GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 387973
add keybinding to start the visual assistive technology
Last modified: 2011-02-19 03:25:39 UTC
Enable Metacity to start gnome-at-visual when the user types <ctrl><atl>s. For more information see: http://live.gnome.org/GAP/ScratchPad/PreferredApplications
Created attachment 78702 [details] [review] prototype 20061220 Untested prototype.
The keybinding conflicts with the request for switching screen focus in multi-head setups (see some open metacity bug I think numbered somewhere in the 101xxx range). Also, just as I mentioned in the other bug, I dislike the idea of stealing Ctrl-Alt-[a-z] in general (Ctrl-Alt-d for show_desktop was before I got involved). We need to figure out some keybindings that don't conflicts and that are good (i.e. most likely not Ctrl-Alt-[a-z]) before committing either of these. I don't see any other problems with the patch in a quick overview.
Unfortunately there's a bit of inconsistency in how our default global shortcuts have been chosen generally... note that we also now have Ctrl-Alt-L for lock screen :/ Alt-F1 (pop up main menu) Alt-F2 (open Run... dialog) PrintScreen (screenshot) Alt-PrintScreen (screenshot of focused window) Ctrl-Alt-L (lock screen) Ctrl-Alt-D (show desktop) The dilemma, as usual, is that Ctrl-alt-<letter> is easier to remember for users, but potentially takes shortcuts away from application developers. Alt-F<n> is less likely to be used by an application, but is harder to remember for users. That said, applications should very rarely need to resort to using Ctrl-Alt-<letter> for their own purposes... are there any examples of GNOME apps that do? If not, I'd be inclined to slightly prefer Ctrl-Alt-<something>; if so, I guess we should go with Alt-F<something.>
If there is no assistive technology currently running and a blind or low vision user would like to get one up and running, then currently he/she would need to press "<Alt><F2>" then without feedback type in the screen reader's command and arguments. I'm proposing to add "<Clt><Alt>s" for Metacity to run the new "gnome-at-visual" wrapper script which would launch the system's or the user's preferred visual assistive technology. http://live.gnome.org/GAP/ScratchPad/PreferredApplications http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387973 I hope this is a worthwhile enhancement.
Yeah, it would be nice if all the keybindings between gnome-settings-daemon and metacity had been combined and been under the control of the window manager (which David and Dan were suggesting last year at GUADEC). Then I could have rejected things like Ctrl-Alt-L. ;-)
I'd like community feedback on the keybinding issue. Depending on that feedback, I may allow Ctrl-Alt-[a-z], but I think you'll need to switch either way (if Ctrl-Alt-s is allowed, it makes a lot more sense to me to use it for "switch screen focus" than for "visual assistive technology program launcher"). Anyway, see http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-April/msg00170.html
The keybinding request (387973) to complement the accessibility enhancement to Preferred Applications (350263) is not critical. Omitting it should not directly impact LSR, Orca, or GNOME Magnifier. It or an equivalent solution would be nice to have, but we shouldn't make it a blocker for the LSR proposal.
It looks like there wasn't a lot of response to <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-April/msg00170.html> :) So should we just go ahead and pick a shortcut? (I'm thinking Ctrl-Alt-A, if we're going with Ctrl-Alt-S for bug #101659, but I'm not an Emacs user so don't know what sort of bug #395645-like chaos they would cause...)
Perhaps an email should be send to gnome-accessibility-devel@gnome.org
Note similar bug #531596 which suggests that the keybinding be added to the keybindings capplet. I'm not sure if it makes more sense to fix this in metacity or gnome-control-center, but I wanted to highlight the similar bug report.
@Brian: I may be misunderstanding your point here, but won't it have to be fixed in both? Metacity will implement it, and the configuration will be set in the capplet.
Agreed, perhaps this is something that needs to be enhanced in both places. I'm not sure. I filed the other bug without knowing about this one. I just wanted the bugs to reference each other so proper coordination could happen.
I'll close this as a duplicate of bug 531596. Most of the keybindings are implemented within gnome-settings-daemon, with the UI for setting them in gnome-control-center. If you have ideas about what default keybindings to set, if any, please add them to bug 531596. If keybindings are missing, please file a new bug against gnome-settings-daemon's media keys plugin. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 531596 ***