Re: [orca-list] meanings of some of the terms used by orca

["David E. Price" <deprice cs utah edu>]

Hi,

I'll tackle some of these:
> grade: This happens sometimes, but the best possible example of it that
> I can give you is when you put in a command at the run application
> dialog, and it says: "command entry combo box 'grade'" What does this
> mean?

I think what you are hearing is actually "grayed", as in the color gray. It 
is used to denote that a control (button, edit box, etc.) is disabled, 
meaning that you can't use it. I'm surprised you get this in the Run 
Application dialog box. Speculating here, but I think it is telling you in 
this instance that there is no "history" (or previous commands that you have 
run), so the button to pull down the list is disabled.

> What is "icon view layered pane?" this is a common one when shifting to
> the desktop.

It means that the elements that you can focus (that is, select and interact 
with) are shown as pictures--icons which often have text labels below them. 
A "pane" is an element of a window (the analogy is to a physical window in a 
building which contains panes of glass) into which items can be placed for 
display. Esentially, this type of pane and others are the elements which are 
used to build a graphical user interface.

> What is the difference between a frame and a window.

When using the various elements to build the GUI, there is a hierarchy to 
the elements. A window is the largest of these elements, the next a frame, 
followed by the various types of panes. As you switch between applications, 
Orca is giving you all of the elements as they receive focus. For instance, 
when I switch to gnome-terminal, I hear "deprice plymouth: ~ 
deprice plymouth: ~ frame deprice plymouth: ~ page deprice plymouth: ~" The 
first of these announcements is the window's title as it receives focus 
because I pressed Alt-Tab, then the frame gets focused, then the page, then 
the prompt. (If you only have one terminal session open, you won't hear the 
"page" announcement.) I'm guessing here, but I believe that Orca reads all 
of this to you because programmers can't be counted on to give Orca all of 
the information you might need in the lowest level element... for instance 
the pane. So, Orca reads it all to you to make sure that you get the needed 
information.

> What is a "scroll pane?"

A scroll pane is a pane which allows the sighted user to move through its 
contents using scroll bars.  In this way, the sighted user can move around 
without necessarily moving the focus from something. To give you a bit more 
info, the scroll bar is a strip along the edge of the pane with an arrow at 
each end and a button that can be slide along the bar between the arrows. 
Assume that the scroll bar is used with a text document. The scroll bar 
allows the sighted user to move the displayed area up or down to change the 
text currently shown on the window. By clicking on the down arrow, the next 
line appears on the screen and the top line disappears from the screen. The 
sighted user can drag the button to any point along the bar, and it will 
move the displayed text to the approximate location (based on percentage) 
within the document. For instance, if the user drags the button to the 
middle of the bar, the middle of the document will appear on screen.

> What is a "label?"

Not knowing your context for hearing this, I'll take a guess. When there are 
controls (buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, etc.) being used, the label 
is the text that identifies what the function of the control is. For 
instance, in an Open File dialog, you might have an edit box with the label 
"file name:".

> What is either a "horizontal scroll bar 0% or a "vertical scroll bar
> 0%?"

See above for a discussion of a scroll bar. The percentage is the curront 
position of the button within the bar, top or left being 0%.

> What is " "unknown?" I ask this, because, at the beginning and at the
> end of every message I read in evolution, I hear either 1 or 2 lines
> that simply say "unknown.""

Sorry, can't answer this one. I use Thunderbird.

Hope this helps,

dave