Re: [orca-list] If you are using Mate with Braille please contact me.

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey Tom.

If Alt+Tab does nothing, it's probably because there are no open windows 
to switch amongst.

Alex: Is it possible when MATE is manually launched such as described by 
Tom, absolutely nothing has focus? If so, should the Desktop be given 
focus so the user lands *somewhere*? If you think so, could you advocate 
for this change with the MATE developers?

Thanks!
--joanie

On 4/30/20 15:50, Tom Masterson via orca-list wrote:
> My desktop has plenty of files and orca does not respond to any keys so 
> I would surmise that nothing has focus.  I know alt-tab does nothing in 
> my case at least as far as orca is concerned.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Apr 2020, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
>
> > + Orca-list for MATE folks.
> >
> > Hey Tom.
> >
> > Thanks! Here's the relevant part of your debug.out (with timestamps 
> > and "INFO:" trimmed for readability and extra space added to group the 
> > checks together):
> >
> > Looking at [window | ] from [application | marco] marco
> > [window | ] lacks state active
> > [window | ] is not active and showing, or is iconified
> >
> > Looking at [frame | Top Panel] from [application | mate-panel] mate-panel
> > [frame | Top Panel] lacks state active
> > [frame | Top Panel] is not active and showing, or is iconified
> >
> > Looking at [frame | Bottom Panel] from [application | mate-panel] 
> > mate-panel
> > [frame | Bottom Panel] lacks state active
> > [frame | Bottom Panel] is not active and showing, or is iconified
> >
> > Looking at [frame | Desktop] from [application | caja] /usr/bin/caja
> > [frame | Desktop] lacks state active
> > [frame | Desktop] is not active and showing, or is iconified
> >
> > Unable to find active window from [list of all applications, even 
> > those which don't have any windows, e.g. Orca, mate-settings-daemon, 
> > etc.]
> >
> > So... The question is what -- if anything -- are you in or has focus? 
> > My guess is that it's safe to eliminate the top and bottom panels. And 
> > if memory serves me the window from Marco is what you wind up in when 
> > you use Alt+Tab. So you're not in that. The only candidate is the 
> > Desktop.
> >
> > You can do a functional test to see if the Desktop is active by 
> > putting some files in $HOME/Desktop. Then, when you start up and Orca 
> > just says "Screen reader on," press navigation keys which should work 
> > on the Desktop like Home, End, Left, Right, Up, Down. If one of those 
> > keys causes the selected/focused item to change, then that's where 
> > focus is. In which case, the MATE folks should see about adding the 
> > "active" state to accessible state set of the Desktop frame. Then Orca 
> > should tell you you're on the Desktop and if it finds a focused icon, 
> > present that as well.
> >
> > On the other hand, if pressing those keys doesn't work without your 
> > having first explicitly given focus to the Desktop, then I suspect 
> > that when you start up your session, absolutely nothing has focus and 
> > you are not physically in any window. Thus Orca has nothing to present 
> > as the active window or focused item. If this is indeed the case, 
> > perhaps the MATE folks could consider putting focus *somewhere*, like 
> > the Desktop, for all users.
> >
> > Related aside: Orca used to say "no focus" to indicate that condition, 
> > but doing so reliably was problematic: There are often very brief 
> > moments where one is in limbo between a window becoming inactive and a 
> > window becoming active. If Orca doesn't wait a sufficiently long 
> > enough time, Orca would be regularly spamming you with "no focus" 
> > messages. On the flip side, if Orca waits too long to tell you nothing 
> > has focus, you've probably already reached this conclusion due to the 
> > silence and caused something to gain focus rendering the eventual "no 
> > focus" message pointless. I had tried to strike a balance in between 
> > these two extremes, but "no focus" messages still crept through on 
> > occasion and users complained. So the "no focus" message got removed.
> >
> > I'm dealing with some Chromium issues at the moment, but I'm hoping 
> > the MATE users -- and in some cases MATE contributors, like Hypra -- 
> > will read the above and either fix the missing state (if the Desktop 
> > really is active) or see about causing the Desktop to gain focus or 
> > clue me in to something I'm not aware of. :)
> >
> > Thanks!!
> > --joanie
> >
> > On 4/30/20 14:44, Tom Masterson wrote:
> > > Hi Joanie
> > >
> > > Here is a debug with orca starting.  Not a high priority as I can 
> > > easily work around it but might be interesting to know why orca says 
> > > nothing but "screenreader on" until I go to the menu.
> > >
> > > Tom
> > >
> > > On Thu, 30 Apr 2020, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hey Tom.
> > > >
> > > > When Orca is first started, it tries to find the active application 
> > > > window. If it finds it, it should present it. Also if it finds it, 
> > > > it then searches for the focused object in that window. So my guess 
> > > > is that Orca is not finding an active window. If you care as to why, 
> > > > capturing a full debug.out would be helpful. I'm happy to take a look.
> > > >
> > > > If the scenario is that Orca is being started automatically along 
> > > > with the desktop, the approach of relaunching Orca and cycling 
> > > > through levels presumably won't work. But on 
> > > > https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca/Debugging, under item 2, you'll 
> > > > find something which should work, namely using 
> > > > orca-customizations.py to set up the file and debug level
> > > > ahead of time.
> > > >
> > > > HTH.
> > > > --joanie
>
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