Re: [orca-list] Vim, is it usable for us?

["Jeanette C." <julien mail upb de>]

Hi Rastislav,
Aug 30 2020, Rastislav Kish via orca-list has written:
...
> * how usable is Vim with Orca?
Not a straight answer: I have a braille display and use Vim from the
commandline, right this second. :) There are graphical modes, not sure
how accessible they are and if that could improve usability further.
...
> H, J, K and L keys doesn't seem to work at all, 
Navigation by letters was an old Vi feature, it can be enabled in the
config files, I don't know how right now, but somehow I must have set it
up some time ago. Someone here might know, otherwise
https://www.vim.org/
should have an answer.
...
> * Is Vim potentially useful for blind people? I can imagine, that when a 
> sighted person sees the whole layout of a page, he / she has an imagination 
> in his / her head what he / she wants to select, delete or replace,
It takes a certain mindset, I think, but it can be very useful, because
of the language and all the commands. Vim has the look of a very simple
editor, thus, I think, you won't get much out of structure with Orca.
There aren't headings, tables and other document elements to navigate
to, because it is all just text. But if you are programming, scripting,
typing simple notes, text for your personal use or use markup languages
like Tex, markdown, HTML or similar, Vim can be of help. Though I am
sure that a few graphical environments can be just as helpful, though
quite different in their approach.
...
What an editor like Vim lacks in GUI structure it may give back in many
other power-features. As mentioned, I can't speak for Vim's look and
feel with Orca, nor even with any text-to-speech based screenreader in
the terminal. It is very suited to a braille display if you feel
comfortable with all the commands, maybe even basic scripting for the
real power features.

Vim is not the only alternative in that area though: there is also
emacs, which in itself has - or had - a built-in screenreader.

Apologies if this answer was way too cautious and general, but I find it
difficult to classify anything as a must-have and of course I haven't
worked with it under exactly your circumstances.

Best wishes,

Jeanette

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