Re: [orca-list] Orca & GSettings

[trev saunders gmail com]

HI,

> El 07/06/2010, a las 08:47, Halim Sahin escribi=F3:
>
> > Hi,
> > On Fr, Jun 04, 2010 at 02:50:02 +0200, Javier Hern=E1ndez wrote:
> > >   At the moment, my work consists on change Orca's own config to
> > >   something more in line with the gnome desktop way, like gconf or
> > >   gsettings.
>
> > Changing or adding more gnome dependency to orca would be realy bad
> > because orca should be a generic screenreader for better atspi-dbus
> > change and kde integration.
> > It's a great thing that in gnome 3 many gnomedeps will go away like
> > bonob/gnomespeech etc.
> > =
>
> > I am strictly against adding a new gnome specific dependency to orca!

nice to see other people agree with me on this. :)

> > There are other places in orca which need some improovment like
> > braillerepresentation, Performance optimization in firefox, the long
> > stadnding bug in large treeviews etc.

agreed, lets fix actual bugs not do things that might improve a UI some.

>       From my point of view, what it is left in your reasoning is that migrate t=
> o something more formal like the current situation about settings managemen=
> t is profitable for the spread of Orca in any Freedesktop-like environment.

no(!)  the configuration file approach would work perfectly well in any window manager or desktop.  The 
desktop might not like it as a part of it because it doesn't do things its way, but if orca isn't part of any 
desktop that's fine.  If qt could talk to at-spi today, I could install kde and use it or a qt application 
with no problem.

>       Even if somebody wants to migrate Orca to KDE (i.e.) he will faced the sam=
> e problem that Javier is trying to resolve. Put order in setting management=
>  in Orca.
no.  same as above, the configuration file will work perfectly fine.  It won't be "integrated" in that you 
don't use one colosel gui to configure it with everything else, but it will do its job read what whats on the 
screen perfectly well, and be perfectly configurable.  

>       And, in short run, we need to support Gsettings for the inclusion in GNOME=
>  3.0 (I think that anybody wants to lost Orca's support in GNOME).

Unless something huge happens in gnome / gtk orca will still work fine whatever we do with our configuration. 
 I doubt gnome would do anything if we don't change the way we deal with configuration. They haven't done 
anything for the last 14 versions why would they now?  Even if they did decide to do something what can they 
do?  take resources on gnome.org I believe that's about it other than remove us from the list of packages in 
gnome.  If this were to be a problem I for one would happily put forward the time and money to setup orca on 
a vps of our own.

>  After that, maybe freedesktop release a solution to support GSettings with dconf ov=
> er d-bus or another standard (freedesktop compliant) settings systems will =
> released.

no(!)  What your saying is that you'd like to break a lot of stuff that works perfectly wel because you 
believe orca would work better in gnome if you do.  Then your saying that adding a lot of complexity that 
breaks stuff is ok because people who need to fix what you broke might be able to make the stuff you did work 
by adding in even more complication. THis still doesn't fix the problem you've created for people who want to 
use awesome / ion / fluxbox, and don't want to use add gsettings to there system.

>       As Luke Yelavich said, now is time for gnome after Orca should move to oth=
> er freedesktop environments.

Yes, currently we work best with gnome, but *do* work on other gtk based window managers.  Since it is our 
intention to move away from gnome why do you want to include gnome dependancies?  If we have to work on this 
for some reason (I don't see an urgent need).  WHy don't we think about what we are doing and do it in a way 
that we won't have to redo for other desktops.  As Luke also said we don't have the man power to dupplicate 
effort.
If I had to make orca use gsettings / whatever desktop configuration mess what i would do is this.  First 
rework the configuration system to read the options out of a file, not import some python.  Importing the 
python imho is an ugly but working hack.  Then we can have orca read its configuration from the file at start 
up and request.  If we like we can keep a settings gui in orca or not.  Finally If someone sees the need they 
can write hooks that somehow update orca's configuration file from the gsettings, and poke orca into 
rereading that configuration file.  This way we won't add dependancies, orca will still work perectly well 
were it does now, and won't have a problem when we want to use it under kde.  However we will have solved the 
supposed problem that we couldn't use gsettings to setup configuration.

Hope I haven't been to personal :-)
I just don't want to have to rework orca's configuration system again myself so I can happily use firefox :-)

Trev