Matthias, I thought we'd fixed the "can't turn off Orca speech" problem
before out 1.0 release on Sunday. What version of Orca is this?
("orca --version" from the command line will give you this).

well, I am seeing various things.

So, if I turn speech off in the preferences, save it and kill orca (orca --setup
won't go away when I close the window...), and then restart orca, it remainss
silent. But if I run orca --setup, it is always talking to me, regardless
of the enable speech setting.

I have also tried to enable the magnifier, but I have not been able to get orca
to show me the magnifier window...

> But if I run orca --setup, it is always talking to me, regardless
> of the enable speech setting.

Yup, we know about that one. See bug #353269.

> I have also tried to enable the magnifier, but I have not been able 
> to get orca to show me the magnifier window...

Rather than clump all the problems you find into a single bug, could you
please file separate bugs for each one.

Again, what does "orca --version" give you?

Thanks.

oh, I forgot. This is 1.0.0

Thanks Matthias. 

You're right. It's not obvious that the magic incantation to stop
Orca once it's running is to type Insert-q. You can also type
"orca --quit" from the command line. That will terminate the previously
started Orca (and the other associated running processes).

The way that the Ubuntu folks are going to make it easy to
stop Orca is to have another menu item called "Stop Orca"
that does an "orca --quit". 

What we should probably do to fix this is for the generic community
Orca GNOMe distribution to create two menu items: one to start Orca
and one to stop it.

Sound reasonable?

Adding Calum to get the HCI perspective on this.
Calum, there are a couple ways we could fix this:

1/ Create two (or more) desktop menu items for Orca.

   > Start Orca
   > Configure Orca
   > Stop Orca

2/ Adjust Orca so that it has a very minimal GUI that
   "lurks" somewhere on the desktop. It could have a
   couple of buttons. Something like:


  +--------------------------------+
  | Orca Screen Reader / Magnifier |
  +--------------------------------+
  |   [ Configure ]   [ Stop ]     |
  +--------------------------------+

What would you like us to do?

Thanks.

Created attachment 72419 [details]
Add a quit button to the GUI

After further discussion we are fixing this in Ubuntu by adding a Quit button to the config GUI. The idea is that those who prefer the GUI will find that easily and those who prefer the command line or key bindings will have read about orca --quit or Insert+q

I think there is still another scenerio which might happen.
Suppose the user initially configured orca via "orca --text-setup",
from a virtual console, then logs into the desktop and starts Orca.
They won't intially get the Preference GUI showing up.
How does s/he know that Insert-Space brings up that Preferences GUI?
If s/he can't get to the Preferences GUI, how is s/he going to find that
new Quit button.

I suggest that we let an HCI person decide the best approach to solving
this and then have the same experience across all Linux and Solaris desktops.

I realize you are trying to get something that's better for Edgy for GNOME 2.16,
so perhaps you will still need to do your own thing for now, but we need
to wait to see if your suggested fix is the one that should be applied to the community Orca CVS module.

Unfortunately I just got an email stating that Calum is on vacation until
October 2nd.

"...Insert-Space..."

And to make matters worse, all those global keybindings that are grabbed by applications are broken by design. We need some central place to manage
such keybindings, to resolve conflicts, etc. The keybinding capplet may 
play a role in a solution.

Just to put things in perspective: I think Orca is a different kind of application from the normal desktop application.  It's not an app that a user gives focus to, interacts with, and then moves on to another application.  Instead it is a non-graphical representation of the entire desktop, providing access to all applications.  If anything, it's closest to metacity in that it encompasses all apps on the desktop, but it also provides access to metacity itself.  As such, it is more global than one might first think.

> As such, it is more global than one might first think.

Sure. But keybindings are still a shared resource that needs to be
managed somehow to prevent chaos. I'm sure you would not appreciate if
your blind users can no longer access the orca preferences just because
they installed some application that also thought it is a good idea to
grab Insert-Space...

Ok, so my head's not really back into full UI-design mode yet after a month off, but I prefer Rich's option 2 of those alternatives, i.e. a small console window with a couple of buttons (preferably labelled Preferences and Quit though).  Main menu items should open a window (be it an application, folder or URI) and nothing else, really.  And the window option also provides the user a little consistency with the window that gnopernicus shows all the time, albeit a much reduced version.

Longer term I can envisage something like start/stop/configure buttons for each AT in the global AT Preferences dialog, or some sort of new AT control applet or status indicator, but that's probably a whole other discussion for later...

Created attachment 73867 [details] [review]
Patch to create an Orca main window.

Patch makes the following changes:

          > Created a new orca-mainwin.glade Glade file with an Orca main
            window in it.
          > Added a new setting in setting.py:
            mainWindowModule = "orca_gui_main"
            so that this can be adjusted to something else if we so desire.
          > Created an orca_gui_main.py file which contains a showMainUI()
            method. It also contains an orcaMainGUI(GladeWrapper) class
            which contains the three signal handlers.
          > Added code near the end of the main() method in orca.py to
            show the Orca main window.
          > Adjusted the quitNoButtonClicked() signal handler in orca_quit.py
            to recreate the Orca main window.

Checked into CVS HEAD. 

Please give it a try and let me know if you like it.
Mike, I understand you want an option to turn it off.
Please spec out how to would like this done.

The big thing here is that the visibility of this window should be togglable.  Once someone gets familiar with orca they will not want to have this window in the alt+tab order.  I propose the following solution:
 Add a general tab to the orca prefs gui.  At this point this tab will only contain a check box for this item.  It should be something like "show orca main window".  The default will be checked.  If this option is not checked no window will appear and the user will need to press insert+space to bring up the config UI.  The reason I am OK with adding another tab is that I'm sure we'll want to add other things to it in the future.  

Thanks Mike. Looks good to me. I'll generate another patch
that adds in this functionality.

Created attachment 73891 [details] [review]
Patch to add General tab to Orca preferences.

It has one setting at the moment: a checkbox that indicates whether
the Orca main window should be shown (default is yes). Adjusted
the Orca code to use this new preferences setting.

Latest patch checked into CVS HEAD. Hopefully this meets
all the requirements. Closing as FIXED. If anything needs
tweaking, just let me know.

Matthias, if you are still having magnifier problems, please
file a separate bug.

Hey Rich, I just tested this and it looks good.  

Just built from CVS HEAD and found a new window!  Cool -- and definitely an item worth adding!

I personally am happy with it as it is, but I'm going to toss out something for consideration: In the Preferences dialog, General page, under the Show Orca main window checkbox, perhaps it would be handy to have a second checkbox:  "Start up minimized."  This checkbox would only be available if the "Show Orca main window" checkbox were checked.  By default, it would not be checked.  

I can see such an option being handy for folks who *do* want a window for Orca in the Alt+Tab order and who also have low vision.  Under those circumstances the general tendency is to minimize the window first thing to reduce visual clutter on the screen.  It might be nice, therefore, to have that done automatically.

Just a thought.... 

Thanks Joanie. Well, it's darn easy to do. 
Mike, would you like me to add this?

I don't really have a strong feeling about this so lets let the community decide.  

Okay, that seems reasonable. I'll leave it the way it is then for now.
Alt-F9 minimizes an app, so it's pretty trival to do.