Re: [orca-list] just some stupid questions

["B. Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

Firstly, you will want  to install packer, or some other aur interface so that you can install and search the 
user repo packages with the same ease aas official packages from pacman. 
Packer's great because syntax is almost the same as pacman's. Once a package is installed, you use pacman to 
remove it, even if it came from the aur.
orca-git is the name of the package to pull from master, other wise you get orca 3.10.2. 
Of course you must make sure you have all the atspi packages you will need, and these can be a bit confusing 
as there are several similar sounding packages available both in official repos and the aur. I can look later 
for the ones I am using if you have trouble, but basically you will want qt-atspi atspi2 , and if running 64 
bit likely some multilib stuff so that you can run 32bit programs accessibly on a 64bit system. 
I imagine there's a aur package for firefox beta or alpha branches, but I don't run them  I have firefox 28, 
but have 24 installed now as there's nothing I know of I want in later versions and a favorite extension is 
broken after 26. 
Hurry up so that you can still find firefox 24 in the arch roll back machine. Get downgrader to search this, 
as sometimes the newest is not the best, especially for accessability, and old versions are not kept around 
in standard repos. 
As for libreoffice, you are confusing windows stuff with what we need. 
For OO or LO, I'm using LO btw, make sure you get the gnome support that probably pulls in the 
libreoffice-gtk package, so probably the package is called libreoffice-gnome. 
I don't remember details, but it'll probably take you a few minutes to figure out which libreoffice packages 
you will need/want. 

Try pacman -Ss after you've updated of course to look for available packages. I'd use less so that you won't 
have to try and remember everything you hear as it likely won't fit on one screen.
so, 
pacman -Ss libreoffice|less
should do the trick to see what's there. I think you just install the basics with pacman -S libreoffice 
libreoffice-gnome
but the first command will let you check on language support and such. 
I've been using xfce as you want to do quite happily, but you may wish to consider mate instead as it seems 
that they are moving ahead more quickly on accessability. 
You'll need pcmanfm or some other filemanager as  the default xfce filemanager's not fully accessible. Set 
pcman as default and you'll still have thunr for when you may need it. Oh, that's pcmanfm-git, also from the 
aur, so use 
packer -S pcmanfm-git
you'll have to make packer and install it first of all, and all the search commands I gave for pacman could 
have been run as packer -Ss instead of pacman. Packer is also a pacman wrapper. 
Hope this answers the basics. 
As your questions are really not orca specific, and have more to do with talking arch, I'd recommend you 
consider joining the talkingarch irc channel on freenode when you have questions that are not orca specific.
I've enjoyed running the type of configuration you are talking about, so hope ou will also. There are a 
number of programs that  require modifications to their .ini or .conf files to make them display in an 
accessible way, so do not just assume that some program is not accessible. If it works with gnome, it should 
work with xfce, but either something about the arch build or the package itself has the defaults less than 
usable with orca. These changes are mostly pretty easy to figure out however. Check ~/.config for the files 
I'm talking about, but a few are in other dirs I think. 
--
B.H.

On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 03:46:22AM -0700, Justin Pospical wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Some of these questions are going to sound really stupid, since I
> haven't been keeping up to date with orca for a while. I've made two
> or three abortive attempts to switch from Windows to arch, and have
> always reverted because of all the firefox bugs and other stability
> issues. I'm going to install arch with XFCE and start it from the
> console whenever I want to run an x application. I've heard that
> firefox and orca have gotten slightly better in the latest master and
> nightly builds. So, is orca master and/or firefox in the arch testing
> repository, and if so, to install would I just temporarily disable the
> stable ones in the config file, sync, and then install, or do I need
> to get the source from git and build from there?
> Also in the past I've tried installing openoffice and libreoffice on
> arch but have never gotten them accessible. I don't remember if I
> installed java, but I believe the default JRE installation now comes
> with the access bridge, and the latest beta versions of OO and LO are
> now using iaccessible2. So, will everything just work out of the box
> when AT support is enabled, and if not what must I do to get them
> accessible. What are other accessible programs, most importantly a
> media player (I'll just use audacity if I have to, and don't want to
> use the console for whatever reason), and instant messenger. I know
> pidgin is accessible, but how well does empathy work?
> I've never been able to get used to any of the GTK file managers I've
> worked with, especially the browse for a file dialogs. It seems that
> whenever I tab, I'm either in a places list or a search box, and
> whenever I actually do get into the file list view, it's very easy to
> move off accidentally with an arrow key, and then have to find it all
> over again. Keep in mind I'm used to Windows, which has a pretty
> consistent file manager layout. Any tips for navigating these dialogs?
> Another problem is the pulseaudio volume control. I install the
> pavucontrol package as suggested in the arch wiki, but the interface
> is inaccessible, and one accidental misstep in the sound preferences
> window, at least in gnome, can permanently mute the sound; I actually
> had to use a live CD once to delete the pulseaudio configuration file.
> I'm pretty sure there's something obvious I'm missing, but typing
> 'amixer set Master 200' or 'alsactl init' or so in a terminal doesn't
> always work, and my desktop does not have multimedia keys on the
> keyboard.
> Another thing, I can get qt-at-spi installed from the AUR for using
> things like virtualbox, but is there any way I can keep it installed
> without also pulling 345 MB of dependencies?
> This one isn't related to orca, but I'm not on the speakup list, so
> figured I might as well ask. I've never been able to use lynx on the
> console with any degree of success. It seems that whatever I do,
> arrows or tabbing either the element before or after the one I'm on
> always gets announced first. What gives? I've tried with highlight
> tracking on and off, and that doesn't seem to help. Any tips on using
> lynx, mc or other interactive menu-based console programs would be
> welcome. Also if there's anything I need to know when installing
> emacspeak that's not mentioned in the tutorials. Sorry for my many and
> probably mostly pretty obvious questions. I'd appreciate any help you
> guys can provide.
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