Re: Request for help setting up Gnopernicus

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Max,

> My name is Max Tappenden. I am 16 years old and am visually impaired. I
> have been referred to this list by my IT teacher to get some help setting
> up gnopernicus on Ubuntu 5.10.
> 
> Firstly, I'd like to say that I am primarily a mac user and am a great fan
> of OS X. I also have had to use Windows as it is required of me by certain
> people at school to run some software, particularly in Maths... I run
> several web servers and these run CentOS or FreeBSD and have grown
> familliar with some linux commands, although I have most of the work done
> on them by other people. So, pretty much a newbie with Linux. I was
> advised by my IT teacher to try Ubuntu and so this is what I am running.
> I've managed to get my wireless connection working and was pretty
> impressed with how it recognized all of my hardware, not requiring me to
> find drivers for anything on my Samsung P28 laptop. Now I am trying to get
> Gnopernicus running. I have installed it using Synaptic. When trying to
> run it I found that the magnifier was unavailable. After doing some
> reading I found that I needed to have gnome-mag installed before I could
> use the magnifier in gnopernicus, and so I installed this through
> Synaptic. Now when I start the magnifier I'm presented with an
> (apparantly) magnified image in the top center of the screen... It has a
> black crosshair, and a large cursor, but everything else just shows up in
> black and white. I haven't got any further than this. Can anyone here help
> me with the configuration of gnopernicus? Also, from looking at what I
> have so far it seems that this only magnifies a part of the screen much
> like the Windows Magnifier. Is this correct? I am used to Universal Access
> Zoom which is included with MacOS X and ZoomText 8 on a PC, both of which
> use full-screen magnification. Is this not possible on linux, or at least
> not with this application? Please advise...

Welcome to the world of UNIX (and in this case specifically GNOME)
accessibility!

Full screen magnification today in UNIX is somewhat kludgy.  You
basically need to specifically configure your X server to have two
displays - either two physical displays, or one physical and one
"virtual" (software) display.  In Linux with the XOrg or XFree86 X
server this is the 'dummy' driver; in Solaris with the XSun server this
is done with the VFB (virtual frame buffer).  Once you have done this,
you configure Gnopernicus to magnify from the software frame buffer to
the hardware frame buffer (or from one hardware frame buffer to the
second), and ensure that your graphical desktop is being sent to the
unmagnified one.  Then make sure that Gnopernicus starts up
automatically when you boot the desktop.

This is all described in more detail in the GNOME 2.10 Accessibility
Guide Appendix A, at:
http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/2.10/apas03.html

We are actively working on this "kludginess", and a shift to some new X
server extenions (most especially COMPOSITE) will help greatly in this
area.  


Regards,

Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

P.S. to Henrik Nilsen Omma - you are very welcome to post to the GNOME
accessibility list, even with KDE apps.  We're all working to make the
UNIX graphical desktop accessible, and whether we use GNOME apps or KDE
apps (or a mixture) to do so, it is the same goal.  That said, unless
I'm mistaken kmag doesn't presently handle accessibility events from
AT-SPI, and so won't track the caret and menu items and focus changes in
GNOME apps, Java apps, Mozilla, Evolution, or
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org.  I know that is being actively worked on, but
unless/until that is fixed, it probably isn't as good an option for
users like Max.