Re: [orca-list] GUI Redesign or clearup and modernization

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Good evening,

I personally don't think I'd have much of a problem with what you 
propose if I understand it properly  if things like Orca's speech rate, 
volume and pitch could be changed on the fly and with retention of the 
Orca + space hotkey.  Of course, instead of sending you to the current 
settings gui, it would send you directly to its counterpart in the 
control center.  I, too, wonder how this would pan out in a world where 
window managers like Fluxbox, Sawfish  or Icewm would be usable by the 
screenreader consumer community but, perhaps, your api idea addresses 
this?  Honestly though, I don't think we are anywhere near to that state 
of affairs and it doesn't make sense holding back Orca's innovations and 
renovations for the sake of something that may not materialize for years 
if ever.  Look at KDE.  That thing has been on the verge of becoming 
accessible for years and years and years.  I remember taking it for a 
spin back in 2012 and reading about all the QT improvements, ETC. ETC. 
ETC. but it was never truly possible to migrate to it with anything 
approaching the level of accessibility you get in Gnome, Unity or Mate.  
Here it is mid 2015 and things haven't really changed all that much.  As 
long as the Orca settings are reasonably usable in the desktops we 
absolutely have access too, I think we can tackle providing the same 
functionality to a11y newcomer desktops if and when they start becoming 
viable options for us.

Sorry for the long-winded reply.

Regards,
Alex M



On 08/30/2015 05:55 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote:
> Re-sending to list, forgot to reply to list.
>
> On 28 Aug 2015, at 8:37 am, chrys87 <chrys87 web de> wrote:
> > Howdy,
> >
> > nomnom :) a redesign is a fully redesigned new GUI. so almost written from scratch. newly designed code, and maybe layout (i 
> > looks really stalled, i do not use orca often. but my girlfriend do, she dont like it because a "card layout" its not 
> > the best in things of navigation. I agree with her that a more "list" orientated layout would be more efficient (also 
> > in things like we are more able to keep things more generic in the codebase, what lead to more easy contribution to orca).
> >
> > A "clearup and modernization" its mosstly clean up the really stalled code ( its hard to integrate some new 
> > things, thats what i learned in my work on the orca beeps). no real name convention, confuse names (combobox1, 
> > combobox2, combobox3), fix warnings while start the GUI, port to more current techniques. :).
> I’d be interested in having a look at what you are working on. I have been working on a GSettings backend for 
> Orca for a week or so now, just about to start the actual coding, after much planning and writing out the 
> GSettings metadata. Longer term, to properly support individual desktop environments offering Orca settings 
> in their system settings control panels, it may be worth moving settings management, both in the storage and 
> retrieval of settings, as well as presenting settings in the UI to a C library. The desktop environments that 
> work with Orca now are written in either C/GObject C, or C++. Orca itself would make use of this C library, 
> and with some planning, we could develop an API that allows a the settings for Orca to dynamically be 
> presented and updated, such that any new settings only need to be added to Orca, and the UI in the desktop 
> environments dynamically updates based on what they retrieve via Orca’s settings API. This library would then 
> take care of storing the settings, most likely in GSettings.
>
> I suspect one reason why some people are against individual desktop environments offering Orca settings in 
> their control center, is due to the possibility of Orca settings being out of sync with what is offered in 
> their control center. I’d argue that it would not be too far fetched, and not too difficult to implement 
> things such that desktop environment developers only need to implement Orca’s settings API once, and then any 
> new settings Orca offers are automatically presented when they are added to Orca. Would that be enough to 
> convince you folks that using the control centre of your desktop environment to change Orca settings is the 
> way to go?
>
> Luke
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