[orca-list] New feature: Application specific settings.

[Rich Burridge <Rich Burridge Sun COM>]

For those of you who like living on the edge and
are getting your daily dose of Orca direct from our
SVN repository, there is a new feature that's just
been checked in, that you might like to try out.

This is the ability to customize various settings
on a per application basis via a GUI dialog. Note
that this feature will also be in Orca v2.19.2
that will be coming out in about two weeks time.

To customize the settings for a particular
application, you will first need to run that
application. Make sure that that application
has focus, then press ORCA_MODIFIER-Control-Space
(by default, for the default desktop keyboard layout,
this will be Insert-Control-Space).

This brings up a tabbed dialog window very similar
to the generic Orca Preferences dialog, but with
the following differences:

1/ There is no initial General pane.

2/ The Speech System and Speech Synthesizer combo
  boxes on the Speech pane will be grayed out
  (made inactive).

3/ Any existing application specific key bindings
  will appear at the top of the list on the Key
  Binding pane.

4/ There may be a new application specific settings
  pane at the end of the set of tabbed panes. Note
  that pressing the End key from the tab list will
  get you directly to that rightmost tab. There are
  currently application specific setting panes for
  Firefox, gaim and StarOffice. More on this in a
  moment.

Adjust your application specific Orca settings in
a similar way to the way to set your general Orca
preferences. For example, you may have key echo
disabled generally in Orca but would like to
specifically have it enabled for the gcalctool
(GNOME Calculator) application. Here's where
you could easily set that.

When you have your application settings customized
the way that you want, press the OK button.
These settings will be written away under your
~/.orca/app-settings directory in a file called
<APPNAME>.py, where <APPNAME> is the name of the
application.

These files are automatically written by Orca.
The existing contents of that file will just be
blown away each time you change your application
settings for that application.

If you want to have some extra application
specific settings or code that you don't want to
lose, then you should put it in a file called
~/.orca/app-settings/<APPNAME>-customizations.py
This file will be automatically read when the
settings for the <APPNAME> application are loaded.
Note that this is an advanced feature that we
don't expect most Orca users to use. It's just
there if you really want it.

IMPORTANT NOTE.
---------------
Note that there is currently one known bug (some
people would call it a feature) that we are
trying to track down and fix:

If you adjust one or more application specific
key bindings, the new values will not take
immediate effect after you've pressed the OK
button on the dialog. The workaround is to either
restart Orca, or to Alt-Tab away to some other
application and then Alt-Tab back to the one
that you've just changed the key bindings for.
Hopefully we can improve on that.

Now onto more detail about the existing application
unique settings that currently exist.

These are:

1/ Firefox / Thunderbird

  Page Navigation

  There are checkboxes that lets you enable/disable:
  > Use Orca Caret Navigation
  > Use Orca Structural Navigation
  > Position cursor at start of line when navigating
    vertically

  Table Navigation

  There are checkboxes that lets you enable/disable:
  > Speak cell coordinates
  > Speak multiple cell spans
  > Announce cell header
  > Skip blank cells

2/ gaim

  There is a checkbox that lets you enable/disable:
  > Speak Chat Room name

3/ StarOffice / OpenOffice

  There is a text field that allows you to setup:
  > Enabled Text Attributes
  These are the text attributes that will get
  spoken when you type ORCA_MODIFER-f in StarOffice
  or OpenOffice. Note that there is a separate
  enhancement request to make this particular
  feature (setting text attributes) a lot easier
  via a GUI. We haven't got to that yet.

Please let us know of any problems you find with this
new feature. Either add your comments to bug #433146
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433146
or if that's not easy to do, send them to this list
and I'll add them to that bug for you.

Thanks.