Re: Accessibility of Gnome panel / How to end session via keyboard

[Peter Korn <peter korn sun com>]

Hi John,

I don't mean to suggest this as the ideal way to solve your problem, but I
think there may be another way to reach your goal of exiting GNOME 2.x from
the keyboard.

Ctrl-Alt-Tab will cycle you through the Desktop and whatever panels you have
installed.  Many GNOME desktops have the menu panel installed by default;
certainly you can make that happen for a desktop you control.  Once you have
brought focus to the menu panel, F10 will activate the first menu (the
GNOME-foot/Applications menu).  Right arrow will bring you to the Actions
menu, and the last item on that menu is Log out.  Likewise, you could
associate a mnemonic with Log out, and then once the menu panel had focus you
could press that mnemonic.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team


John Zitterkopf wrote:
> 
> I wasn't real sure where this question / request for assistance should have
> been posted. I figured the Accessibility mailing list would be a good place
> to start as this appears to be a limitation which would affect vision
> impaired people more than my specific application. If you know of a better
> place to seek information, please let me know.
> 
> Executive summary:
> Gnome 2.x does not appear to provide a keyboard shortcut or other means to
> terminating (or logging out) the session.
> The Gnome panel does not appear to have acceleration keys on the menu;
> preventing access via <ALT><F1> key sequence.
> 
> Background:
> Prior to our upgrade to Gnome 2.x; we were using which ever flavor of Gnome
> came with Mandrake-Linux v8.1.  I assume it was some version of Gnome 1.x.
> With 1.x; we were able to enter <ALT><F4> as a key binding and it would
> allow us to assign that key to "logging out" (or maybe it was "ending
> session") (as I recall). This allowed us to use the keyboard to logout via
> the following sequence (as I recall):
> <ALT><F4>
> <ALT>O
> <ENTER>
> 
> Gnome 2.x appears to have removed the ability assign a key binding to ending
> the session... Google searching has not yielded any answers to this
> question.
> 
> As I stated in the summary above; there doesn't appear to be a acceleration
> keys on the gnome panel so I cannot be sure any log out sequences will be
> successful.
> 
> My goal:
> Execute gnome... under keyboard control (without visual feedback).
> Detect gnome is running properly (without visual feedback).
> Using the keyboard only (no mouse, no monitor); shutdown gnome properly.
> Needs to be 100% reliable and repeatable.
> Detect gnome has shutdown and the Linux shell is active.
> 
> Plea for help:
> Am I missing something crucial with the Gnome 2.x?
> Anyone have any "hacking" ideas which I could kludge some configuration
> scripts to give me what I need / want?
> 
> Last resort:
> Where would I begin looking to modify the source code to provide some robust
> method? Keep in mind I have nearly zero experience with code development
> under Linux. I've compiled some apps and kernels which came with prepackaged
> source code; but I'm not sure what packages / files I would start with to
> kludge in some kind of solution.
> 
> John
> 
>               EE's do it 'til it Hz 8-)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~John D. Zitterkopf~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> zitt zittware com           http://www.zittware.com
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