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Re: [orca-list] More findings regarding Gnome and Unity


So, I am totally confused now.
 
When I open a new application I've never worked with before, very simply put, what's the best stratigy to take to try getting to its menu bar?
---
Christopher Gilland
Co-founder of Genuine Safe Haven Ministries
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 6:20 AM
Subject: Re: [orca-list] More findings regarding Gnome and Unity

Hello,

Unfortunatelly top pannel application menu is typically implemented for Gnome apps or other GTK+3 based apps. Firefox has traditional style menu bar you can get into by pressing F10 key even when running on the Gnome desktop.

Gedit is a Gnome app and it has an application menu on the top pannel, it also has text entry popup menu you can get into by pressing shift+F10 or applications key while editing the text content, however it also features toolbar with expandable controls which features all the actions from the old style menu bar that was available with Gnome 3.8 and earlier. For convenience F10 key moves you to the expanded menu on the toolbar. You can explore the whole toolbar by pressing ctrl+tab from within text entry.
Gedit has an extensive keyboard shortcuts you might like to check from its top pannel menu. It can display multiple windows or it can create multiple tabs where each tab will handle different file. For example pressing ctrl+n opens a new gedit window while ctrl+t opens a new tab in the current gedit window.
While putting together this description, I have just found out a problem that I am not able to work with checkboxes and radio buttons found in the F10 menu and on the toolbar. I've just tried to file a bugreport for this: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=789188

Greetings

Peter


2017-10-19 0:36 GMT+02:00 Christopher-Mark Gilland <clgilland07 gmail com>:
OK, how in the world do you access the menu bar of an application? For instance, I opened up Firefox. That thing should have File, Edit, Tools, and maybe a few other things like Bookmarks, History, Help, etc. I cannot seem to figure out how to get to those menus.
 
I thought maybe Alt+Control+Tab, but all that does is gets me to the top panel. When I right arrow, I do hear things like Firefox menu, but, when I hit enter to open it, all I see is quit.
 
In the case of GEdit, all I see in the GEdit menu is new window, and quit. No file, edit, format, none of those menus that I darn well know! should be in the menu bar.
---
Christopher Gilland
Co-founder of Genuine Safe Haven Ministries
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: [orca-list] More findings regarding Gnome and Unity
Hello,

You are asking about multiple environments here.
I would say when it comes to the various indicators Gnome is the best in terms of accessibility.
To navigate over the parts of a gnome desktop you can use ctrl+alt+tab and ctrl+alt+shift+tab respectivelly.
When you login into gnome session you will land on an empty workspace with no apps running.
If you try out navigating with ctrl+alt+tab in this state, you will recognize you can move between top bar and windows.
The top bar with quick settings and indicators is visible all the time.
In the pannel reported as windows there are all the application windows. You can switch between individual apps by pressing alt+tab or alt+shift+tab respectivelly. You can switch between multiple windows of the current app (e.g. multiple browser windows) by pressing alt+grave or alt+shift+grave (the key in a upper row of keys - immediatelly above the tab key).
When it comes to navigation on the top bar on the Gnome desktop I think you will recognize it features similar navigation paradigm to the menu bar known from your Microsoft Windows machine. You can use left and right arrow keys to navigate over the available menus. You enter the menu by pressing the down arrow. In the menu you can usually navigate with up and down arrow keys. You can expand or collapse expandable controls or manipulate the sliders with right and left arrow keys. You can activate items or toggle checkable items or select radio items by pressing the enter key. You can toggle the toggle buttons by pressing the space bar key. When you expand a collapsed control, you can press down arrow to jump to its first child and then you can continue navigating with left and right arrow keys.
On the top bar you will find an Activities toggle button, current application window menu (only applicable to GTK+3 based apps - analogous to F10 menu in Mate and other GTK+2 based environments), accessibility menu and a system menu with indicators, with logout and shutdown buttons.
Instead of alt+F1 menu known from Gnome 2, Mate and others, Gnome 3 features so called activities overview. You can get to this overview either by pressing the super key alone, or pressing alt+F1 or by going to the top pannel and toggling on the Activities button there.
When the overview is showing the application windows are all minimized and a windows pannel displays window chooser. You can see all the application windows represented as buttons here. You can press arrow keys to navigate and enter key to switch to chosen window.
When the overview is showing you can move to even more pannels by pressing alt+ctrl+tab and alt+ctrl+shift+tab e.g. dock, Search and Applications as an addition to top bar and windows.
Dock is a row of icons to your favorite apps and running apps. You can navigate over the icons by pressing up and down arrow keys. Individual icons do usually have a popup menu you can inwoke by pressing the applications key (the key to the left of the right ctrl key on most keyboards). The popup menu contains some contextual items for example you can open a new web browser window, create new text document and similar. It's app specific. Also you can add or remove an app from favorites. Favorites are the apps displayed first on the dock. Ordering of these apps is not accessible via keyboard however they are ordered as you are adding or removing them from the favorites using app specific context menus so for example if you do have Web as the first item, you will hit remove from favorites inside its context menu, then find it again in the list and add it to favorites it will be added to the end of the dock. The last item on the dock is a toggle button you can use to show or hide the applications view.
Applications view is very similar to the dock except you can use all four arrow keys to navigate over the apps arranged in a grid. By default frequently used apps are shown with ability to toggle the view to display all aps on the bottom of this view. Popup menus can also be inwoked for the individual apps.
Search has a text entry where you can type your search query. In fact if you don't require ability to edit the content of this text entry there is no need to navigate to it because you can just open up activities and start typing the query. You can search for apps, documents, files and possibly other types of content this way because individual apps can plugin into this mechanism.

There are some predefined keyboard shortcuts. You can browse over the list of keyboard shortcuts somewhere in the Settings -> Keyboard. Those include for example super+a to jump directly to the list of applications from anywhere. Or there is super+m to jump to the notifications also reffered to as system tray. This is also on the top bar however I think there is no other way on how to get into notifications besides pressing super+m keyboard shortcut.

Also there is an usefull wiki page here on the gnome site you might like to read to find out more gnome features: https://wiki.gnome.org/Gnome3CheatSheet

I hope you will find this usefull.

I have never used alt+ctrl+esc within Mate and I do also have mixed results using pannels on Mate desktop. Still I am using Gnome more it's why I have chosen to describe it in more details so you can also get some good use of it.


Greetings

Peter


2017-10-18 14:54 GMT+02:00 Christopher-Mark Gilland <clgilland07 gmail com>:
First, it was suggested that I try the official Ubuntu Mate desktop installer from
 
 
I did so. And yes, it was the 16.04 image. Again, I cannot access any of the pannels.
 
I was told to try in Unity, to get a more accessible screen of my apps, to hit CTRL+Win+A. I did, and nothing happened. I tried Win+A, without control key, and that brought something up that says appearance toolbar frame, but try as I may in any combination I can think of, I can't navigate the window. Not even with flat review.
 
Upon installing Gnome, either from the official Ubuntu Gnome image, or by apt getting it, and installing over Unity, either way, even from the live image, Alt F1 isn't taking me to my applications menu. It's bringing up that stupid dash thingy only even more inaccessible than in Unity. At least in Unity, I kind of can navigate the thing, though I can't figure it out. In regular Gnome 3, I can't tab around that thing, I can't arrow around, absolutely nothing! As soon as I start typing in the search field, the window disappears. I swear to God I'm not making this stuff up to cause attention. I mean it. This really is happenning. I'm just as stumped about this as you all are!
 
I tried plugging in an external USB keyboard, just in case maybe HP did something kurfuckity with my internal laptop keyboard, excuse the language, but even that isn't the case.
 
I should add that just to isolate things, I've tried with all the above mentioned live installer images.
 
So, yeah.
 
I even tried Fedora as mentioned, and it's having the same issue as just plain Gnhome 3, where Alt+F1 doesn't work, Alt+CTRL+Tab to move between panels doesn't work, and hitting Alt+F1 getting that search window thing is again, not navigatable.
 
So yeah, unless someone can tell me how to navigate that window after hitting the super key in Unity better, I'm afraid I'm now completely out of options.
 
I want so badly to try Linux, but this is a dealbreaker. If I can't navigate my list of installed apps, then that's enough to totally turn me off.
 
I get you all, to be fair, are having no issues. I just don't see at all why I always tend to have them but no one else ever does. It's very very frustrating! It's been this way since day 1 when I joined this list back in the days. Everyone seems to be OK, but I'm always having issues.
 
Trust me, this isn't me throwing around drama on the list either. This is really a member of the list who is super super perplexed. I really don't get this! You all can get things working, so, why in the world if you all can do it can't I? Surely things cannot be that different between my setup and you all's.
 
I have another idea, but, it's not one I really want to take. It's definitely an extreme overkill last resort, but, I'll bet it would work. The only problem would be out of date things getting updated, then possibly breaking in the process.
 
I could! theoretically install Vinux, since I know beyond a doubt that works, I can get to my panels, the alt+F1 menu works fine, etc. Then, I could run
 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade
 
but, I'm just not sure if that would break things or not. In the past, I've had mixed results trying that, and on a hacked up version of Linux, I'm just not sure that would be advisable. My gut feeling tells me don't attempt.
 
Chris.

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