are certain apps like LibreOffice and Firefox
that will be in someone's package repo no matter what. So I think you
convinced me that lending my help elsewhere is the right thing to do.

Cheers!



On 9/5/11, Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:
> Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com> wrote:
>
> > I could in theory just grab the latest Gnome 2.32 source, officially
> > fork it into an alternative to Gnome 3, customize it, and release it
> > as a new desktop environment, and then upgrade it manually from there.
> > However, before I do something that major I'd like to see what issues
> > there might be with Orca compatibility.
>
> It wouldn't just be a question of Orca compatibility. Gnome, as I understand
> it, has a lot of dependencies that won't remain static over time.
> Maintaining
> a fork would be a huge task.
>
> In my opinion there are much better ways to contribute to accessibility than
> a
> Gnome 2 fork dead end.
>
> For example, you could join an existing project (if not Gnome 3, then XFCE,
> KDE or whatever) to improve accessibility and to help put processes in place
> that prevent accidental breakage later on.
>
> You could work on Chromium accessibility under Linux (or Mozilla
> accessibility
> if you prefer that).
>
> You could go over to LibreOffice and fix some of their accessibility bugs
> involving ATK/AT-SPI.
>
> I'm sure there are other options that would make greater contributions than
> attempting a fork of gnome.
>
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