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Re: [orca-list] light weight accessible desktop for arch?

Hello,
I am also using xfce on one of my machines and I have got a lot of apps working in there. So let's assume you have got pure text based arch linux installed and you would like to get xfce installed and try to make it accessible. 
Here is what I would suggest:
- install xfce4 and xfce4-goodies groups of packages.
- If you have no ~/.xinitrc file then copy the default one into your home directory 
cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
- edit ~/.xinitrc with your favorite text editor. Make sure the line
exec startxfce4
is there and is not commented out.
Before this line add another line saying
export GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge
- Install orca what will also install speech-dispatcher and other dependencies. - Now either change speech-dispatcher configuration so it will use alsa as its output module or install pulseaudio. You can edit /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf If you also have gnome installed on the machine where you are installing xfce into you already have pulseaudio installed so you can skip this and just keep speech-dispatcher configured as installed by default. - At this point you should be able to start xfce by executing startx . As it starts up you will be greeted by the pannel configuration which is not accessible. You can escape or alt+f4 out of it and then press alt+f2 to run xfce4 app finder and type in orca to launch it. - If orca starts first thing you should do is that you will press alt+f1 to inwoke the popup menu, choose applications -> settings -> accessibility and enable screen reader checkbox.
I haven't installed gdm in order to get accessible login screen because it installs a lot of gnome dependencies. Instead I have installed SLiM and set it to autologin. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLiM#Autologin
In order to make the experience better I have installed the following gnome and lxde packages: 
polkit-gnome, evince, file-roller, pcman-fm.
QT4 apps can also be made accessible while running xfce4 you have to instal qt-at-spi from AUR and restart the machine in order to get it working. 

xfce4-terminal is accessible, it has even keyboard shortcut for select all.
Mousepad what is xfce text editor is working verry well too.
For playing multimedia you can install vlc, totem or DeaDBeeF for music. DeaDBeeF is just partially accessible but it's avesome. 

Firefox, Thunderbird and libre-office are all working verry well.
In the alt+F1 menu -> settings -> prefered applications I have changed default filemanager from thunar to pcman-fm.
Recently we were discussing orca and xfce in the accessible freedom support list and also here on this list. Some people are getting issues while trying to start orca. We haven't figured out the cause yet. Problems reported so far were happening on ubuntu 13.04. On arch linux we haven't faced issues like this up to now. Anyway if you cant hear orca after starting it via alt+f2 you might like to test whether the sound is working for example by trying running the following commands via alt+f2 
espeak hello
spd-say hello
and their variations.
Also if this is still not working you might like to create orca debug log in order to find the issue. 


Hopefully this is usefull

Greetings

Peter


On 28.06.2013 10:04, kendell clark wrote:

hi
I have a script that automates all this now, but to set up xfce accessibly you do the following commands.First you install the xfce desktop and the panel plugins with pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies. Those are both groups of packages so you'll get something like, enter number of packages to install default all. Press enter both times and install. After that, you'll need to install orca manually if you don't already have anotehr desktop that pulled it in, just pacman -S orca. If you want any other progs taht aren't included in xfce, firefox, thunderbird etc install those. finally all you need to do is create a .xinitrc file in your home directory (nano .xinitrc). Add in the following, save and close. exec startxfce4 new line 
On 06/28/2013 02:37 AM, Mobeen Iqbal wrote:

Hello Kendell.
Many thanks for getting back to me. I'm not asking for a step by step guide, but could you outline what you had to do to get XFCE working successfully on your arch install? there's a guide online but its from 2010, i'm guessing things have changed since then. Even a brief list of commands/files you had to edit. If you could let me know that would be great. 

Many thanks,

Mo.

On 28/06/2013 02:35, kendell clark wrote:

hi
I myself use xfce on my arch install. It's not quite equal to gnome, if only because the panel is not accessible yet, and the default file manager, thunar, is accessible but has some serious issues. But it's very fast, and all the settings dialogues and apps work beautifully. They're also viewable in flat review, something some gnome dialogues eitehr fail to do, or crash outright. If you need help i can either email you on list or I can help you on the vinux channel. 
On 06/27/2013 03:27 PM, Mobeen Iqbal wrote:

Hi Everyone.
I'm hoping someone can advise. Out of all the various desktops, gnome varients, XFCE, LXDE etc, are there any desktops which are low resource but still accessible to the point where you can use them for every day use and where orca works with most apps and is not unstable? I would like people's opinions because i'm wondering which desktop to get going on my arch install and don't want to waste time for example on XFCE if the user experience leaves something to be desired. Any feedback greatly appreciated. 

many thanks,

Mo.

_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html 
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge. teh gtk_modules is in al caps, just in case orca doesn't say so. Then save and close. IF you want xfce to start at boot up the best way to do this is by installing slim. Pacman -S slim. Edit /etc/slim.conf with your editor, search for default user it's set to simone by default. Change that to your user name. A few lines later set autologin to yes, uncomment it out, then save and close. Lastly, type systemctl enable slim.service this will make slim start up at boot up. IF you don't want xfce to launch at boot just type startxfce4 at a terminal when you're ready. To get xfce accessible once you're inside xfce, press alt+f1 to bring up the manu, scroll down to settings>accessibility, press enter. HIghlight the enable assistive technologies checkbox and check it, close the window. Xfce is not accessible. You will need to install pcmanfm in order for the file manager to be accessible, as thunar is not, or not completely. Phew, this is long. The last thing you'll need to do is go to menu>settings>preferred applications. for file manager, set it to pcmanfm, or another one if you have one. Web browser should be set to firefox, likewise for thunderbird. That gets xfce working. It's not complete yet, you don't have keyboard shortcuts up yet but it's usable. If you want any more help I'll write back. It's a lot of work but once working you shouldn't need to re-do it. Hope I don't sound too formal, it's 3 a.m and i'm about to drop, lol. 

Thanks

_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html 
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
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