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Re: [orca-list] Accessibility of LXDE desktop?

You need xorg, you need keyrings and such. XFCE, or Mate can be installed with out their extras packages, but 
you have 
nothing to work with, and will need to add editors, calculators, bla, bla, firefox, applets for the panel in 
the case of 
mate, or really , what is the point?
XFCE is as easy to get going as Mate, just substitute xfce and xfce-goodies in arch for the mate package 
names, not sure 
which Debian and Ubuntu versions have latest xfce packages, but probably that's no problem, just check on 
names. 

What's the point of under 500 MB on disk anyway, That is an arbitrary number and unless it's for rescue 
ppurposes only 
again you can't do it and have what most computer users want and need. 
Flux box will let you be a bit lighter, but you still need the keyrings and such for a day in and day out 
usable system, 
notifications the whole accessiblity stack...
As Alex says, a debian net install adding packages from grml for rescue, and fluxbox with orca and 
speechdispatcher of 
course to run what eve GUI stuff you want, but it seems like you are kind of inbetween wanting a rescue disk 
and a desktop 
OS. There's no advantage to have 497MB compared with 697MB .isos. Fluxbox is the lightest except for 
ratpoison, but for 
most users there's no advantage there. No menu is available for ratpoison either, but it does have some nice 
features for 
the folks interested in a part time gui. 



On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 10:43:07AM -0500, Alex Midence wrote:

You'd probably have to make it yourself. If I were going to undertake that I'd start with a Debian 
netinstall cd, install a barebones, minimal installation with just CLI and speakup and then go into 
aptitude to disable autoinstall of suggested and recommended packages.  I would then install Mate or 
Fluxbox with Burt's configuration suggestions or, look into what's needed to get XFCE going with the 
minimum possible needed packages.  I'd then do whatever it is the distro has you do to make a live cd out 
of your environment.  Even with all this, I'd be immensely surprised if you wound up with something under 
500 mb.  

All in all, the entire thing has all the hallmarks of being an all-day, deskpounding, 
four-letter-word-filled ordeal.  I'm exhausted just explaining it!  *grin* I can't imagine why I'd put 
myself to all that trouble when I can just grab just about any Fedora, Ubuntu or  Debian cd or dvd and get 
it talking with super alt s.  Once I do that, it's a simple matter to get to a terminal, mount my hard 
drive and do what needs doing with all the utilities most distros come with standard.  I'd save oodles of 
time and frustration reinventing the wheel, get what I needed to get done, put my cd or dvd back in my 
drawer and go on about my business.  These days, one doesn't seem to need to go to all the trouble that was 
once needed to get a talking environment out of a mainstream live cd.  

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Alex H.
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 7:17 PM
To: B. Henry
Cc: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Accessibility of LXDE desktop?

Yeah, but can someone just make a sort of bigger version of DSL that has CLI and GUI and doesn't suffer 
from bloat and ... vinuxyishness?
500megs or less, orca, whatever the litest GUI thing that works w/Orca, no neckbearding needed? Thinking of 
a small rescue disk that's primarily CLI and not GRML.

On 8/16/14, B. Henry <burt1iband gmail com> wrote:

It is not that hard to make a custom installer once you have 
configured things as you like, e.g. installed fluxbox and its 
dependencies. You can switch from one desktop to another assuming 
sonar has an accessible DM, and it'd be pretty easy to set up as to 
get the nicest accessible fluxbox I know of several mate packages and 
their deps are installed.
I use caja to get me a orca readable desktop for instance, and caja is 
mate's default file manager.
I use pcmanfm as my file manager because of its superior performance, 
better than windows xp's filemanager, windows explorer I think it's 
called. That is lxde's default file manager, but you want the version 
from git, pcmanfm-git I'm pretty sure it is called on arch/manjaro.
I know it is a bit scarey for some people to think about the 
configuration required to get all of this working well, but it is 
actually pretty easy, and I can give you very specific instructions if 
you want to go this route.

Hopefully with in a few months I'll have a screenreader friendly 
fluxbox setup in the Arch-Linux AUR, so with something like packer or 
yaourt you will be able to install everything with a single 
pacman-like command, i.e.
pacman -Syu
and then
packer -S what-ever-I-call-the-package No help today, but something to 
look forward to.
Storm already hs ratpoison accessibility stuff packaged, so you only 
need to add the accessibility variable export stuff and run a couple 
of commands to get things screenreader friendly, see his email in this 
thread regarding this.
Unless you are very memory tight Mate should be plently light, and it 
is enough more accessible compared with lxde to make it a much better 
choice if you can run it.
XFCE is about as accessible as lxde, maybe a bit better actually, (not 
tried lxde recently to say for sure), and on most systems uses less 
memory than mate, but as far as cpu goes there's no big advantage 
either way.
At least one person, maybe a significant minority of users, report 
using less ram with mate than they do with XFCE. All I read however, 
and personal experience tell me that xfce's lighter on memory usage 
than Mate.
As they often say, "your mileage maly vary,"...
--
B.H.


On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 11:28:35PM +0430, Hadi Rezaee wrote:

I wish there was a distro, (based on manjaro) that had a very 
lighweight desktop manager. Extremeley lightweight with minimum 
packages, so i could boot it from my USB flash and take it with me around.
Sonar apparently is working on a mate-based distro, But i know many 
lighter desktops also exists.

On 8/16/2014 10:47 PM, B. Henry wrote:

Thanks for sharing the link.
More later, but quickly, although the menu's not accessible in 
fluxbox,  there is no menu at all for rat-poison.
In either one though, as mentioned in my prev post in this thread, 
you  can make a shortcut to open a filemanager in 
/usr/share/applications/ and pressing enter on the .desktop files in 
there will launch the  programs they refference in their exec lines. 
Usually the program has same name as the .desktop file, but not 
always.
I have used this technique in flluxbox with the super, (windowskey 
to  some), plus a as the shortcut.
The line in my ~/.fluxbox/keys file reading:
Mod4 a :Exec pcmanfm /usr/share/applications/ Note that Mod4 is what 
the windows or super key is called by many *nix  configuration 
files, and Mod1 is alt.
Ratpoison has a keybinding to show you all the hotkeys that are  
configured, so in a sense this is a app menu substitute.

The big drawback to ratpoison for me is the two key combination  
keybindings.
As Storm says, it's like screen, or emacs if you wish, i.e. 
control-t  plus something instead of having Control-m do something.
I find it rather inconvenient and just plain rhythm destroying to 
have to  press two key combinations to launch programs, show the 
desktop or what ever instead of just typi9ing one combiinationm,  
e.g. alt super m to launch mangler, alt super w to launch my default 
x-www-browser, etc.
For others this would not be a bother, or not much of one.
Both window managers are very fast, small, and thrifty with system  
resources in general.
Ratpoison's even smaller/lighter than fluxbox, but not noticeablly 
faster  here. They both have atractive features and are quite 
stable. I do find fluxbox more flexible, and generally more feature  
rich, but there's plenty good to say about ratpoison.
Again, more later.
Oh, you can make a .sh file in /etc/profile.d/ and put the 
GTK_MODULES  line in it, andf same with the QT setting, but in a 
file called qt-accessibility.sh. Having those files should mean that 
any  user will have the access stuff for these kits working, and if 
you use a dm that doesn't use .xinitrc file in your home  dir you
--
B.H.

On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 11:55:16AM -0400, Storm Dragon wrote:

Hi,
this is still very much a work in progress. It's designed to 
replace the  inaccessible bits of ratpoison, which is about as fast 
as you can get  and still have access to X.
git clone https://github.com/stormdragon2976/strychnine.git
You'll have to point to the items in the git directiory in your  
.ratpoisonrc or add them to fluxbox. If you absolutely have to have 
a  desktop, you can install caja and add caja -n to the .ratpoisonrc.
Ratpoison works a lot like screen, I find it very easy to use. 
Fluxbox  was pretty cool too, but the menu isn't accessible, which 
is a bit of a  drawback. In ratpoison, if you need a tray for apps 
that only work if  there's a panel or tray present, try trayer. I 
only have one app that  requires it, and it's a QT app, so I'm not sure how accessible it is.
It does say panel when focus lands on it though, so maybe...
If you're setting up mate, fluxbox, or ratpoison, here's a quick  
reference of things you will want to do to make the best accessible  
experience. Note these instructions work on Arch Linux. I'm not 
sure  where .xinitrc is on other distros like Ubuntu or Vinux.
In ~/.xinitrc, make sure you have the line:
export GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge

In your ~/.bashrc:
export QT_ACCESSIBILITY=1

In terminal type:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications 
screen-reader-enabled  true

And finally, if you chose Mate:
gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true

HTH
Storm
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 10:23:57AM -0500, Burt Henry wrote:

no panels, can't remember about desktop icons.
Mate is a lot heavier than lxde, but light compared with unity or 
kde,  and much cpu less intensive than gnome3 and very accessible 
with a few glitches.
XFCE may be a bit better than lxde, but very similar, and if you 
can do  with out accessible panels and can do with out an 
organized apps menu you can go super lightweight with fluxbox.
In fluxbox assign keuyboard shortcuts to the programs you use 
most,  launch caja to get desktop icons, (use the -n option when 
auto starting it in the fluxbox start-up file), and assign a key  
to open the applications dir in /usr/share to get a way to launch 
any app you don't have a shortcut for and do not remember  exact 
name for.
Also Stormdragon wrote a little  script to replace the run box app  
that's not accessible for fluxbox, ratpoison and similar. I don't 
have his original, but do have my slightly hacked  version of this 
I can send, or look in archives for the url to get his version. 
Build from source if not able to get latest  fluxbox on your 
debian based distro, it's in repos for arch.
I can help more with the fluxbox configuration if you are 
interested,  and maybe it'll get better out of the box with in a 
reasonable time frame, some dev interest.
OAll of the above mentioned options require exporting gtk modules 
and  setting qt accessiblity at least as well as a couple things 
for gconf  for mate anyway, same gets stuff working for  fluxbox.
I can send you some links and or notes later if you need.
--
B.H.

There are a couple more hacks for fluxbox.
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 08:06:43AM -0700, austinAustin quesada wrote:

Hi list. Was just wondering if the light-weight LXDE environment 
is accessible using orca? I have some older machines laying 
around that might benefit from a debian or arch install with 
LXDE. If it's not particularly accessible, could anyone advise on 
another light-weight desktop? Thanks for any feedback.
_______________________________________________
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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.h
tml 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




_______________________________________________
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.ht
ml 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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_______________________________________________
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.htm
l 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

_______________________________________________
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


_______________________________________________
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

_______________________________________________
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


_______________________________________________
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
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