[orca-list] About a new extension: clipboard notification

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

Hi,

while talking about new stuff to add/improve on GNOME, Joanmarie
mentioned that one feature that appears now and then is getting a
notification when the content of the clipboard changes. Some examples of
this now and then here [1] and here [2].

The brief summary of those mails is: that feature doesn't belong to
Orca. After all, Orca is a screen reader so it should focus on ... well,
focus on read the screen. On those mails it is mentioned that if the
user is interested on that feature, "something" should show a
notification, and Orca would just read it.

But in the same way, I feel that this doesn't fit also as a
accessibility core feature for the desktop (on GNOME, GNOME Shell). The
desktop should expose the proper information to be read, and this seems
something on top. And in the same way it is something that some users
are interested and some others not. For that "some users are interested
and some others not", is the reason we concluded that the proper way to
implement this is with a GNOME Shell extension [4]. For what it worth, a
extension is just a mechanism to add custom functionality to the
desktop. On GNOME2 we had something similar on the panel, the applets.

So these days I was implementing a small extension called "Clipboard
Notification". What it does right now:
  * When the content of the PRIMARY clipboard changes it sends a
accessible notification.
  * The content of that notification is the following:
     * If the text has less that 20 words: "Clipboard: <all the text>"
     * If the text has 20 words or more: "Clipboard: X words copied to
the clipboard"

We (Joanmarie and me) have tested it with GNOME Shell 3.4 and 3.6 (the
next release of GNOME) and Orca expose it properly. In order to install
it, you just need to go to the extensions page:
   https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/451/clipboardnotification/

This feature could be improved, like configuring the number or words,
and I'm still investigating on how to distribute a translated version of
the extension. But at this moment, I still consider this as "beta", and
before working more on this I want to be sure that someone is interested
on this feature. After all, if nobody uses it, it doesn't worth to use
my time here.

So, if anyone is interested, please test it, and provide any feedback.

Best regards

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2012-June/msg00056.html
[2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2012-June/msg00112.html
[3] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Extensions

-- 
Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias