Re: Improving stability in Vinux testing repo by dropping GTK+ patches

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Penelope Stowe <pstowe gmail com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com> wrote:
>>
>> Now, all that said, Luke has limited influence at Ubuntu.  Major
>> headaches, like switching to pulseaudio, and likely the upcoming Unity
>> Desktop, trash accessibility.  Ubuntu rolls out updates without any
>> a11y testing at all, so now and then we find that some critical piece
>> of Vinux dies after an update.
>
> The Ubuntu Accessibility Team is trying to change this.

Outstanding!  BTW, I am a fan of what you're doing.  I tend to only
notice actual code commits, which is one reason I talk a lot more
about contributions from Luke, Joamarie, and other coders (and
Joanmarie claims not to be a coder, but she's not fooling anyone).
Obviously your work is also very important.

> We'd really
> love to get as many people involved with testing as possible, however,
> we're still relatively new in our current formation and need more
> people!

While we lack developers in Vinux land, we do have a fair number of
very good testers.  I've been trying to get Natty up and running -
other Vinux devs have already succeeded.  However, I'm having trouble
with VirtualBox not being able to do 3D acceleration on my machine.
Like other people with some vision impairments, I'm a bit gun-shy
about switching my main machine to a native install of unstable
versions.  As soon as I can figure this out, I'll start testing.

> Right now we're waiting for the accessibility framework for
> Natty to make it into the PPA and next development release, but we do
> hope as many people as possible will help us test.

I think Tony would be interested in a more formal testing role for
Vinux if we can figure out how to enable our blind users to do it.
Most of them are not developers, but they are enthusiastic supporters
of FOSS and have time for testing.

> I really would love to have as many people as possible involved who
> are interested in Ubuntu accessibility. Unfortunately, so far I often
> feel like I see a lot of complaining and fewer people getting
> involved.

Yeah... I'm guilty of complaining a lot myself.  However, I think
people with vision impairments have reason to complain.  I wont list
all the serious crud hampering progress here, but it's a pretty deep
pile.  All I need is a bit of magnification to get by, but now and
then I run across something that even I can't operate, like books that
have no e-book equivalent, and little else in my life makes me so
angry.  For the fully blind, it must be difficult to be civil when so
many things are inaccessible.  I'm always surprised how polite the
discussions are on the Vinux list.

Bill