[orca-list] keybindings philosophy__was: Experimental focus versus browse mode committed to master

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

Good point, and while I['ve never had the chance to try a Mac to see how VO does its thing, I get the point.
Another example worth looking at, and major source of potential conflicts is chromoe/chromevox.
I've had to remap my desktop keybindings to avoid conflicts with chromevox because at times the option to 
change chromevox 
modifier key(s) has been disabled, and at other times, usually it's at least partially broken. 
For those who've never tried chromevox by default it uses control alt on Linux, and I think shift alt on 
windows as 
default chromevox modifier. Gnome, XFCE, and Unity at least use control alt, so after spending hours 
experimenting with 
partially broken chromevox keybindings I found it best and easiest to leave chromevox modifier alone and 
change all 
control alt keybindings in my desktops to super alt. BTW, (and OT), I use control super when I run out of 
logical super 
alt options, and use all three keys for both those times where I need a letter that is already being used a 
couple of 
times, and for some personalized commands that would not be transferrible to most other systems.  
My point is that there's a lot of potential conflict out there. Chromevox by default has a lot of emacish two 
character 
keybindings, and I don't like these, and will be experimenting again with the more traditional "flat keymap" 
available for 
chromevox, but there are more potential conflicts there. If we'd only been born with six or seven fingers and 
had a 35-40 
letter alphabet...lol.
Apart from the orca modifier, control is the only option that can be more or less comfortably used in 
combination with 
ordcakeys for keybiindings. The other posibility is shift, but unless I'm mistaken it doesn't work, or at 
least doesn't 
work reliably, e.g. does orca a consistently perform differently than orca shift a? I don't remember for sure 
the results 
of my experiments, but thinkat best shift only made a distinct binding sometimes.
I was looking at ratpoison, but dropped it from my possible defualt GUIs quickly because of the emacs style 
bindings, and 
don't use screen as much as I might because again, two letter combinations take some getting used to, and 
although I'm a 
fairly flexible thinker/computer user I've not adapted well to two letter bindings, just do not flow in a 
good rhythm of 
typing for me, and especially should be avoided when possible for screenreader controls. 
Could two letter bindings be used for those who want them though, or can they now?
Thanks again for the time and energy put in to this experiment and likely major improvement to Orca!
--
B.H.


On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 04:44:10PM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> I suspect we're about to see a re-run of the Vi vs. Emacs debate with respect
> to keyboard usage.
>
> Vi makes wonderful use of the keyboard at the expense of having two modes:
> command mode and insert mode.
>
> Emacs avoids the modes, but takes your fingers to awkward key combinations.
>
> Likewise, OS X avoids having distinct modes, at the expense of requiring you
> to hold down modifier keys while moving the focus (except where the
> application's handling of tab and arrow keys does what is needed).
>
> The problem with Orca and Gecko here, as I understand it, is that Orca takes
> over caret navigation, but uses the same keys (i.e., cursor movement keys)
> that are also used to interact with widgets. It's a key conflict problem that
> could be solved if Orca mapped its caret navigation commands to something
> other than arrow keys and tab.
>
> At this point we would have arguments on both sides about which design is
> better and whether we should avoid having browse and focus modes or not.
>
> I think it would be best to make some design decisions about the future and
> then change the implementation accordingly. I don't have strong views on the
> issues at stake, although, having used OS X recently, I quite like the fact
> that none of the screen reader commands conflicts with keys commonly used in
> applications. At the same time, this does lead to some awkward key
> combinations.
>
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> https://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