Orca Tracking Issues, Other Qs About It

[Willie Walker]

Hi:

Thanks for your interest in Orca.

> Some Orca issues. I'm using the latest binary available via apt-get in 
> Dapper. 

Thanks for helping test Orca and for bringing issues to our attention.
It would probably be best if you brought these discussions to the
orca-list at gnome.org list:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list

In addition, if you could keep it to one problem per e-mail, it would
help everyone track the problems better.   Multiple unrelated problems
in the same e-mail message with a generic subject makes it really
difficult to track problems.

As a hint: really long messages containing lots of different questions
tend to sit in my inbox for a long time since I know they are going to
take a lot of time to respond to.  Short messages with specific points
and specific subjects tend to have the quickest turnaround.

> I've found that in some very basic apps tracking fails rather 
> miserably. I wonder if these are known issues and or specific to my machine 
> or if there's anything I can do. I've switched my theme to inverse high 
> contrast 800x600, which is the clearest of the bunch for me, though far from 
> what I'd like.

When you say "tracking", are you referring to speech, magnification,
braille?  In addition, you need to be very specific about the app(s) you
are trying to use.  Some of them are not accessible.

> So here are the tracking issues:
> in Gconf, when you navigate a list of values for a key, such as the list of 
> visible columns for NAutilus, Orca fails to track the selection at all. 

I'm very puzzled.  Can you give more specific example(s) (in a new
thread on orca-list at gnome.org) of what you're doing and what's not
working?  These may seem like the same problem, but they're probably
different.

> The 
> same thing, in my experience, with the Gnome panel if you move around the 
> icon view containing all the panels you can add. Orca seems to speak nothing 
> and the flat review keys, 

Again, I'm not really sure about what you're doing here.  I think you're
talking about the "Add to Panel" dialog you get when you select "Add to
Panel..." from the gnome-panel?  If so, there may be a bug in the
accessibility implementation of the icon view being presented by this
dialog and we should enter a bug against gnome-panel. Can you provide
specific steps to reproduce the problem (in a new thread on
orca-list at gnome.org)?

> which should be changeable for laptops, by the 
> way, 

We definitely agree that customization is needed.  This is being worked
on: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354970

> The third app where I'm having similar issues is a file manager that was 
> recommended to me namely Rox Filer. Tracking does work in the menus and 
> dialogs but nothing is tracked when you select an icon in the main window. 
> That prevents me ffrom using the app in the first place. I don't like 
> Nautilus as it is barely as configurable as WIndows Explorer, which is not 
> much, period.

I've not seen the problem you are describing with Nautilus.  I need more
detail with what you are doing and the problems you are seeing.  In
addition, you might try using the list view in Nautilus.  You can enable
this by bringing up the Edit->Preferences dialog and selecting "List
View" in the "View new folders using:" combo box.

I'm not familiar with Rox Filer.  Where did you obtain it and how do you
run it?

> If even garden variety Gnome apps have this bad issues, I wonder how usable 
> the average gnome app would be. At the moment I'm rather sceptical about it. 

I realize you are probably frustrated with Orca right now.  We want to
help.  I think we can work through these things, but we definitely need
more specific detail about problems that you are running into.  Without
this, both of us will be frustrated and we'll have trouble getting
anywhere.  ;-)

> How do GTK1 apps like XMMS look to Orca? I'm a huge Winamp fan, as far as 
> exotic formats go, so would really need access to this app as it is the 
> closest Winamp equivalent you can get. Something which can use XMMS plugs 
> would also do.

I don't think the GTK1 toolkit supports the accessibility infrastructure
(AT-SPI), so any assistive technology relying on the AT-SPI will not be
able to access it.  

There may be an alternative to XMMS, though.  I use my computer about
11hrs day for work only and get relatively little joy out of it, so I'm
the wrong person to ask about for entertainment and other diversions on
the machine.  ;-)  Other folks on the orca-list may be able to point you
to more accessible applications, though.

> Lastly, I have noticed that my issue about gnome-panel crashing when trying 
> to run orca in the run box is not specific to that app. When Gnopernicus 
> starts the first time on logging in it works fine. IF I close it down and 
> try rerrunning it in the run box, it crashes the gnoem panel similarly to 
> how running Orca does. Too bad. 

Yeah - something is very odd with gnome-panel on Ubuntu.  It seems to be
quite depressed and commits suicide frequently and without warning.  I
think the Ubuntu guys are taking it to therapy, though:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-accessibility/2006-October/001260.html

> Which makes me wonder two things. How do you 
> change which app GNome uses as the screen reader? 

Orca is the default screen reader for GNOME.

> I'd like to have Orca 
> start up when the screen reader box is checked. 

It should do so as of GNOME 2.16 (and Ubuntu Edgy).  Is this not
happening for you?

> And also, step by step 
> instructions on how to update or downgrade the gnome panel component, to 
> resolve these issues, would be appreciated.

I think keeping an eye on the Ubuntu updates would be the thing to do.  

Henrik, if you're keeping an eye on this thread - are you aware of the
gnome-panel crashing issue on Ubuntu.  If so, do you have any
information on it?

Hope this helps,

Will