Re: [orca-list] Getting started with Orca scripting

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi Nolan:

I'm CC'ing Li Yuan, who is expert in all things related to AT-SPI.

> How do I set up Orca for debugging and logging its output? I've changed
> the debugging level, which gives lots of useful output, and I've seen
> lines in user-settings.py for opening a file. Seems that setting the
> debug level only sends the data to stdout, though, which isn't quite
> what I want. I can certainly redirect the output from a terminal, but
> since there appears to be a logging mechanism available, I should
> probably use that. And it'd appear that I've uncommented one of the
> output file creation lines. Is this all that is necessary to start
> logging?

Putting this line in your ~/.orca/user-setting.py or 
~/.orca/orca-customizations.py file should work:

orca.debug.debugFile = open('debug.out', 'w', 0)

It's preferable to modify your ~/.orca/orca-customizations.py file 
since it will not be overwritten when you adjust your preferences via 
the preferences GUI.  With the line above, debug.out will be created in 
the directory from where you launched Orca.  If you want an exact path, 
you could use '/tmp/debug.out' or something like it.

> Now for the actual scripting questions. My first challenge is to
> actually pronounce the source column name correctly. Debugging seems to
> indicate that the column name is being sent as "S_ource" which isn't
> particularly aesthentically pleasing. :)

Strange.  The underscore character is usually used in labels to 
indicate the mnemonic to be used to give something focus.  I'm not sure 
it should be exposed in the name string sent over the AT-SPI.  But, 
maybe there's a bug here (i.e., possibly column headers don't really 
support mnemonics?).

> What would be the best way to
> change this?

Ah..yech.  Table row and col headers are treated as part of the 
contextual information for a table cell.  Right now, the logic for 
obtaining them is buried in default.py:locusOfFocusChanged, though this 
could be much cleaner.  If you have ideas for how to refactor this, 
please let us know.

> Also, here's something else that confuses me. I'm trying to hack the
> rhythmbox source to display more useful information on podcast feeds,
> but I'm getting some disparity between what Orca speaks and what's
> displayed when I flat review the screen. Specifically, when I view my
> list of podcast feeds, I first get a column containing the feed URL
> titled "Feed," then get an identically-named column containing the
> podcast title. When I navigate this area with flat review, I don't see
> the first "Feed" column containing the URL.

I haven't looked at RhythmBox in a long long time, so I'm not sure what 
the UI looks like.  But, it might be possible that you're running into 
a situation where a non-text object is being used to present the "Feed" 
info.  If this is the case, the flat-review stuff might be missing it.

Will