Re: accessebility suggestion for Ubuntu 6.06 LiveCD

["Chris Jones" <skating tortoise gmail com>]

It is a pity I was not aware of Xevie earlier in the project.  It may
have caused me to change my mind if I knew there was light at the end
of the tunnel on the core pointer issue.

I understand completely why the dialog boxes are there and why they
are necessary.  They are symptoms of the actual problems.  Simply
suppressing them would do little.

My project as I saw it was not to improve but to fix.  Gnome is in
need of a usable OSK.  The main gripe with it being the configuration
problems.

Since at the time you refused to consider addressing the configuration
problems I was left with no choice.

On 24/07/06, Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 15:10, Chris Jones wrote:
> ...
> > It is possible to detect when pointer grabbing occurs so work arounds
> > are quite possible I should think.
>
> Not as far as I can tell.  X just doesn't allow it.
>
> > Since GOK can not be configured to work out of the box there seems
> > little point installing it by default.
>
> I disagree - we went to a lot of trouble to make GOK work as well as
> possible out of the box.  That said, we felt we needed to warn end-users
> of potential conflicts with the core pointer, thus the warning dialogs
> (easily suppressed, as I have pointed out before).
>
> Bill
>
> > Bill Haneman wrote:
> > >For a pointing-only user (who cannot perform a mouse click), these are
> > >lockout scenarios which effectively hang their desktop sessions, so
> > >these problems are very serious indeed.
> >
> > I'm not sure I understand.  Is this something that could be solved by
> > desktop wide dwell support?
>
> ??
> I don't think so, if I understand your question.
>
> > >The "new onscreen keyboard" does not meet the needs of many
> > >mobility-impaired users.   GOK should be bundled with the LiveCD - once
> > >some configuration issues are dealt with.
> >
> > Are there plans afoot to deal with these configuration issues?
> > Otherwise I think we need to explore alternative approaches.
> > Imperfect though they may be, we need something that works.
>
> There is no point debating this on mailing lists.  Please file bugs
> where the technical issues can be discussed thoroughly.
>
> I plan to follow up with a more detailed email about the pointer
> grab/core-pointer problems.  But in short, because the trend for X
> server configurations is to multiplex all pointing devices together into
> core, and a number of problems with the way the current generation of
> XInput works,  I agree that a different solution seems necessary.  I
> think using Xevie (via AT-SPI, since there can only be one Xevie client
> on a desktop) for all GOK's input is the best approach, but we've been
> holding off on doing this since some distros have shipped with broken
> Xevie support (FC4 for instance).  Now that FC5 is out it seems like a
> good time to require Xevie if that will break the logjam with regard to
> input devices.  This would also make GOK's configuration very simple and
> allow it to work "out of the box" with all mouse-like or button-like
> input devices.
>
> > >???  Because GOK uses GTK+ for its rendering it uses Cairo too.
> >
> > True.  GOKs poor performance is a mystery to me, I have no idea why
> > SOK seems faster.  It does however.
>
> Have you or anyone filed a performance bug?
>
> > >By default GOK gets the physical keyboard's layout from the xserver and
> > >displays that.  However GOK also has alternate physical layouts that you
> > >can use.  They are XML files and straightforward to customize by editing
> > >the XML.
> >
> > I am also hoping to go down this route.  It is much easier to
> > personalise these layouts with SOK which many will want to do since a
> > physical keyboard layout is not necessarily good as an on-screen
> > keyboard.
> >
> > >Henrik said:
> > >> We haven't make any attempt get this into Gnome 2.16 as I could see that
> > > >there would be strong opposition, but I think we can make a good case
> > >> for Gnome 2.18.
> >
> > >Absolutely not.
>
> In the beginning we tried to give guidance, but I got the distinct
> impression that it was going to /dev/null.    This is why I am
> frustrated - lots of behind-the-scenes vague griping, without GOK bugs
> and seemingly without a willingness to engage cooperatively to improve
> the existing Gnome onscreen keyboard suite, which was designed by
> experts in the field of adaptive technologies.
>
> I would very much like to work cooperatively with you and with the rest
> of the Ubuntu team, but in the context of improving our existing OSKs.
>
> Bill
>
> > It's this kind of attitude that discouraged me from asking you for
> > advice.  I can understand how my approach has riled you as a fair bit
> > less work has gone in to SOK than GOK, and yet people talk of
> > replacing it.  However my program is more useful to some people.
> >
> > I hoped to bring new ideas to the area and you seemed determined to
> > squash them from the start.
> >
> > I'm sorry to get personal about this, and your experience and
> > knowledge would be very valuable to me only it seems impossible to
> > enlist your help without this kind of prolonged heated debate breaking
> > out.  It needs to be accepted that there will be differences of
> > opinion and to work together despite this.
> >
> > Chris Jones
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list


--
Chris Jones

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