[orca-list] O

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

This is only barely on topic, but potentially very useful for Orca users who run Arch or one of its spins, 
i.e. Manjaro and family.
A year or year and a half ago I searched the repos and AUR for alarmclocks to try for accessiblity, and asked 
some Talking Arch users for suggestions 
and came up with blanks. The only thing available was the gnome panel applett I think, and at some point one 
for mate. I'm assuming these are 
accessible, and think I've tested both, but not on arch perhaps, but do not remember for sure. 
I tried hacking together an import of an alarmclock I used on Uuntu, but it did not work for me.
Well now I decided to look again, and good news. Besides a couple of QT apps I've not yet tested, there are 
three options that should met most user's 
needs. 
I've tested two with good results, and the 3rd is the one I tried to import last ear with negative results 
which I'll try later although it runs best as 
a panel applet, and I'm not using any accessible panel with my environment.
First is a program in the AUR called amazingly alarm-clock...lol
It is very easy to configure, comes with a default bell sound, but can be configured to play a sound file of 
your choice, and can also show text 
messages either in dialogs or pop-ups. It has a scheduler, snooze and a time out can be set, colors can be 
configured as well as I remember.
Then I found a C>LI option that works in terminals or pure CLI consoles. It's a bash script that uses mplayer 
by default, but can be configured to use 
other media players. It's just a one off alarm as written, with some options that can be configured on the 
command line or set in a configuration file. 
The basic comand is just shalarm, (that's the package name),
 so for example
shalarm 08:20
will sound an alarm at 8 20 in the morning. It uses a 24 hour clock always BTW. You can set it to play a 
stream or sound file if you wish instead of the 
default sound, and I've tested, it can be backgrounded e.g. 
shalarm 23:24&
to play an alarm at eleven twenty-four at night. You will have to type fg to interact with the alarm to shut 
it off, but should both see the message if 
you have a message configured and hear the alrm with it backgrounded however, oh, it can also use fortune to 
show you an inspirational bit or some smutt 
or 
what ever in the morning.

The 3rd program, one I like a lot in Unity, Gnome, etc, (used it in mate as well), is called 
alarm-clock-applet. I'll try it with out any panel later to see if itworks correctly.
The other one that may be worth while is called qtalarm. It use qt5. I'll see about testing it as well I 
reckon, but may not get to it.
Don't bother with something called clockywock, an ncurses clocki/alarm. It spews a bunch of chars that much 
flash, or just are reannounced as the clock 
changes, and I don't even know what it's supposed to do in the way of alarms, i.e. are they audio or just 
visual. Not usable with a screenreader anyway, 
well maybe one can blank outmost of it with speakup windows, but I'm not going to bother trying.
HTH


-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886