Re: Very New: Caribou 0.3.2

[Eitan Isaacson <eitan monotonous org>]

Hey Mats.

2011/6/19 Mats Lundälv <mats lundalv vgregion se>:
> Hi Eitan,
>
> Thanks for the update information - I read your blog with interest!
>
> A couple of questions and comments:
>
> The modular approach for the Keyboard UI - among other things - looks really
> interesting!
> For the version that you are currently working on; What kind of tools and
> opportunities for high-level editing of keyboard layouts and behaviour are
> you envisaging?

Currently we are using a temporary JSON format. I have a branch for
XML layouts, where we could do more powerful things like including
external resources. Eventually that will land in master. I agree with
you about an authoring tool, but that is not on the roadmap for the
near future. Maybe someone would want to start that as an independent
project.

>
> I'm not quite sure about how to interpret your comment about the "Input
> Method Support (bye AT-SPI) section in your latest blog post: What kind of
> problems are you referring to - just technical, or also functinal from the
> user's point of view, etc?

This is still up in the air. I introduced GTK input method modules in
the latest Caribou, but they are disabled by default. There is no
immediate user visible change here. But the overall goal is to
simplify Caribou's architecture and make it easier for users to just
start using, and for distributions to have an easy time too. Caribou
uses an extremely narrow subset of AT-SPI, so it is tempting to cook
our own thing up that would circumvent the need for comprehensive a11y
API support on toolkits and applications. I don't know if the input
modules answer that goal, so they are still experimental. I even
managed to add QT4 support relatively easily.

I feel like this is a topic that will need to be revisited in the
future. There might need to be more than one approach employed
simultaneously.

>
> I think I commented quite a while ago that the feature of displaying the OSK
> only when a text input task is expected may often be problematic for many of
> the potential users - in particular those with a disability - as they may
> often want to use the keyboard not only for typing text, but also for
> sending commands to the UI, as this is often far more effective than using
> the GUI - in particular if you have problems with pointing and clicking, and
> even more if it is possible to set up keys with macro strings, which is
> highly desirable. So these "smart" functions of when to show or hide the OSK
> really MUST be optional from an accessibility point of view (in my view ;-).

I agree with you 100%. The issue for the time being is that there is
more than one type of user an OSK is useful for. Right now we have an
opportunity to get Caribou integrated in GNOME Shell for pointer and
touch screen users, so the focus is there. Pointer users generally
only need an OSK for entering text and could access the other UI
elements in a conventional fashion.

When we talk about scanning support we will need to add a lot more
kinds of keys, "smart" functions, macros, UI navigation, etc. With
that said, I am pretty proud of the progress I have made so far on the
switch access front, if you look out the scanning configuration UI you
will notice that it is cleaner and supports things that users have
grown to expect, like inverse scanning, repeat cycling, auto scan,
etc.

>
> And btw: I take for granted that all the Ctrl, Alt, Shift etc key
> combinations will be available for convenient commands to the application
> and system - as "sticky key" combinations independently from the physical
> keyboard settings - as an OSK should definitely NOT be depending on, or
> interfere with, the physical keyboard functionality (as it has been doing in
> GOK and previously in OnBoard). But I only see the Shift key on your
> keyboard layouts, why?

Like I said above, the focus now is purely text entry. Other Caribou
layouts, such as the "scan" layouts will have ctrl and alt. But our
"touch" layout is for pointer-only users who don't have a real use for
ctrl and alt.

>
> This thing with the need for users to have the keyboard constantly available
> also for UI navigation and control purposes is of course even more necessary
> for users of switch input and scanning, right?

Of course :)

>
> Cheers,
> Mats
> -----gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org skrev: -----
>
> Till: GNOME A11y <gnome-accessibility-list gnome org>,
> gnome-announce-list gnome org
> Från: Eitan Isaacson <eitan monotonous org>
> Sänt av: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org
> Datum: 2011-06-14 00:12
> Ärende: Very New: Caribou 0.3.2
>
> Hello,
>
> This is to announce the release of Caribou 0.3.2
>
> This is the first release for the GNOME 3.2 cycle. This release is
> almost a complete rewrite from previous versions of Caribou. The core
> library is now native GObject (written in Vala), and it is designed to
> be exported over DBus.
>
> For a more verbose list of changes, see my blog posts:
> http://monotonous.org/tag/caribou
>
> ===========
> Version 0.3.2
> ===========
>
> What's New
> ==========
> - Rewritten almost entirely from scratch, featuring a GObject library
> for a DBus activated OSK.
>
> New And Updated Translations
> ============================
> - Marek Černocký (cs)
> - Kris Thomsen (da)
> - Christian Kirbach (de)
> - Daniel Mustieles (es)
> - Mahyar Moghimi (fa)
> - Jiro Matsuzawa (ja)
> - Kjartan Maraas (nb)
> - Djavan Fagundes (pt_BR)
> - Yuri Myasoedov (ru)
> - Andrej Žnidaršič (sl)
> - Sergiy Gavrylov (uk)
> - lainme (zh_CN)
>
> Download
> ======
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/caribou/0.3/caribou-0.3.2.tar.xz
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/caribou/0.3/caribou-0.3.2.tar.bz2
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>
>