Build Orca on Ubuntu 12.04

[Luke Yelavich]

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 01:12:08AM EST, Cameron Wong wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to make Linux accessible for Chinese blind users. I have
> developed Ekho Chinese TTS (http://www.eguidedog.net/ekho.php) which works
> fine with Orca on Ubuntu 12.04.

It would be nice to integrate this with speech-dispatcher, see http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd.

> (Let me know if someone would like to help
> to put it into Ubuntu's repository).

Once we have speech-dispatcher support for it, sure.

> Now I want to implement an ibus input
> method plugin to Orca. Without the ability of reading input method, Linux
> is not quite accessible to east Asian blind users.

You probably need to talk to the upstream at-spi maintainers, as that is likely where the support needs to be added, since Orca uses at-spi to deal with all of its input snooping, to determine what keystrokes have been pressed etc. I suggest you mail the GNOME accessibility development mailing list at gnome-accessibility-devel at gnome.org to start a dialog. The mailing list page is at https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel.

> I know few about Orca. All starts from building the source code. I get the
> source code of version 3.4.1 with following command.
> $ apt-get source gnome-orca
> Then
> $ ./configure
> 
> To my surprise, the dependency doesn't meets. Not because some packages are
> missing but the version is not high enough. Can someone explain why source
> code from apt-get depends on some packages newer than current system?

Did you install all the build dependencies for Orca, sudo apt-get build-dep gnome-orca.

> To make orca be able to build, I make and install following packages:
> * gnome-common, libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev, libcairo2-dev, libpango1.0-dev,
> libatk1.0-dev, libxext-dev, libxi-dev, python-dev, libgirepository1.0-dev,
> python-cairo-dev, libatspi2.0-dev
> * GTK 3.1.92 (
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/3.1/gtk+-3.1.92.tar.xz)
> * PyObject 3.0.4 (
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/pygobject/3.0/pygobject-3.0.4.tar.xz)
> 
> I choose GTK 3.1.92 and PyObject 3.0.4 because I think they are the most
> closest version to Ubuntu 12.04 that can meet orca's build dependency.
> 
> The look-and-feel of desktop windows/widgets has changed now.

Yes, because you overwrote the system GTK setup with a custom built one. 

> Now I can build and install orca. All commands I use to build from source
> are `./configure && make && make install`. So they are installed in
> /usr/local/.
> 
> When I run `orca` in terminal, it complains:
> '''
> Contraction tables for liblouis cannot be found.
> This usually means orca was built before
> liblouis was installed. Contracted braille will
> not be available.
> Cannot start Orca because it cannot connect
> to the Desktop.  Please make sure the DISPLAY
> environment variable has been set.

The issues you raise are common amongst people who end up having more than one copy of Orca, and other libraries on the system. As I suggested above, you should install all of orca's build dependencies before you try to build it.

Luke