Re: [orca-list] text console use



Hey, DOS wasn't all bad...as long as you knew what you were doing. I'm always amazed by some of the things 
DOS machines of the 80s and even up until W95 could be made to do, heck I know university software that only 
ever runs in DOS.....which sorta broke when said university was forced to upgrade their system. Their 
solution? DOSBOX...of all things. I'm getting off track here but I doubt having used a Gui I could ever go 
back to a command line full time IMHO, it's just too easy to grab a keyboard or mouse and click around vs 
typign lin long strings of commands. After all that's why graphical shells were thought up, to make it easier 
to do stuff.
OS/2. I need to set up a VM of that if I ever get around to it. I never ended up using that, though hello MS 
monopoly on the eudcational system here pushing everyone downn learning MS and only MS stuff. Amusingly from 
what I heard from educators in my area now Apple are trying to do the same thing. So the head IT guy had an 
awesome response. Get Ubuntu. Skin it like Mac.  Present it as a cheaper alternative product to the school 
board. THey went for it. I like that inegenuity.

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 08:01:50AM -0400, Janina Sajka via orca-list wrote:
Christopher:

You and I appear to have a very similar history, including OS/2, some of
whose features I still miss.

I'm responding to agree with you. From your post I would surmise I spend
more time in the cli than you. But, I always have Orca and Gnome open on
tty1 and I use it frequently.

Janina

Orca screen reader developers writes:
I also started using computers in the 80's with DOS and the command line. I
also used Unix for a bit. My first two editors were EX and EdLin. In the
early 90's I started using OS/2 with it's graphical interface and IBM's
Screen Reader /2. In the mid 90's I was using the command line on AIX along
with Emacspeak. In the late 90's I switched back to a graphical interface
with Windows, and I've been switching between Windows and Linux with Gnome
and Orca ever since. I'll still pop open a terminal session or jump to a
console to perform tasks almost daily, but I do spend most of my time in a
graphical interface.


My only point is that it isn't just kids and younger people that prefer the
graphical interface. As someone else said, I like to have both available at
my finger tips. I also agree with something Janina said later in this
thread, which went something like, to each his own. I'll further that and
say there's nothing wrong with using either the graphical interface or the
command line. they're both just tools used to get a job done.


On 10/15/2018 07:25 AM, Janina Sajka via orca-list wrote:
> Hi, Didier:
>
>
> I have to add my strong agreement, but maybe it's because I, too, have
> been using computers since the early 1980's--when there was no graphical
> desktop to be had. I suspect younger folks simply have no clue about the
> cli. I suspect for many of them it's like a foreign country with an
> incomprehensible language.
>
> I sometimes play a what if game with myself. How might my life today be
> different had I studied kernighan and ritchie rather than Applesoft
> Basic at San Francisco State University in the 1980's? What if I'd
> learned vim and latec back then rather than WordPerfect 5.1?
>
> Of course the reasons for these choices were greatly dictated by the
> availability of those options in a pre-Linux world. Back then very few
> people had direct access to any kind of Unix system, except perhaps by
> modem where access was metered by the minute--a very expensive
> proposition for someone on a strict budget.
>
> And, I must close by noting in Orca's defense that I sometimes forget
> that I'm using Firefox and not Lynx when I tab to an input field and
> issue a Ctrl-U. I mean I'm surprised to see the source-view, because I'd
> forgotten I wasn't in Lynx! <grin>
>
> Janina
>
> Didier Spaier writes:
> > Funnily I would tend to ask the opposite question: why a blind person would need a graphical environment?
> >
> > I know at least one blind Slint users who never use one.
> >
> > I believe that most things done in a graphical environment can also be done in a console, often with a 
better productivity. This stands for blind as well as sighted people.
> >
> > A few examples: for writing you have a lot of text and code editors like nano, emacs and vim, mutt for 
emails, lynx and links for web browsing, mplayer to listen to music, vlc to listen to movies, crafty to play chess, 
games like freeswipe or scribble, the list goes on and on.
> >
> > Actually the first personal computer I used nearly 40 years ago didn't have a graphical environment, 
maybe that's why I am used to text mode.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Didier
> >
> > On 10/12/18 7:48 PM, Michael Weaver via orca-list wrote:
> > > I don't know if this is the right list to ask on as it is not strictly Orca but it is about text 
screenreaders but is text console use still necessary. I am not quite clear on this point. The reason is that you can 
use the terminals in gnome, Mate or maybe other desktops like mate-terminal from an alt F2 run prompt which is why I 
ask about text consoles, your CTRL ALT F1 to F6 which don't speak with Orca so need a different screenreader.
> > >
> > > Just curious with projects like Fenrir.
> > _______________________________________________
> > orca-list mailing list
> > orca-list gnome org
> > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
> > Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
> > GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
> > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org

--
Christopher (CJ)
Chaltain at Gmail

_______________________________________________
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orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org

--

Janina Sajka

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:       http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures        http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org

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