GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 579125
Allow for the "freezing" of flat review
Last modified: 2018-02-08 12:55:26 UTC
Orca has this feature called "flat review". It is a great feature, but has a big problem. If I'm using a Terminal, and there appears new text, Orca jumps to the cursor (Focus tracking mode?). That can be useful, but also very hard to manage: If I'm using e.g. ircii and I want to read a message in the middle of the screen, but someone is sending a new message, orca jumps to the bottom of the window and I have to scroll back to read (and I have to hope that noone will post a message during this). In a channel with a lot of users this is difficult. But this is not only a problem of the terminal, also a problem of Gnomemud or LostIRC. I know from other screenreaders (also from Windows :( ) that they simply stay on the line and let the text scrolling by. My suggestion would be, that orca remains on this line always, when the flat review is activated or that there is a feature to put the flat review in such a mode via a key stroke. My System: Debian Lenny with Orca 2.2 and Gnome mix 2.22/2.20 (Debian mixed Gnome 2.22 with a nautilus v 2.20)
See also http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2009-April/msg00167.html
I would like to suggest that flat review mode be a mode that the user consciously enters and exits. When in flat review mode, no matter what application, the flat review cursor maintains its location no matter what is happening with the carat. When not in flat review mode, the starting position for flat review can move witht he carat. If you would like to maintain the current behavior of flat review always moving to the carat position when the carat moves, make that an option in the preferences, so that the user can select that mode in some applications and not in others. Please let me know if this isn't clear. Thanks!
We are late in the 2.28 release cycle and I want to focus on "high impact"/"low risk" items that also fall within the release team's restrictions in place. Regretfully, this bug doesn't fit well within those constraints and we'll review it for the 2.29 release cycle.