Re: [orca-list] about the new sonar distro

[Jonathan Nadeau <j nadeau charter net>]

I don't use many qt apps. But I do use mumble and I would say it is 99% 
accessible. Past releases of Ubuntu and qt-at-spi didn't work that well 
for me. So With mumble it is very accessible now.
 On 08/31/2012 03:06 PM, Hank Smith wrote:
> what about qt apps?
> have u tested any qt accessibility yet?
> Hank
> On 8/31/2012 12:03 PM, Doug Smith wrote:
> > Hi, everyone, this is Doug Smith.  Lately, I have been made aware of 
> > the new sonar Linux distro for the blind.  I have to tell everyone 
> > this.  I am using it right now, installed on my production machine 
> > and I am liking what I am seeing.
> > I have to give you a really honest opinion of the distro, and I 
> > will.  There are several characteristics of the system that I really 
> > like.
> > 1. I got the classic version and it is running like a top.  On the 
> > stock ubuntu with unity 2d, I seem to have had a problem when 
> > pressing return immediately after entering something into the dash 
> > panel.  On the other hand, I had a few accessibility problems with 
> > it.  Not here.  This thing is running so fast that, I would have 
> > thought it was a new machine if I hadn't know any better.
> > 2. ease of installation: This system was so much faster to get 
> > installed than the stock ubuntu, I couldn't believe it.  Real good 
> > stuff!!
> > 3. On the stock ubuntu with unity 2d, the graphical desktop locked up 
> > on me.  This really ticks me off, as this kind of thing has been a 
> > problem since I started working with talking computers 27 years ago 
> > this month and I still see it sometimes. It happens a lot less in 
> > text mode than graphical.  Not on here.  This thing has not hung on 
> > me one single time.  It's really great.
> > 4. Orca never drops on here.  It didn't on the regular ubuntu 
> > neither.  I want to congratulate the Orca development team on 
> > stopping that idiotic crashing behavior Orca used to have.  It's 
> > running smooth as silk.
> > On the stock ubuntu with unity 2d, the keyboard shortcuts I had to 
> > set myself were constantly coming undone.  I couldn't depend on 
> > alt-tab or alt-f4 to be working from session to session. When I found 
> > out that I had to remove the ~/.gconf/apps/metacity directory from my 
> > home folder, I thought all would be well.  It wasn't.  I still fought 
> > a running battle with the window manager over writing its config to 
> > my home directory.  Then I fixed it. It was a dirty hack and a major 
> > cludge, but it worked.  I removed this file then, as root, did this:
> > touch ./.gconf/apps/metacity
> >
> > and this created the new file to replace the configuration 
> > directory.  Well, that wasn't good enough, so I had to put it back 
> > and using the chmod command, remove all permissions, read, write, and 
> > execute from all users.  Problem solved.  Not on here.  All the 
> > keyboard shortcuts have stayed around, even after upgrading the 
> > system.  It's great.
> > 6. On the other side, ubuntu with unity 2d, the sound continually 
> > muted out on its own from session to session.  I have never seen this 
> > in my life, and I am not sure if any of you have or not, so I will 
> > attempt to describe it.  Turn on the machine and do some work. All 
> > will be well.  When the machine was turned off and allowed to cool 
> > overnight, then restarted again the next day to do other things, no 
> > sound.  I had to have some eyes in here so many times it was really 
> > getting bad. Well, adding pavucontrol and the ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev 
> > repository together solved the problem.  No more pulseaudio 
> > problems.  I also did this on here, and pulseaudio is really not all 
> > that hideous.  It works perfectly well except for the distortion for 
> > a few seconds when it starts.  How does pulseaudio avoid this on the 
> > live cd? I guess it's just because it's so slow in getting Orca and 
> > friends started that all that must be out of its system before you 
> > hear it.
> > 7.  This sonar stuff has a really good and fast boot time even though 
> > I have a few extra daemons on here which start at boot time, this 
> > thing really starts up fast.
> > I hope the author of sonar gets this.  I want to talk to him on 
> > mangler or something and let him know personally, rather than just in 
> > writing how good this distro is.  Please keep gnome classic on this 
> > system, and you've got a lifelong user.  If the sighted world is 
> > going to tell me that I have to use a graphical desktop on my machine 
> > just to get hold of the same functionality and information everyone 
> > else has access to, I'll be shot down in flames if they're going to 
> > tell me what OS or desktop to use.  And, by the way, thunderbird 
> > accessibility on here is perfect.  I'm using it to write this message 
> > right now.
> >
> > I just have one question about thunderbird.  How do you set it up 
> > such that all the messages in a thread are not transmitted back and 
> > forth every time you send a mail?  I hate that with a passion and I 
> > hope someone can tell me how to set it up such that I just send what 
> > I wrote and not a quadrilion other messages attached onto it each 
> > time I post to a list.
> >
> >
> > Thanks.