Re: [orca-list] Proposal: Eliminate the "gui setup" command line options

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey Thomas, all.

On 05/12/2012 04:21 PM, Thomas Ward wrote:

> 1. If Orca's settings do become a part of control center will I still be
> able to use insert+space to go directly to Orca's settings or will I
> have to go to the top panel, find my user name, arrow down to System
> Settings, arrow to the Universal Access option, find the Orca settings
> tab, etc?

As I stated earlier in this thread [1]:

> > My colleague Felipe has been traveling, but he will be leading the
> > design efforts as previously discussed. The goal will be to incorporate
> > the resulting design directly into GNOME's control center. I'll keep a
> > "vanilla" copy that looks the same as Felipe's design within Orca until
> > we can get other desktop environments to also integrate Orca into their
> > control panels.

So, you will still be able to get into Orca's vanilla preferences dialog
at least until the other major desktops have addressed this. The
appearance of said dialog will likely change to be more user friendly
based on Felipe's findings and recommendations.

> If I have to spend a minute or two getting to Orca's settings where
> insert+space takes seconds to access the same settings currently I think
> that would be a huge step in the wrong direction.

For anything which needs changing on the fly, it's faster to not use the
Orca Preferences dialog, but rather bind a keystroke to the command. You
can already do so for speech rate, speech pitch, punctuation level, and
key echo. Doing so for changing the synthesizer will happen once I get
to changing profiles on the fly.

> If Orca's settings do become a part of Gnome's control
> center how does a person using KDE, Lxde, Xfce, get access to Orca's
> settings?

If your question is an example of why this is a BadIdea(tm), please see
my above quote from my previous message in which I state that Orca's
vanilla gui will remain in place until they do.

If instead your question is a technical one: The settings themselves are
not going to leave Orca. They are staying put. It's the configuration
thereof which is changing. In order for this to be accomplished, I will
be making Orca's settings configurable via dbus service. Orca will
listen for and respond to changes in its settings. So anyone who wants
to make an Orca configuration tool will be able to do so. This includes
both desktop environments as well as individuals such as yourselves. And
they can make it look and act however they want. And Orca will do the
right thing in response. Furthermore, any tool that allows you to
interact with a dbus server's properties and methods could be used to
change Orca's settings.

So in the long run, I think this change will be awesome.

> Yeah, I understand that KDE or whoever may have to write their own
> control center settings for Orca, but that seems to me to be reinventing
> the wheel.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But "integration" is what's shiny and new.
And given that it can be done in a way that does not negatively impact
us, and may actually positively impact us by making Orca more available
and more approachable to more users.... If people want to reinvent
wheels to help us, who am I to stop them? <smiles>

> In the meantime before they do that are we forced to log out
> of the session, log into Gnome, change Orca's settings, log out of
> Gnome, and back into KDE?

No. In fact, right now I have a desktop with both GNOME and KDE. I can
change KDE settings in GNOME and GNOME settings in KDE. All without
logging out.

Furthermore, see the above statements in which I state that Orca's
vanilla gui is sticking around for now.

> Basically, as a Orca user I want to know how this change will effect me.

Understood completely. Have I addressed all your questions and concerns?
If not, please let me know.

> How much work will I have to do to access those preferences,

Should be a minimal amount.

> there be some effort made to maintain the current ease of use by
> pressing insert+space to go directly to Orca's preferences?

See above.

Take care.
--joanie