Re: [orca-list] Naming, shaming and flaming (was Re: LibreOffice and orca: moving to headings, links, tables etc.)

[Kyle <kyle free2 ml>]

Devin Prater pounded out:
> Okay, so before, when I said that Orca is sluggish with tables in 
> Docs, and that NVDA isn't, in response to Nimer saying that the OP 
> should try Docs, you went on a rant about how I shouldn't be comparing 
> Orca to a Windows screen reader which the developer of Orca doesn't 
> have access to. Just to not leave any stones unturned, why do you 
> assume the Orca developer doesn't have access to Windows, with Windows 
> screen readers? 


First, I did not go on a rant. I pointed out that you compare apples to 
oranges, and instead of simply reporting the bug somewhere between Orca, 
at-spi and Firefox, you just said that Orca is sluggish in some places, 
but that NVDA does not have the same problem on an operating system 
where everything is fundamentally different, and even the hacky 
work-arounds that the screen reader uses have to have hacky work-arounds 
just to keep things somewhat functional. Did you send a debug.out to try 
to help with reporting the bug? Did you simply say that Orca is sluggish 
in some areas in Google Docs, or did you throw in that little commercial 
that says come over here because this is so much better; the 
sluggishness doesn't happen over here? The point is that we are talking 
about Orca and how it interacts with Linux browsers, whether Firefox or 
Brave or Chrome or whatever, and what happens or doesn't happen even 
with Talkback or Voiceover is completely irrelevant.


Secondly, you haven't been on this list as long as I have, so you 
probably are unaware of what the primary developer of Orca uses. First 
of all, Joanie is employed by Igalia

https://www.igalia.com/

which is a software consultancy company working strictly with open 
source software. She has worked in this space for many years, and as far 
as I know, the only not quite open source operating system she has ever 
accessed was Solaris after Sun Microsystems kicked their accessibility 
team to the curb probably about 12 or more years back; at that time, 
Orca was being developed primarily on Solaris, Sun Microsystems' 
distribution of Unix. She hasn't exactly been top secret about the 
machines she has access to either. In any case, even if she did have 
access to any other non-Linux, non-Unix operating system, it still would 
be irrelevant to Orca and Linux accessibility, since the frameworks are 
fundamentally different, and are not at all interchangeable. This would 
be like asking why your toaster is not a microwave. Sure both heat up 
food, but they do it in very different ways.


> Also, you're very willing to throw lots of shade at Windows, but when 
> some one even points out Linux's flaws, you get so defensive. This 
> does not help Linux accessibility, it doesn't help Orca development 
> that people in the blind Linux community just stick to the few Linux 
> GUI apps that we've been using for the past 15 years, and it doesn't 
> help that you, Kyle, are always bashing other operating systems.


I point out bugs and flaws that I see here, but I'm just as quick to 
point out the flaws of other operating systems when someone decides that 
they want to advertise for another OS instead of simple and 
straight-forward bug reporting. There is no place for talk of other 
operating systems here, because again, it has no bearing on what bugs we 
have here or how they can be fixed. The way NVDA handles things simply 
will not work here, so there is no need to even mention it. Try asking 
your microwave to toast bread for you ... that's just not the way it 
heats it.


And regarding the whole pointing out Linux flaws and/or bugs, Joanie 
will probably be the first to tell you what a rant I went on when a 
"focus mode" in Orca was still just a thought. I was perfectly happy 
with being able to hit a text entry field and just start typing, tab off 
and then change whatever in the next field. It worked for me perfectly. 
Now we have this focus mode, which I personally found counterproductive. 
My productivity is severely diminished by such a mode switch, since 
being automatic is not a default. Fortunately for me, there is a setting 
that will automatically switch focus mode on or off depending on how I 
get to what type of control, giving me back most of the behavior I came 
to expect and trust to make me productive. And then there was the whole 
page summary and all the Chatty Cathy stuff that Orca started doing by 
default. Oh boy did I give an earful for that or what? Sorry Joanie, I 
know that had to hurt. Fortunately for me again, all that extra 
announcement stuff and that page summary stuff that I was getting 
already on-demand through the use of the WhereAmI function, although it 
is a default setting now, can still be turned off, giving me back all 
the productivity I had before Orca's defaults became so chatty that I 
just couldn't cope. Still, these are antifeatures with which I certainly 
expressed my dissatisfaction, and there have been others as well. So no, 
I don't just bash other operating systems for the sake of bashing. I 
report bugs, request features, and certainly point out what I feel are 
flaws or mistakes that cause me to be less productive. I don't however 
slide in any advertisements or unnecessary comparisons of things that 
don't have any bearing on my productivity right here on the operating 
system and software I use every day and the screen reader I use with it.

> Now, do I bash Linux sometimes? Yeah, ...


And therein lies the entirety of the problem. You want to use it, use 
it. By all means report the bugs you find. But bashing the operating 
system you claim to love so much is quite unhelpful to the state of 
things, and i dare say it even slows down development. Just report the 
bugs you find, request features, but again, don't bash Linux, just 
report the bugs; don't advertise something else that is completely 
irrelevant, just report the bug or request the feature. Just an example 
of this, I have a document where I am embedding mp3 files. I either see 
a bug or need a feature added to LibreOffice that is keyboard 
accessibility to play the embedded mp3 file, as I can't even get it to 
play from its right-click menu. I will not however mention any other 
office applications that are fundamentally different, I only point out 
that keyboard access to the media controls in LibreOffice writer is 
either a missing feature that should be implemented or a bug that needs 
to be fixed in LibreOffice Writer. It makes no sense to mention Google 
Docs, Apple Pages or Microsoft Office, since they are entirely different 
pieces of software, even though they do similar things. My bug report or 
feature request is with LibreOffice writer, so that is the only software 
that I need to be mentioning in my bug report or feature request. I only 
mentioned that earlier on this list because it's possible that it's not 
a bug or a missing feature at all, but simply user error, something I 
don't know how to use, being the first time I have tried it. Still, the 
fact remains that it is specific to LibreOffice Writer, so every other 
word processor or document viewer, even Firefox or Chrome, is irrelevant.

~Kyle