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Re: [orca-list] Different desktop environments

Hi there

I picked this message up on my iPhone, read a bit of the first part,
and immediately wanted to argue. but now that I have read the whole
thing, I thinkyou might have a bit of a point with the importance of
the GUI.

I would say that as a latex user, I find that I have had no trouble
moving from linux,2 to mac, to windows and back without any trouble.
On one hand there is a learning curve with a markup system like latex,
but on the other, once you have learned it, you never have to chnage
the way you write. A bull/bulleted list or a table of contents is done
exactly the same on this linux netbook as it is done on my macbook, as
it is done on my parents' windows xp desktop sitting here in front of
me. As an academic who writes a lot, I find this an important factor.
I don't need to learn a new menu structure, or worry about key
commands or different levels of accessibility from system to system as
least with word processing.

I think you have a point about employment though, but I would just add
that it probably depends on the job that you are taking. Probably
knowing how to do both ways would be helpful. I also suspect that, as
far as universality,  google docs is going to take the place of OO or
MS office, as it can be used on just about any system and the way of
using it is the same. (Lol if only I could get chrome and chromevox up
and running on this netbook ;) )

Glad to know that there are fellow latex users on this list. Latex has
truly revolutionized the way that I do wordprocessing.

Regards
Justin Harford

On 1/1/12, Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:

I think this topic is important to cover here and very relevant to
this list as it touches on something central to why I think Orca is so
incredible.  It gives people the ability to gain marketable skills to
go and earn a living.  It also gives people the ability to leverage
marketable skills they acquired in another environment like Windows or
Mac in a place that prefers Linux or Unix in an x-windows environment.

You forgot something gui environments have over emacs and latex hands down:

Virtually no learning curve.  People can just sit down, learn where
menus and toolbars are and just get to work.  They don't have to learn
any weird, fancy markup code to do what they need.  Nor do they have
to sit down and methodically memorize a dazzling array of hotkeys if
they don't want to.  They can spend their time learning the job and
not the tool.  Even when you throw Orca into the mix for a blind
person, the hotkeys are close enough to what you're used to in Jaws
and other screen readers that it makes very little difference.  I
spend very little time in academia these days.  Most of my time is
spend in the corporate world where time constraints, collaboration,
(teamwork, we call it), and rapid production methods are a big deal.
Something like LibreOffice or Open Office gets my vote over Emacs
every single time because it's easy to learn, has many features and is
an environment most people are familiar with.  Even if they've never
used it before, they may have used something like Microsoft Office or
Word Perfect where the interface, features and methodologies are very
similar.  For people who are very good at what they do but lack a
whole lot of technical skills, have poor short term memories and so
forth, any technical superiority Emacs with Auctex has for delivering
a nice end product goes completely out the window.  It's a bit of
overkill when all you have to do is create a memo with a bulleted
list, a header and a footter with page numbers.  For long, drawn out
technical documents with bibliographies, tables of contents, tables of
figures, unusual indentation, spacing  and stringent documentation
requirements, I can see where someone who had access to gui tools with
limited accessibility might prefer something with such fine grained
control as LateX.  I like it myself for those reasons.  But for
general, day to day document production such as one finds in a regular
9 to 5 desk job, you want something much more straightforward.  You
also want something your boss and your team mates can used to work on
and seamlessly send documents or spreadsheets and things back and
forth to one another.  Those very same collaboration points which
don't seem to weigh very heavily with you are the very things that are
extraodinarily important to someone seeking to find employment in many
business environments.


So, this is why I get rather worried about anything that makes it look
like there is a regression in accessibility of the gui desktop in
LInux.  Linux is gaining more and more popularity in areas it
previously stayed out of.  I live in the U.S. and more and more,
you're starting to see small businesses like car dealers, service
providers, and even doctors and lawyers in some isolated cases, giving
Linux a try to reduce costs related to licensing fees.  You are even
starting to see big companies that were staunch MS users dipping their
big toes in the proverbial waters to see if they want to jump in.
This means that the likelihood of a blind person used to working in
Windows encountering a situation where they need to productively use
GUI tools in linux grows more and more.  I can't imagine somebody
saying to the executive that hired them:  "You see, Mr. Smith, I'd
rather use LateX to create my documents for you.  Would you mind
terribly informing the others on your staff so that when I e-mail them
pdf's when they are used to odx's or even raw text files full of
{documentclass}, {section} {subsubsection} markup, they can be secure
in the knowledge that I am using something technically superior."  Or,
worse still, imagine a smiling conversation like this between a young
and reasonably smart and motivated blind person with their rather
fatherly case worker:  "Look, John, this company seems to want to hire
you.  Now, they use Linux so, you're going to have to learn Emacs
because Word doesn't run on there.  They use something called Lee-Bray
something or other Office in some little system called Elf?  Dwarf?
... something like.  Anyway, son, here's your book on all the hotkeys
you need to memorize, oh, here's a very nice LateX primer for you, a
link to Emacspeak pages and, best of all ... *thump*"---something hits
the table--" I gotcha a nice book on command line.  You'll like it,
why, when you were a little boy oh, about 20 years ago, I used to use
Dos and found it real nice.  Your first job will be to learn
everything you can about how they like their widgets delivered in the
northwest, writing articles in newsletters relevant to what people
south of us want to read and, oh, I don't want to forget, make sure
you learn your way around that building because it's kind of tricky!
Good luck, John!  You start in 2 days and I hear they're impatient
over there.  Do us proud, boy!."


Alex M

ps  For the record, I'm an Emacspeak enthusiast too.  I love that
thing but I know it's not for everyone now.  I used to think it could
be but, I've been forced to have a change of heart.

On 1/1/12, Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:

Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:

I'm fond of Emacspeak and I like the console but, I would be seriously
inconvenienced if I had to do without a full-featured desktop system.
There are some things that are just easier to do in that environment.
Word processing, presentation creation, listening to music .. Some
stuff is just less of a headache to do with Gnome than in cli.


I can't agree here. For the first two, there's TeX/LaTeX and Emacs AUCTeX
mode. This environment is better than any word processor, past or present.
There are good scripts and tools for audio file handling as well, which
addresse the third point.

I don't want to enter into a disagreement about this any further, on or
off
the list - the above comments are simply intended to substantiate my point
earlier in the thread and to establish that I have reasons for making such
remarks.

If you prefer a GUI desktop, that's your choice, of course, but (for those
who
need non-visual access), GUI desktops are not where Linux has a technical
advantage over other operating systems. If I wanted to work primarily in a
GUI
environment, I'd probably run something else, given the current state of
X11
desktop environment accessibility.

On the other hand, if I suddenly had to edit a document collaboratively
with
a
word processor user, I would be able to use LibreOffice under Linux with
some
degree of accessibility. That doesn't make me like word processors, but at
least there's one available should the need arise - and there are people
who
really do need an office suite for one reason or another (mostly file
format
compatibility). That's why I care about its accessibility, even though
it's
not what I would choose to use outside of exceptional circumstances such
as
the aforementioned collaborative editing scenario.

I am very glad, though, that I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX, using Emacs
as
the editor, Git for revision control, and BibLaTeX to handle the
bibliographical references.

This is off-topic for the list, so I'll stop here.

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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
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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