Zoom function in Ubuntu 11.10

[Aurelian Radu <ricaradu gmail com>]

Hello,

I just tried Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 64-bit in live CD mode, without proprietary graphics drivers (System Info doesn't even recognize my ATI card) and I enabled Zoom in System Settings. Then I went to Keyboard and set the shortcuts. I can turn zoom on and off using the keyboard shortcut (I can see it toggle on and off in Accessibility), but zooming doesn't seem to work. I logged in/out but no luck. I logged into Unity 2D, still no luck. I even tried changing the shortcuts to no avail. Is the function broken or am I doing something wrong?

On a more general note, how is the state of magnification in Gnome 3.2, and Ubuntu? Are there any big changes/improvements from 6 months ago? I tried Ubuntu 11.04 when it came out and was sort of disappointed. Unity was completely "unzoomable" and the magnifier no longer followed the text caret in LibreOffice. It used to work just fine in OpenOffice in the past.

Does Gnome still use gnome-mag + Orca or are there newer (and better) alternatives? I know KDE doesn't have a good magnifier and Compiz Enhanced Zoom (the best and most stable magnifier, IMHO) doesn't follow text insertion, which is a deal breaker for me because I use high magnification and need the magnifier to follow text insertion. Looks like I'm stuck with Windows again. 

Thanks for your replies,
Aurelian Radu