[Fwd: Debugging accessible GDM in Feisty -- please help]

[Brian Cameron]

Henrick:

> We wrote a spec for feisty to add accessibility functionality to the 
> login manager, GDM. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/AccessGDM
> 
> This does not look like it will happen as no work has been done in 
> Ubuntu or upstream on making the themed greeter (which everyone uses by 
> default) accessible. The folks at SUN have made the old-style one work 
> with Orca on Solaris.

Some a11y functionality works with gdmgreeter.  You would probably find
that Orca and GOK work okay with gdmgreeter, but there are bugs to
be fixed.   gdmlogin works better and supports changing the theme
to HighContrast/LowContrast, etc.

> For me at least, even that still just breaks on Ubuntu Feisty. Has 
> anyone tried getting this to work in Ubuntu? The Orca changelog for 
> 2.17.4 suggests adding
> 
> <Control>o  1 1000 10000  /bin/sh -c "GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge ctrun 
> -l child -i none orca -n
> -d main-window"
> 
> to /etc/X11/gdm/modules/AccessKeyMouseEvents

A few things you should be aware of:

1) You should *not* need to set GTK_MODULES in the command line.  Should
    be okay to just call "orca -n -d main-window".  Unless this is some
    weird Orca issue.

2) You should not include the "ctrun -l child -i none" on Ubunutu.  This
    is Solaris specific stuff to make the AT programs work with SVC (more
    specifically to ensure GDM doesn't restart if the AT programs crash).

3) You may not need to use the /bin/sh -c "...".   Might be okay to have
    the line look like this:

    <Control>o  1 1000 10000 ocra -n -d main-window

    You will need to test to see if the /bin/sh -c "..." syntax is
    needed on your distro.

4) Some AT programs won't start unless the gdm user has a writable
    $HOME directory.  GOK definately has this problem.  See
    bugzilla.gnome.org bug #383514.

5) Make sure you've read section 9.1 of the GDM docs:

    http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/docs/2.16/accessibility.html

    Note laste paragraph of section 9.1 which has a few tips for figuring
    out what the problem may be.

    Especially note that when you hit the gesture, if you see a little
    hourglass then the gesture listener noticed the event and tried to
    start the AT program.  If you do not see an hourglass then GDM did
    not register the gesture.

6) Note that the AccessKeyMouseEvents file has these columns:

# <modifier>[<modifier>...]key  #times duration timeout executable_path 
+args

   Note that column 3 is duration in ms so a value of 1000 means you
   need to hold the key-combo down for 1 second for it to register.
   Make sure you are holding the key down if duration is required.
   Set duration to 0 if you just want to hit the key and have the
   program launch immediately.

7) For debugging purposes, it can be useful to create a gesture that
    launches an xterm.  Then start up the xterm from GDM and try to run
    the command in AccessKeyMouseEvents by hand in the terminal.  Note
    error messages that might be echoed to the screen.

    This is obviously very insecure, so turn off this gesture when done
    debugging.

Hope this helps you get a11y working!  If you have suggestions on
how to improve the docs then let me know and I would be happy to improve
them.

Brian

> Has anyone tried this? If/when it breaks are there any useful log files 
> produced?
> 
> Henrik
> 

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