[g-a-devel] onboard and mousetweaks for gdm and gnome

[Francesco Fumanti <francesco fumanti gmx net>]

Hello,


I would like to inform you about the existence of 2 applications that 
I would like to be considered as candidates for integration to the 
GNOME platform; and this especially for the second because it offers 
fonctionalities still missing in GNOME. The first is the onscreen 
keyboard called onboard (previously called sok) and the second is a 
pointer enhancement utility called mousetweaks.

Both are able to run during a gdmlogin session and during a normal 
GNOME session (at least on my Ubuntu 7.10 installation).


Please, have a look at the first picture of the following website to 
see onboard and mousetweaks work under gdmlogin:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/doc/OnboardAndDwellAtGDM?action=show

Of course, in the GNOME session, onboard and mousetweaks are both in 
resizable windows.



1. OnBoard

Onboard is already part of Ubuntu since Ubuntu 7.04. It is written in 
python and can be used by people in need of an onscreen keyboard, but 
without the need of all the accessibility features provided by gok.

Here are its main features:
- works with zero configuration
- comprehensive language support
- macros, phrases or sentences assigned to a key
- keyboard layouts that are easy to create and modify
- keys can perform an action such as switching mouse buttons
- Re-sizable so that you can make best use of your screen

You can read more about it here:
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cej105/onboard/

The specification used during development is here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Projects/onBoard

It is hosted on launchpad:
https://launchpad.net/onboard

As it is also possible to start onboard during a gdmlogin session, it 
can be especially interesting to tabletpc users.



2. MouseTweaks

Mousetweaks is an utility to add new fonctionalities to the pointer. 
It provides:

- An optional capture area on the panel: if the pointer moves into 
that area, it gets trapped and the user has to enter a determined key 
combination to release the pointer.

- The "delay click": it is an additional way to open the contextual 
menu, namely by keeping the left mousebutton pressed without moving 
the pointer for a determined time.

- The "dwell click": it is a way to perform a single click, double 
click, drag click and right click automatically without having to 
click with a hardware button. It is in fact a click performed by 
software at the location of the pointer, when the pointer remains 
motionless for a determined time. It is considered an accessibility 
feature and as far as I know, GNOME does not currently provide any 
way to do a dwell click. (It is this fonctionality that you can see 
on the picture of the site indicated by the first link of this email.)


Mousetweaks implementation was started as a GSoC 07 project for 
Ubuntu by Gerd Kohlberger:
http://gerdk.blogspot.com/

Its source code will soon be hosted on launchpad.net.

Here is the page with the original specification:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/MouseTweaks

(I would like to point out that the gesture fonctionality indicated 
in the specification is not part of mousetweaks anymore. It has been 
moved into a separate application called chickenscratch and that is 
already hosted on launchpad: https://launchpad.net/cs But that is 
another topic.)


Many thanks in advance for any comment and suggestion.

Have a nice day.

Francesco Fumanti