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Re: [orca-list] Possibly Forking Gnome 2

Greetings!

I'm inclined to say GO FOR IT, if that seems the best course to you.  It
sometimes makes more sense to play in existing ballparks, but sometimes the
only way to do a job right is to build your own.  I suppose that could even
include an alternative screen reader or two (or three or six), if somebody
can and wants to do the work.  Software freedom is a myth if all the
practical pressures command conformity.

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Thomas Ward
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 5:40 PM
To: orca-list
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Possibly Forking Gnome 2

Hi Alex,

That's my concern as well. While I could in theory contact whoever is in
charge of Mate I just don't know how receptive they'd be to maintaining
accessibility long term. Especially, the kind of commitment and long term
development I have in mind in terms of getting 100% access to all apps,
features, and adding other assistive technologies to the desktop like voice
recognition for those with motor impairments. In my experience most sighted
developers just don't understand what we need in terms of accessibility.
Most are of the opinion they can just patch it and forget it, but true
accessibility doesn't work that way. Accessibility has to be in the design
from the very beginning and it has to be a primary design goal, or it just
doesn't achieve 100% access. Sadly though we have seen all too many times
how mainstream developers handle accessibility. As soon as Oricle took over
Sun they canned Willy Walker who was a primary contributer to Gnome and Orca
accessibility. It was a pretty clear statement to me what their intentions
are in continuing funding and supporting the future of Gnome accessibility.
I think we need is a new project leader who can't be canned, and someone who
knows exactly what accessibility means to blind and other disabled computer
users. That's why I am thinking of appointing myself that position.

I'm totally blind, and have been using assistive technologies for roughly 15
years. I am a skilled C/C++ developer, and have experience with open source
development tools. About the only thing I don't know, which I can learn, is
all the ins and outs of the Gnome source, and haven't explored the
relationship between the assistive APIs and Gnome. So certainly if I do this
I'd have to read quite a few design docs and API documentation before
forking the Gnome desktop, but it certainly could be done. I certainly have
the time and programming experience to do something like this though.

Cheers!




On 9/5/11, Alex H. <linuxx64 bashsh gmail com> wrote:

Hi,

While I can see contacting whoever's in charge of Mate and seeing if 
they'll care more about a11y, they might not be willing/understand 
thoroughly what the deal is. At this point, I say if you've got the 
resources and can devote some time to it, Do it. Others may jump on 
board and finally, we'd have a up-to-date, streamlined and fully 
accessible desktop. Still, it wouldn't hurt to contact the Mate devs 
and see what they have planned, maybe you won't have to double the 
effort and possibly risk getting tired of developing your own fork.
This is usually what happens to good forks, people get sick of working 
on them for whatever reason, and they die. I just hope whatever 
happens, it's not that. I really don't like GNOME3 either, and Unity 
is just a mess IMHO. GNOME2 worked fine, but they went and fixed it 
anyway.

Alex

On 9/5/11, Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com> wrote:

Hi Storm,

Yeah, I heard something about the Mate fork, but I've got personal 
reasons of my own for creating my own fork of Gnome 2. For one thing 
I feel if I personally take charge of a new fork I can insure and 
maintain maximum accessibility as that will be first and foremost on 
my list of things to do where a sighted dev might not be too 
concerned about that. The other reason is that I personally have some 
creative ideas where to take the Gnome desktop, ideas for a new sweet 
of accessible apps, and want to give the Gnome 2 desktop a personal 
make over. In other words I want to do more than just fork it I want 
to use Gnome 2 as the basis of a new desktop that will compete with 
Gnome 3 and KDE. This is the power of an open source project like 
Gnome in the first place.

I can take a stable desktop environment like Gnome 2, fork it, and 
then modify it to suit my needs. I can rename it, add new features, 
improve accessibility, customize it, and release my desktop 
environment as an alternative to the existing desktops. In short, the 
power of open source is the freedom to customize an existing software 
product and rerelease it to the open source community as a new 
software product. I think that's worth doing with Gnome 2. 
Especially, if I actually carry out some of my ideas for the make over.

Cheers!


On 9/5/11, Storm Dragon <stormdragon2976 gmail com> wrote:

Hi,
Gnome2 has already been forked. The project is called gnome mate. It 
would be cool if someone got in to it in the early days and kept up 
with the accessibility side of things. So this might be exactly what 
you are looking for.
HTH
Storm
--
Vinux Publicity Coordinator: http://www.vinuxproject.org/ Registered 
Linux user number 508465: http://counter.li.org/ My blog, Thoughts 
of a Dragon: http://www.stormdragon.us/ How many Internet mail list 
subscribers does it take to change a lightbulb?
http://goo.gl/eO4PJ
"One more time we stare into the blackened sky, for tonight, in our 
hearts now we feel. One last time see our destiny reveal."
DragonForce



On Mon, 2011-09-05 at 15:57 -0400, Thomas Ward wrote:


Hi everyone,

I thought I'd write the list, and see what your opinions are 
regarding an idea I've had for a while now. Also I'd like to get 
some input from the Orca dev's themselves as long term this would 
effect Orca and desktop accessibility if I decided to go through with

it.


Basically, it goes like this. Recently I installed Arch Linux on a 
test computer, got Gnome 3 up and running, and to be honest about 
it I'm very disappointed in the direction Gnome is going. I really 
don't like Gnome 3 at all, and it feels like a lot of things that 
were working just fine in Gnome 2 is now broken or changed in Gnome 
3. From what I have read on list I gather I'm not the only one who 
is less than satisfied with the way the Gnome project is headed in 3.x.

The problem is, for a blind Linux user like myself, there really 
isn't any good alternatives. KDE access is still rather up in the 
air at the moment and Xfce is slowly getting there. However, there 
is no single desktop out there that compares with Gnome 2 in my 
opinion. For that reason I've been strongly considering just doing 
what open source is good for and fork the project.

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. I realise that Orca 
is officially a part of the Gnome project, and therefore I would 
expect development to follow the main branch of the desktop. 
Although, there is an xdesktop version now would that continue for 
some time to come, or would I also have to fork Orca in order to 
maintain backwards compatibility with essentially a custom Gnome 2.x

desktop environment?

Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments?

Thanks.
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Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
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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/NetiquetteGuideli
nes 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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