[BRLTTY] brltty new user

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by kendell clark on 2016/07/02 at 20:08 -0500]

>I think this is why it would be useful for brltty to only read the new
>incoming text if it's below a certain length. You wouldn't want whole
>screenfulls of new text read out, that would take a while and might not
>have anything you want to read. 

If the screen reader starts to present the data, then it needs to keep on 
presenting all of the data. If it suddenly stops after some limit, the user 
will likely think that something has gone wrong with his system.

>It's up to you guys if you add this feature and what you set it to,

:-)

>but storm is asking for a useful feature. 

It's either useful because it actually is, or it's perceived to be useful 
simply because that's how something else has always done it. That's what I'm 
trying to understand.

>Does brltty do this with braille? New text appearing either on the screen if 
>you're in console mode or in the gui if you're using brlapi?

Yes, of course new text appears on the screen. No, however, that brltty 
automatically jumps to the new text and starts to follow along with it. I guess 
that's just not how braille users think. We just move the braille display 
around the screen, even while a command is executing, to read whateever it is 
that we want to be reading. Normally, cursor movement automatically jumps the 
braille display back to the current line, but we can disable that feature 
(cursor tracking) if we need to, as well.

As of the most recent release, 5.4, one can almost do what you're describing. 
There's a new feature in 5.4 called delayed cursor tracking. What it does is 
delay the automatic movement of the braille display due to cursor movement as 
long as the cursor movement is entirely outside what's currently on the braille 
display. If, within the delay period, the cursor goes back to exactly where it 
originally was, the braille display doesn't move. The intent of this feature is 
to prevent the braille display from being undesirably, automatically moved due 
to things like the updating of a status lines.

Another practical use of this, however, is to start a command and then move the 
braille display up one line. Now the braille display will always show the last 
line of command output until the command completes, at which time the braille 
display does automatically jump to the new command prompt.

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Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | The Bible is the very Word of God.
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