Re: [orca-list] What is all this?

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey Doug.

Quick answer for now because I'm trying to fix bugs and finish features
before we hit more GNOME freezes. Once I'm "frozen," I will write
documentation in detail about all of these changes and new features.
Besides, I'm sure your fellow users will chime in with answers to your
questions in the meantime. But I did want to address a couple of things
you raised:

> 4. Exactly what changes can I expect when orca 3.14 comes out 

Stability, fewer bugs, predictability about what Orca will do in
Firefox, you being in charge of your experience, you not getting stuck
in widgets, etc., etc.

> have never used windows a day in my life and I know nothing about nvda,
> jaws, narrator nor any of those nor what kinds of things are possible on
> a windows system.

It's been many, many years since I used Windows or JAWS. I've never used
NVDA. This isn't about Windows at all. It's about fixing Orca in a sane
fashion. The problem being addressed is that Orca hasn't had modes for
interacting with web content. Instead it has had "control," along with a
bunch of hacks and heuristics that boil down to:

1. Does the user want Orca to control navigation?
2. Are you sure? I mean, the user said he/she did, but....
3. Well, maybe just this once we should do something special.
4. Whoa, it's ARIA. We must do nothing here.
5. Unless....

Yes, I'm being snarky, but the code largely boiled down to that.  As a
result, you could arrow into and out of things you shouldn't; you could
get trapped within things you didn't want to. And all the checking and
guessing to determine what should happen where was non-performant in
addition to being non-reliable and unpredictable.

So the above craziness is gone. There are two modes:
1. Focus mode - Orca does not control navigation. It's like using Gedit
   or any other non-Gecko app. Orca stays out of the way and just
   presents stuff.
2. Browse mode - Orca does control navigation. It assumes you want to
   read what's there; not interact with it or change it.

If you know what mode you're in, you know what Orca will do (or not do).
If the mode you're in is not the right one for the content, form, or web
app you wish to interact with or read, toggle modes. Structural
navigation is still around, caret navigation is still around. But now
you, and not insane heuristics are in charge of when these things kick
in and when they don't.

What we're borrowing from NVDA are terms and user experience -- when and
if doing so makes sense for us here in GNU/Linux Land. In some cases, it
really doesn't make sense so we're continuing to do our own thang.

Hope this helps.
--joanie