[BRLTTY] WORDS AND WORDS... BUT GNOPERNICUS?

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 09:02:20AM -0400, Christopher Moore wrote:
> Hi Kenny,
> I've had similar unfavorable experiences with gnopernicus and gnome.  I
> think the basic problem is getting a compatable snapshot of libraries and
> applications.  
> 

I don't believe that is as big of a problem as it was during the early
development of Gnome accessibility.  For example, I can get The latest
Gnopernicus to build using the Gnome 2.8 available in Debian Sarge.

> Debian seems to be a common starting point, but because debian comes in so
> many flavors, what does this really mean in terms of actual versions of
> applications x, y and z?
> 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Debian stable (sarge) has Gnome 2.8 and
the coresponding versions of libs released for that version of Gnome.
Debian unstable (Sid) has Gnome 2.10 and the coresponding versions of
libs to match the Gnome 2.10 release.
Debian testing (Etch) is still in transition, so it will be the branch
nost likely to have problems.  The problems are likely to be more
general than just Gnome accessibility.

> Another potential distro is ubuntu.  Some folks on the gnome-accessibility
> list have had recent success but not sure whether they were using brltty.
> I booted the accessible live cd, and gnopernicus  actually came up talking.
> There doesn't appear to be any brltty support on the live cd.  The main
> drawback to ubuntu is the lack of an accessible install.  There might be a
> way around this by using debbootstrap to a vacant hd partition.  Again this
> is uncharted territory and may lead to another dead end.
> 
Because most of my Linux experience is in Debian, I prefer to stick with
it instead of switching distros just to get Gnome support.  I believe
most distros have problems with Gnome accessibility, and I know the most
about the Debian specific problems.


> Gentoo may provice the most promise.  The distro can be installed with
> speakup,  brltty is one of the supported packages and the maintainers are
> committed to supporting accessibility.  
> 

I tried Gentoo for a short time last year.  I had better luck with some
things, and worse luck with others.  Probably the best thing to do is
decide on your distro, learn all the details about it, and try to work
within it to fix the issues.

For example, there appears to be a problem switching windows in Debian's
Gnome 2.10.  It affects accessibility, but it isn't an accessibility
bug.  Sighted Debian users are having the same problem.

> So I'm all for some resonably concise documentation on getting some useful
> access out of gnome.

I'll try to recreate the file I started, but it will have parts specific
to Debian.  I origionally wrote it to try to document how to get
Gnopernicus up and running for Sarge.

> 
> As to web browsers, while the text browsers such as elinks have come a long
> way, there is still much work to be done in order to support javascript.
> Perhaps the mozilla solution is preferrable provided the accessibility is
> working.
> 

I would agree if the accessibility is working, but it doesn't seem to
have improved for me in the last year.  During the same time, elinks
added Javascript support.  It's support isn't close to complete, but I
see more progress with elinks than I see with Mozilla accessibility.
Maybe the biggest advantage for elinks is you can actually talk with the
developers.  The same isn't true for Mozilla accessibility.  

          Kenny