from:"B. Henry"

It's been some time since I've used a standard mate configuration, so honestly 
I do not remember whether once III added the mate network applet to 
my panel it just worked like it should have with orca, or if I had to go in to 
the system menus and use the networkinterface and enter the name and PW 
there. 
I know if it had been very troublesome I'd have remembered more.
If you don't get it sorted out in a day or two write me back and I'll  change 
the configuratin of a mate installationh I have and see what works. I've 
got too much going on to look at this today and tomorrow.  

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  Glenn / Lenny wrote:
Sat, Apr 02, 2016 at 08:32:17AM -0500

>Message: 5
>Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 05:22:49 -0600
>    From: "B. Henry" <[1]burt1ib...@gmail.com>
>To: [2]ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
>Subject: Re: gnome shell versus mate
>Message-ID: <[3]20160402112249.gc2...@gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
>And how did you add your own network?
>This should be easy.
>The way I added my own network is not a problem, you go to Internet and
>Network, and WIFI under type and then add, and enter the information.
>But this method does not show available SSIDs and if you think you know
>the SSID and don't enter it exactly, and have the infrastructure type
>correct, you will not connect.
>All this is with clean installs of Ubuntu Mate, no changes.
>So do you know how I can find the WIFI list?
>It does not work like with Gnome, with alt + control + tab or any other
>variant of that.
>Glenn
>Did you not remove the mate bottom panel, and perhaps relocate the top
>panel to the bottom?
>You can only read one panel, and it will be the last installed.
>Put all your icons and applets on the same panel, and things work as they
>should for the most part..
> 
> 
>-- 
>
> 
> References
> 
>Visible links
>1. 
> file:///dev/mhtml:{AC45AB4A-95F3-477C-93EE-6634985EC77A}mid:/0431/!x-usc:mailto:burt1ib...@gmail.com
>2. 
> file:///dev/mhtml:{AC45AB4A-95F3-477C-93EE-6634985EC77A}mid:/0431/!x-usc:mailto:ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
>3. 
> file:///dev/mhtml:{AC45AB4A-95F3-477C-93EE-6634985EC77A}mid:/0431/!x-usc:mailto:20160402112249.gc2...@gmail.com

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Re: gnome shell versus mate

There is more than one way you can to this, but basically you either make a 
link to a .desktop file, the files used to launch graphical applications, or 
copy the file it self from /usr/share/applications to your desktop.
You can even sym link directly to an executable. 
I think what Kendell was saying was that you can't easily customize gnome's top 
bar, although there are a few things availble to add I think. 
There is a lot that can not be customized with gnome however, and that is 
certainly one of its weaknesses. 
Putting icons on the deskto pis not an issue however. 
The thing is, people probalby miss the old menu item that gave you a couple of 
fields to fill in to put a launcher on the deaktop or panel of your 
choice. 
Also, in gnome you cn't go adding panels like you can in mate, or xfce. Too bad 
xfce panels are not accessible. 
I think it's a bit better than maate for sighted folk, and would be for us if 
those panels would start talking...lol
 


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  Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Fri, Apr 01, 2016 at 07:03:26PM -0500

> Are you sure you can't add your own desktop items? I don't recall how I did
> it, but I have a few desktop icons that I know I created myself in Gnome 3.
> 
> I also don't have any problem removing a drive. I just find the icon for the
> drive on the desktop, hit the applications key and then arrow down to eject.
> 
> On 01/04/16 08:41, kendell clark wrote:
> >hi
> >Being objective is a little difficult, since I've switched back to mate,
> >but i'll give it a shot. Hear goes.
> >Gnome is great if you don't want to have a customized panel with
> >different applets on it. The gnome panel is set and can't be changed
> >easily. It requires an extension or gsettings keys to do so.
> >
> >As a resultt, once you learn where everything is it won't ever change.
> >This is an advantage if you just want to run your apps and not have to
> >go looking for stuff on the panel. On the other hand, gnome has taken
> >out a lot of functionality that mate, being a fork of gnome 2 before all
> >this stuff was removed, has. In gnome, you can't select a different
> >sound theme than the default except by using gsettings.
> >
> >You can't create your own desktop icons, and removing a drive through
> >the gui is buried in nautilus. Whether you care about this stuff mostly
> >depends on what you do with your computer. Mate is much lighter on
> >resources, which won't matter unless you have a computer that gnome
> >doesn't run well on. On the other hand, mate's panels can be very odd
> >with orca, sometimes getting stuck and requiring a reset of orca or the
> >panel to fix things.
> >
> >Mate is a lot more configurable, but has the disadvantage of not being
> >able to run apps as root accessibly. At least for now. This is being
> >worked on right now and should be fixed shortly. Mate has a nice menu
> >system, with apps organized into categories. Sound and video, office,
> >etc. You can't search for apps like you can in gnome, to find them you
> >have to use the menus or add them to the desktop.
> >
> >You can of course create keyboard shortcuts to launch them and so on. I
> >can't tell you which is better because each one is preferred by
> >different people. But mate tends to be better on computers that don't
> >have a lot of power or memory. Gnome has more desktop effects and can
> >search, but has a lot of the more advanced functionality removed. It's
> >really up to you, in the end.
> >Thanks
> >Kendell Clark
> >
> >
> >Daniel Crone wrote:
> >>Hello.  I am curious about the advantages of gnome shell over mate, or vice 
> >>versa.
> >>What do you think?
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> Christopher (CJ)
> chaltain at Gmail
> 
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Re: gnome shell versus mate

And how did you add your own network?
This should be easy.
Did you not remove the mate bottom panel, and perhaps relocate the top panel to 
the bottom? 
You can only read one panel, and it will be the last installed. 
Put all your icons and applets on the same panel, and things work as they 
should for the most part..

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  Glenn / Lenny wrote:
Fri, Apr 01, 2016 at 06:37:15PM -0500

>Hi,
>With the exception of not being able to connect to hotspots other than my
>own router, I like Mate very much.
>This inability with Orca is indeed frustrating.
>In Gnome, one could access the top panel and locate available networks and
>connect.
>If anyone has found a way to do this with Mate, I would like to know.
>Glenn

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Re: gnome shell versus mate

Honestly, the current state of the classicmenu-indicator is much less helpful 
than it could be in my opinion. 
There are too many categories, and a large percentage of items appear in 
multiple sub-menus. 
I mean, really, sundry and other? 
This is too bad as this was a nicer tool back when I first used it when gnoe 
shell was still pretty new. 
I've got an alternative that hopefully will be packaged for Ubuntu this weekend 
that is rather more efficient I think, will let you know about it, or 
write me off list and I'll send you a tarball that can be installed with a 
couple of commands, i.e. extracting the files and running the installer.



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  Rob Whyte wrote:
Sat, Apr 02, 2016 at 08:26:02AM +1100

> Have you tried installing classicmenu-indicator?
> 
> On 02/04/16 08:18, Don Raikes wrote:
> > I am just used to the old menu-driven approach and whenever I try to do 
> > something I can't find it in gnome.
> >
> > I am working on a security-based debian derivative named kalilinux, and I 
> > don't know all the tools so it would be helpful to have the menus to guide 
> > me into knowing the various tools and their general functions.
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Rob Whyte [mailto:fu...@thefudge.net] 
> > Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 12:43 PM
> > To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> > Subject: Re: gnome shell versus mate
> >
> > Hi,
> > What frustrates you about Gnome Don?
> > cheers
> > Rob
> >
> >
> > On 02/04/16 03:30, Don Raikes wrote:
> >> I have been frustrated with gnome-shell for a while now and want to go 
> >> back to mate.
> >> I downloaded the ubuntu-mate-15.10 desktop iso and have tried installing 
> >> it in a vmware virtual machine, but once it is installed I can't get sound 
> >> working on it at all.
> >>
> >> I tried with a variety of configurations over the last couple of days but 
> >> nothing seems to work.
> >>
> >> -Original Message-
> >> From: kendell clark [mailto:coffeekin...@gmail.com] 
> >> Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 6:41 AM
> >> To: Daniel Crone; ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> >> Subject: Re: gnome shell versus mate
> >>
> >> hi
> >> Being objective is a little difficult, since I've switched back to mate, 
> >> but i'll give it a shot. Hear goes.
> >> Gnome is great if you don't want to have a customized panel with different 
> >> applets on it. The gnome panel is set and can't be changed easily. It 
> >> requires an extension or gsettings keys to do so.
> >>
> >> As a resultt, once you learn where everything is it won't ever change.
> >> This is an advantage if you just want to run your apps and not have to go 
> >> looking for stuff on the panel. On the other hand, gnome has taken out a 
> >> lot of functionality that mate, being a fork of gnome 2 before all this 
> >> stuff was removed, has. In gnome, you can't select a different sound theme 
> >> than the default except by using gsettings.
> >>
> >> You can't create your own desktop icons, and removing a drive through the 
> >> gui is buried in nautilus. Whether you care about this stuff mostly 
> >> depends on what you do with your computer. Mate is much lighter on 
> >> resources, which won't matter unless you have a computer that gnome 
> >> doesn't run well on. On the other hand, mate's panels can be very odd with 
> >> orca, sometimes getting stuck and requiring a reset of orca or the panel 
> >> to fix things.
> >>
> >> Mate is a lot more configurable, but has the disadvantage of not being 
> >> able to run apps as root accessibly. At least for now. This is being 
> >> worked on right now and should be fixed shortly. Mate has a nice menu 
> >> system, with apps organized into categories. Sound and video, office, etc. 
> >> You can't search for apps like you can in gnome, to find them you have to 
> >> use the menus or add them to the desktop.
> >>
> >> You can of course create keyboard shortcuts to launch them and so on. I 
> >> can't tell you which is better because each one is preferred by different 
> >> people. But mate tends to be better on computers that don't have a lot of 
> >> power or memory. Gnome has more desktop effects and can search, but has a 
> >> lot of the more advanced functionality removed. It's really up to you, in 
> >> the end.
> >> Thanks
> >> Kendell Clark
> >>
> >>
> >> Daniel Crone wrote:
> >>> Hello.  I am curious about the advantages of gnome shell over mate, or 
> >>> vice versa.
> >>> What do you think?
> >> --
> >> Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
> >> Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
> >>
> >
> 
> 
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Re: accessibility profiles, what is it and how it works?

2016-03-30 Thread B. Henry

This does indeed sound very good, and of course leads one to wonder about 
sharing custom profiles.
Is there now, or will there in the planned future be an easy way to export and 
import accessiblity profiles?
Thanks much to you and anyone who has worked on enhancing this functionality.


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  Luke Yelavich wrote:
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 04:03:16PM +1100

> On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 09:31:46PM AEDT, Pavel Vlček wrote:
> > Hi,
> > after today's update, when I press alt f10 key, I get accessibility
> > profiles menu. I am using Orca normally, but no profile was selected.
> > I changed it to screen reader witch speech. What changet? I am using
> > Ubuntu daily, to install the Ubuntu, I used live dvd from 10th March.
> 
> Accessibility profiles are a way to facilitate the configuration of the
> Ubuntu desktop for people with disabilities. An accessibility profile
> contains settings that improve the usage of the desktop environment for
> particular assistive technologies.
> 
> Accessibility profiles have been around for many years now, I think as early
> as Ubuntu 8.04, if not earlier, however until now, they have not been as easy
> to work with. For one, they were only available in the live session or the
> installer, and for another, they were not available post install, and were
> hard coded in a shell script, that was only present in the live environment.
> 
> As of Ubuntu 16.04, the accessibility profile system has been much
> improved. The profiles are available on the live session, and during
> installation, and also available post install. So for example, you can now
> create a new user, log into that user, and enable a particular accessibility
> profile for them, without having to manually tweak a bunch of settings.
> 
> What you are seeing is the new accessibility profiles indicator. By default,
> the indicator is enabled when any accessibility profile is enabled,
> to allow the switching between profiles if the user so desires. The
> indicator can be turned off from the universal access control panel,
> under the accessibility profiles tab.
> 
> One other advantage of the new accessibility profile system is you can now
> create your own profiles, and they will appear in the indicator alongside
> other profiles. The profile system allows for any gsettings key to be
> changed when a profile is enabled. Creating a profile is not yet documented,
> and thats something I have to work on, and it will likely be put on the
> Ubuntu wiki under the accessibility section.
> 
> Unfortunately due to time constraints, I was not able to implement this
> support for all Gtk/GNOME based flavours of Ubuntu. Doing so would require
> adding UI to the various desktop environments to allow the profiles
> indicator or equivalent to be enabled/disabled. I would also have to
> code extra modules to properly support GNOME shell, and Mate's own panel
> applet system. Once this work is done however, the design is such that it
> would then be possible for profiles to contain settings specifically for a
> particular desktop environment, so you could have settings for mate that
> would be applied when the profile is enabled, and those settings would
> not be enabled under Unity or GNOME shell.
> 
> Luke
> 
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Re: Orca 3.20 in ubuntu 16.04 question

2016-03-24 Thread B. Henry

I do not know exactly what you are trying to say, but it appears you are mis 
informed. 
Orca works with most version s of firefox very well. 
There was a time, between firefox25 and 29 or 30 where things wer pretty sad, 
and one or two release/builds have com eout over the years with an 
accessiblity issue, but orca should have nothing to do with your security.
Ordca has dramatically improved its working with firefox in recent releases, 
and this is not going to change for the worse. 

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  Alex ARNAUD wrote:
Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 10:31:36AM +0100

> On 03/23/2016 12:07 AM, Luke Yelavich wrote:
> >Orca 3.18.2 will be in Ubuntu 16.04. I will make Orca 3.20 available in the 
> >accessibility PPA when I get a chance. Unfortunately newer versions of Orca 
> >do not work properly with the Unity dash, so I need to work out a fix for 
> >that.
> What's about test compatibility between Firefox and Orca ? As I know Ubuntu
> updates Firefox version each time for security but Orca is only compatible
> with the current version of Firefox.
> 
> Best regards.
> 
> -- 
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> 
> 
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Re: Orca 3.20 in ubuntu 16.04 question

2016-03-22 Thread B. Henry

Is accessibility overall going to be similar in 16.04 to recent Ubuntu 
releases? have things changed much on the accessiblity front since 14.04?
Thanks.


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  Luke Yelavich wrote:
Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 10:07:52AM +1100

> On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 04:34:14AM AEDT, Pavel Vlček wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Orca 3.20.0 is here. Is here a chance to be released in Ubuntu 16.04,
> > or 3.18.2 will be included in 16.04? I don't know Ubuntu release plan.
> > Can I read it somewhere?
> 
> Orca 3.18.2 will be in Ubuntu 16.04. I will make Orca 3.20 available in the 
> accessibility PPA when I get a chance. Unfortunately newer versions of Orca 
> do not work properly with the Unity dash, so I need to work out a fix for 
> that.
> 
> Luke
> 
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Re: chromium orca accessibility

Last I heard, chromium was not working with the google TTSs at all. 
As chrome isworking with speech-dispatcher again maybe chromium is working with 
sd again also. 
It did not work as well as chrome back when it could be used with chromevox and 
speech-dispatcher, but was usable for me. Others found it much buggier. 
Chrome isstill a better choice as far as I know. 
You canjust download and install and repos will be enabled as well.
Then make an extensions directory in /opt/google/chrome/ and copy a file I'll 
attach there.
then start chrome with the --enable-speech-dispatcher option, and a while later 
hopefully chromevox will install and you will get speech. 
I think chromevox actually installs with voices now, but as I've had my 
configuration synced for years now I do not know exactly what new installers 
get.
Try starting chrome normally with out the option and see if you get the female 
voice. Those voice files are probably large, so the download might take a 
while on slower connections, so be pasient and or ask some one to take a look 
and see if things appear to be installing.
Once you do have chrome talking log in and make sure your configuration is 
going to sync/think extension syncing is default, but I'm not sure.
Then all you will need is someone to tell you where the username and pw fields 
are if you install chrome on another box.

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  Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 10:20:32AM -0500

> It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I used option #2, installing
> from the Google PPA, on the following web page 
> http://ubuntuportal.com/2014/04/how-to-install-google-chrome-web-browser-in-ubuntu-14-04-lts-trusty-tahr.html
> 
> I used the Chrome web store to instal ChromeVox and the default
> female TTS from Google. I needed sighted assistance to do this
> originally.
> 
> On 17/03/16 09:55, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> >How did you get those installed?  google keeps redirecting me to chromium.
> >
> >On Thu, 17 Mar 2016, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> >
> >>Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 10:52:35
> >>From: Christopher Chaltain 
> >>To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> >>Subject: Re: chromium orca accessibility
> >>
> >>I don't see the original message, but if the question has to do with
> >>Chromium then I'll just add that I use Chrome and ChromeVox on my
> >>Vinux 5 system almost daily.
> >>
> >>On 16/03/16 19:41, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> >>>So far as I can tell, that's not ready for prime time.  I'm using unity
> >>>and vinux flavor of ubuntu for now.  One firefox extension that would
> >>>probably be useful for orca users is pentadactyl since that is supposed
> >>>to make firefox easier for keyboard users to use  I didn't find that
> >>>using aptitude or apt-cache search so figure I'll probably have to get
> >>>it directly from mozilla's archives.  Before I do attempt to install
> >>>pentadactyl, has anyone on this list already had experience with the
> >>>extension or add-on they'd be willing to share?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>--
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> 
> -- 
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> chaltain at Gmail
> 
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Subject lines was: just a suggestion

Yes, and I generally do this when I change the topic, but occasionaly do 
forget. 
I also often change the subject line even when I did not change the subject 
myself, and even bring this up frequently enough that I sometimes worry that 
folks will get tired of me trying to correct bad posting practices. 
Please join me in this crusade so that there is more than one of us to 
hate...lol
In the same vane many people start a conversation with a subject that gives 
little or no idea as to what is being discussed or what question is asked. 
I do delete email that does not interest me when I know I am unlikely to be 
able to contribute any thing useful to the conversation, and often delete 
imprecisely subjected messages. 
More often I do answer a person once or twice and give them a reminder about 
making good subject lines, and sometimes I just answer, but I certainly 
think spending a few seconds coming up with an explanatory subject for an email 
is the least one can do if they are asking for help.

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  Daniel Crone wrote:
Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 04:39:43AM -0500

> Hello everyone.
> I know I am new here, but I wish to offer a suggestion.
> I wrote an introduction, and people replied.  Thanks.
> Then some wrote about other matters, but the subject stayed the same.
> Since some might like to search messages by thread on the website, would it 
> not be more logical to give a message its own subject, if it differs from 
> what came before?
> I would like to know what you think.
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Re: ubuntu 12, temporary solution

What system do you want to back up, i.e. what OS, distro if Linux, a system 
that is currently installed, or the ubuntu-mate you say you are going to 
install?
Have you installed a lot of extra software beyond what came on the installer 
image you used?
Is all the extra software you installed in repos, or did you build anything 
from source or install .deb packages you downloaded?
The short answer if you are talking Linux and did not make a seperate /home 
directory is to copy your whole /home directory, e.g.  something like 
/home/dan, somewhere. 
I've done this with anormal cp command, or from a file manager, but better 
would be to use rsync. 
Unless you have done some editing of files in /etc/ most of your settings are 
in that home directory.

You can then just reinstall the programs you added, and voila.
Answer the questions above and we can give more specifics.
Also, are you talking about reinstalling the system to the same computer where 
it was installed, or putting it on a different one?

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  Daniel Crone wrote:
Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 11:44:28AM -0500

> I dug out an ubuntu 12 stick, and installed it to my hard drive.
> I know it is old, but I will use it to burn a ubuntu mate disk.
> But in the mean time, is there a way to back up my whole system, so that if I 
> like, I could install it, without having to reconfigure everything?
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Re: introduction

It is something specific to your system if mate term is faster. It's as close 
to the same thing as is possible, was actually the exact same size, and 
had 0 differences one time when I dcompared.
Thunderbird  works perfectly with unity. It sounds like something is messed up, 
corrupted or badly configured if you are having the problems mentiioned, 
Jude.
Gnome is notably lighter than unity when it comes to RAM usage.

 




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  Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 09:48:04AM -0500

> If you're running Vinux 5, you don't need to install Gnome. You can
> just go into options on the log on screen and choose between Mate,
> Unity and Gnome.
> 
> Also, if you're running Unity, you shouldn't have any trouble running Gnome.
> 
> Chromium may not work well with Orca, but I use Chrome with
> ChromeVox all of the time.
> 
> I run Thunderbird with Gnome, and I don't have these issues.
> 
> On 17/03/16 09:18, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> >I have vinux5 installed which runs unity and found out thunderbird and
> >unity don't like each other very much.  I was able to enter my gmail
> >credentials and get to the inbox using I think it was shift-f10 inside
> >of thunderbird but haven't got email down for reading yet.  I may have
> >to install gnome but with only a gig of ram on my athelon X86_64 gnome
> >will probably crash the computer.  Inside mate to get to a terminal you
> >want to run mate-terminal since that runs faster than gnome-terminal.
> >The mate-terminal also works under unity.  Firefox works pretty well
> >from my limited use of it so far.  The chromium app isn't accessible for
> >orca at all and isn't worth messing with for now at least.  Emacs is
> >available and probably very accessible as a work environment which
> >should help cover any of libreoffice's shortcomings.  Thunderbird is
> >easily crashed over here, but then again I'm a touch typist and have
> >little tollerance for keyboard latency unless I get some kind of audio
> >indication that something I've done is being worked.  Some clicks from
> >the speaker would help in this respect but I don't know that any form of
> >Linux offers this feature that can be enabled yet.
> >More than that I don't yet know but will find out as I hack through this
> >system.
> >
> >
> >On Thu, 17 Mar 2016, Daniel Crone wrote:
> >
> >>Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:44:28
> >>From: Daniel Crone 
> >>To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> >>Subject: introduction
> >>
> >>Hello one and all.
> >>My name is Daniel, and I have used different operating systems through
> >>the years.
> >>I have decided to give ubuntu mate a try.
> >>I am very new to linux.
> >>Before starting, I welcome anyone?s words of wisdom for a totally
> >>blind user, new to linux.
> >>I liked the idea of sonar, but I have tried to install several times,
> >>and the installer never finished.
> >>But that could be due to my machine?s being so old and slow.
> >>From the dvd, sonar worked very well.
> >>I hope ubuntu will be equally good.
> >>So, hats off to all, those on the sonar team, and to all on the ubuntu
> >>team.
> >>I would really like for all linux accessibility people to benefit each
> >>other.
> >>--
> >>Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
> >>Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
> >>https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
> >
> 
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> chaltain at Gmail
> 
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Resource usage was: introduction

2016-03-18 Thread B. Henry

I am reffering to both minimum hardware requirements and comparing the desktops 
on the same hardware.
Linux in general will use as much RAM as is available up to the point where 
performance is optimal, and then use swap space. 
This is a good thing of course as RAM is much faster than reading from and 
writing to disk. 
Older windows would use the windows equibalent of swap more than it should have 
for optimal performance. 
When I had only 1gig of RAM unity used a lot of swap space, and even gnome2.x 
had programs swapping stuff out of course. 
I could tell the difference in performance between a machine with 1GB and 
another with 1.5GB with identical specs other than that.
I avoid multitasking in the GUI more than most, and for me it appears that 
1.5GB is the oint where adding more RAM has little if any effect on 
performance with Desktops like XFCE, or Mate. Of course that would not be true 
if one keeps several windows open with resource hungry aps. 
There are other things that effect memory consumption of course as well, 
notably   non executable data is cached, so if you open many different files 
you chip away...
I was running 32bit OSs BTW on the machines with 1 and 1.5gigs of RAM, not sure 
if usage would vary enough to change my observations if they had run 
64bit opperating systems.
Unity certainly will benefit from more memory. KDE is supposed to be rather 
resource hungry, but I've never run it.
If you do not multitask 3GB is enough RAM to avoid most need for swap on 64bit 
systems running gnome and even Unity for me, and personally I don't think 
I would benefit often at all from more than 4GB of RAM.
Of course your mileage may vary, and through in a program with memory leaks and 
everything goes to hell.

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  kendell clark wrote:
Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 12:33:10AM -0500

> hi
> One thing I've noticed about mate, and probably other desktops as well,
> is that they seem to have some kind of algorithm for measuring how much
> ram a system has and adjusting how they use ram accordingly. On my
> system, which has 8 gb of it, mate isn't all that resource efficient in
> the ram department, usually idling at around 700 to 800 mb used.
> However, on my mac and on mellisa's toshiba, mate idles at around 350 mb
> used, and there's zero difference in performance. Gnome and unity
> probably do the same thing, but they also use more effects so can be a
> little heavier on the system. The biggest problem with unity and gnome
> is, my opinion only, cpu usage. They use up a lot of the cpu cycles if
> you have a slow one, and that can make the thing feel sluggish or
> unresponsive. It's why I switched from gnome to mate on my mac, gnome
> did not like my mac much.
> Thanks
> Kendell Clark
> 
> 
> B. Henry wrote:
> > It is something specific to your system if mate term is faster. It's as 
> > close to the same thing as is possible, was actually the exact same size, 
> > and 
> > had 0 differences one time when I dcompared.
> > Thunderbird  works perfectly with unity. It sounds like something is messed 
> > up, corrupted or badly configured if you are having the problems 
> > mentiioned, 
> > Jude.
> > Gnome is notably lighter than unity when it comes to RAM usage.
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
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Re: introduction

2016-03-18 Thread B. Henry

Well, today I think the desktops use available cpu wisely for the most part, nd 
for years boot stuff runs in parallel by default when posible. 
Of course there is still a lot of software that does not take advantage of 
multiple cores, and I am pretty sure that most does not take advantage of 
multiple threading. 
Some allow you to configure how many cores are available for it to use.
 

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  kendell clark wrote:
Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 12:33:10AM -0500

> hi
> One thing I've noticed about mate, and probably other desktops as well,
> is that they seem to have some kind of algorithm for measuring how much
> ram a system has and adjusting how they use ram accordingly. On my
> system, which has 8 gb of it, mate isn't all that resource efficient in
> the ram department, usually idling at around 700 to 800 mb used.
> However, on my mac and on mellisa's toshiba, mate idles at around 350 mb
> used, and there's zero difference in performance. Gnome and unity
> probably do the same thing, but they also use more effects so can be a
> little heavier on the system. The biggest problem with unity and gnome
> is, my opinion only, cpu usage. They use up a lot of the cpu cycles if
> you have a slow one, and that can make the thing feel sluggish or
> unresponsive. It's why I switched from gnome to mate on my mac, gnome
> did not like my mac much.
> Thanks
> Kendell Clark
> 
> 
> B. Henry wrote:
> > It is something specific to your system if mate term is faster. It's as 
> > close to the same thing as is possible, was actually the exact same size, 
> > and 
> > had 0 differences one time when I dcompared.
> > Thunderbird  works perfectly with unity. It sounds like something is messed 
> > up, corrupted or badly configured if you are having the problems 
> > mentiioned, 
> > Jude.
> > Gnome is notably lighter than unity when it comes to RAM usage.
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
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Re: Subject lines was: just a suggestion

2016-03-18 Thread B. Henry

Of course, explaining the benefits of good subject lines, etc is most of the 
message, and no, you can not repeat this daily either. 
I don't like much list moderation, but do sometimes think when someone signs on 
to a list they should have to answer a couple or three questions 
correctly indicating that they understand what is expected from posters, and 
understanding that one does not reply to digest email, highjack 
conversation 
threads, nor post messages with subject lines that are more or list the list's 
name would cover most of it.
  One thing I've only mentioned a couple or three times in my life that I find 
a bit annoying in most cases is digitally signing list mil. 
If you are attaching code then the sig makes some sense to me, but normally 
it's more clutter tht is a bit more of a bother to blind folk than to 
others.
I was writing rather tongue in cheeck when I used the word crusade, and again I 
want to stress that I agree with you in that friendly suggestions are 
the way to go.
I'm done with this conversation. 


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  Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 06:55:08PM -0500

> I think it's OK to encourage people to use good posting practices,
> but in general, I leave this up to the moderators of the various
> lists I'm on. I definitely don't say anything though unless it's
> chronic or I don't think the person is aware of what they're doing.
> Too much list traffic on posting etiquette can defeat the purpose of
> using good posting etiquette in the first place, by adding a lot of
> off topic traffic itself.
> 
> The other thing I do is appeal to someone's motivation. You'll get
> more people looking at your message if you use a good subject line
> and don't hijack another thread. You can only go so far in policing
> someone else's posting habits, and it's perfectly OK to delete
> someone's message if they didn't use a good subject line, hijacked
> someone else's thread, didn't spell check or whatever. There's
> plenty to read on the web and don't let someone else's poor habits
> waste your time.
> 
> On 18/03/16 14:07, B. Henry wrote:
> >Yes, and I generally do this when I change the topic, but occasionaly do 
> >forget.
> >I also often change the subject line even when I did not change the subject 
> >myself, and even bring this up frequently enough that I sometimes worry that
> >folks will get tired of me trying to correct bad posting practices.
> >Please join me in this crusade so that there is more than one of us to 
> >hate...lol
> >In the same vane many people start a conversation with a subject that gives 
> >little or no idea as to what is being discussed or what question is asked.
> >I do delete email that does not interest me when I know I am unlikely to be 
> >able to contribute any thing useful to the conversation, and often delete
> >imprecisely subjected messages.
> >More often I do answer a person once or twice and give them a reminder about 
> >making good subject lines, and sometimes I just answer, but I certainly
> >think spending a few seconds coming up with an explanatory subject for an 
> >email is the least one can do if they are asking for help.
> >
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
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> chaltain at Gmail
> 
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Re: Ubuntu phones and accessibility for the blind

2016-03-02 Thread B. Henry

I'd say it's not going to happen for you/get an android phone, or iphone if you 
must for now. 
Maybe the powers that be will care enough to invest paying Luke and perhaps 
someone to help him to get things working for us in a year or two, but I'm  
honestly not particularly optimistic. 
If they cared as much as I and many otrhers feel they should then accessibility 
would have been considered and developed from day one, and would be 
available in some rudamentary form now, something to keep die hard testers busy 
for the next months, maybe longer...smile

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  Oliver Grawert wrote:
Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 11:17:09AM +0100

> hi,
> Am Mittwoch, den 02.03.2016, 11:08 +1100 schrieb Luke Yelavich:
> 
> > > Is Ubuntu phone already on Mir or it still uses ordinary X.org? I am
> > > really impatient to try something (although don't have this phone
> > > yet). I am ready to try getting this phone, but I need to be sure
> > > that I will be able to have access to its internals. Otherwise,
> > > apparently , I will be unable to do anything at all.
> > 
> > As above, Mir is used on the phone now.
> 
> Mir uses libinput, the same generic input layer that wayland uses. 
> i would expect that there will be something happening upstream at some
> point to integrate at-spi with libinput (there is surely also work in
> Mir and unity8 required, but the lower input layer should be covered by
> upstream integration)
> 
> ciao
>   oli
> 
> 
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Re: installing an update

2015-12-26 Thread B. Henry

A couple odf things:
your 
apt-get update command
would have to be run as root, e.g. with sudo to work, and would have to be 
connected to the internet unless you had new software sources on a local 
network or locall attched disk and had that local repository refferenced in 
your sources lists. 
I'll assume you've not done anything like that, you'd sure know it and know 
that what you'd done with the update command would do nothing if you had 
...smile
Also apt-get update only updates the list of available  packages, it does not 
actually download or install anything.
 You'd have to run something like 
sudo apt-get upgrade
to get new software versions installed on to your machine.
That command would not update to a new major kernel version either. It would do 
something like update kernel you boot in to from 3.19.4 to 3.19.6.
If updating the kernel is supposed to have an effect  in your case, i.e. 
support for your device has been made possible with something added in the 
kernel, you need to update to a new kernel, one that would change its first and 
or 2nd number, e.g. 
3.20.1, 4.2.1, 4.2.1, etc.  
Actuall ubuntu kernels will have a few words in their names. You should update 
the headers when you update a kernel as well. 
The article that told you how to install the driver should have told you the 
exact name of the new kernel.
You will of course need an internet connection to do this. 
You are using the internet to write this, so obviously you have access. If the 
computer in question can not connect for some reason you can not fix then 
you will need to copy the stuff you need to update to the machine that does not 
connect from one that does. 
If both machines are not running the exact same distro and release then you 
will have to manuallly download the kernel yu need and install it after 
copying it to the machine that does not connect.
You'll have to investigate to make sure there are no dependency issues that 
will be caused by updating the kernel, so it'd really be easier to get that 
computer connecting so that apt-get can do the research for you as well as the 
installation. 
The onlyl other thing you might needto do is modify permissions for the driver 
you copied in to place.

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  Glenn / Lenny wrote:
Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 03:26:19PM -0600

>Hi,
>I'm having problems getting my NUC 5PPYH to connect to WIFI.
>It sort of connects, and then disconnects.
>I read where updating the WIFI driver with:
>iwlwifi-7265D-13.ucode
>will fix the problem.
>The instructions said only to paste it into:
>/libs/firmware
>I did that and rebooted, and it did not help.
>I ran apt-get update
>thinking, even though I am not connected to the Internet, that it would
>update that driver, since I placed it into the firmware folder.
>Is there something different I need to do to make it use this updated
>driver?
>Sounds like updating to the latest Ubuntu kernel 4. something fixes it
>too, but this computer is not connected to the Internet.
>I am using Ubuntu Mate 15.10 Desktop.
>Ultimately I want to install Voxin successfully, which seems to never work
>unless I'm connected to the Internet, for some needed packages.
>Thanks for any help.
>Glenn

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Re: VINUX-SUPPORT: Introduction of my project

2015-11-02 Thread B. Henry

This is a great project, much after my own heart. I started thinking about 
about something like this kind of thing a long time ago, but more 
specifically last December when people were discussing their need of a good 
dasy player for Linux on the Orca list.
I am really excited to hear about the steps your are taking to improve 
accessiblity with FOS software for GNU-Linux.
I am also very glad that there is an English version of the website.
At this oint I do not know what I can offer this project directly, but hope to 
be able to do so at some point. For now I'll be spreading the word that  
it exists among some folks who are not on this list, Orca nor 
Ubuntu-accessiblity.
Congrats!

 
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  MENGUAL Jean-Philippe wrote:
Tue, Nov 03, 2015 at 02:10:42AM +0100

> Hi,
> 
> I've been working with free software for 2004, and I'm sure now of 2 things:
> it's The solution to get an accessible computer in long-term, but its
> diversity results on a need of fulltime work on the matter. I love the work
> on distros such as Vinux, about which I'm writing a manual to learn
> computing (very long as I've few time). I think now an accessible system
> should go still further, using "universal" purpose. But universal, it means
> a flexible desktop, for various visual issues, etc.
> 
> For all these reasons I try now so pay for devs to work on GNU/Linux a11y,
> in particular Compiz, Orca and MATE. To know the values of this project and
> our model, see:
> http://hypra.fr/?-Home-17-=en
> 
> For next month, we will release a full list of features we found in Jaws,
> NVDA, ZoomText and SuperNova and not present in Orca and Linux, so that
> users could tell us whet should be prioritary to be developped. On this
> basis, we'll submit patches to add features, including technical discussions
> with you about the good approach (what is for Orca, for at-spi, for the
> application, etc). Now we've the basic platform, we can start developping
> improvements and submitting them.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> 
> Jean-Philippe MENGUAL
> 
> HYPRA, progressons ensemble
> 
> Tél.: 01 84 73 06 61
> Mail: cont...@hypra.fr
> 
> Site Web: http://hypra.fr
> 
> -- 
> Remember to frequently check our Wiki: http://wiki.vinuxproject.org
> Our website: http://www.vinuxproject.org
> You can search or view our group on the web: 
> http://groups.google.com/group/vinux-support
> Talk to us on IRC irc.vinuxproject.org #Vinux
> 
> Unsubscribe from Vinux by emailing vinux-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
> --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Vinux support forum" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
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Re: orca and firefox

2015-08-19 Thread B. Henry

16.2 or 16.3 I think it is, but you can build the latest development version if 
you want to test even newer stuff. 
There are instructions on the orca website
isit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Once in a while something important does not work well for a few hours or even 
a day or two, but I've never had to downgrade to an older build for the 
things I do using orca from git master in well over a year. 
That being said, as far as your firefox experience at the moment if you have 
orca 16 you should be doing fine, and I certainly agree that there is  a 
huge difference in orca with firefox comparing current versions with those from 
a year and a half ago. 
Enjoy
 


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  Lucas Radaelli wrote:
Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 02:14:10PM -0300

 Folks,
 
 Just wanted to say that I gave orca and firefox another try and the
 experience seems to be much better than i was used to! this is awesome.
 
 I am running 14.04.
 
 Just to make sure that I got the best that is available, could you confirm
 to me which is the orca version that I should be running and which firefox
 version?
 
 I am also running orca with speech dispatcher + voxin and the experience is
 very close to what we get on windows with NVDA.
 
 
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Re: orca and firefox

2015-08-19 Thread B. Henry



yes, it will certainly build 

You might need to get some at-spi packages from an extra repo, let me check on 
something and I'll post back.

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  José Vilmar Estácio de Souza wrote:
Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 04:06:31PM -0300

 Hi Lucas.
 In my opinion 3.16 is better but I am not sure if it is possible to build in
 ubuntu 14.04.
 
 A while back I posted a message in the linux-accessivel list with
 instructions on how to build orca from git.
 
 On 08/19/2015 02:14 PM, Lucas Radaelli wrote:
 Folks,
 
 Just wanted to say that I gave orca and firefox another try and the
 experience seems to be much better than i was used to! this is awesome.
 
 I am running 14.04.
 
 Just to make sure that I got the best that is available, could you confirm
 to me which is the orca version that I should be running and which firefox
 version?
 
 I am also running orca with speech dispatcher + voxin and the experience
 is very close to what we get on windows with NVDA.
 
 
 
 -- 
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Re: orca and firefox

2015-08-19 Thread B. Henry

Yeah, thanks for this important resource Luke.

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  Luke Yelavich wrote:
Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 08:54:35AM +1000

 On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 07:58:19AM AEST, kk wrote:
  Wow,
  Who maintains this ppa for accessibility devel?
 
 I do.
 
 Luke
 
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Re: State of 14.04 LTS

2015-08-18 Thread B. Henry

It is generally quite good and stable now, some things work that did notin 
12.04, language support for instance was silent in precise, now it works well  
with orca. 
Overall there is a slight difference in the feel, it's a very different unity 
under the hood, but most key bindings are the same. 
You'll have to manually start speechd-up with sudo from your GUI to get speakup 
to talk, and it probably will not on console log-on screen, but once 
logged in speakup is as solid as ever. I usually make a script to kill off 
running speechd-up and then start it as mentioned with sudo and run this when 
the desktop starts. 
I've not run stock trusty in some time, but have vinux5 nightly builds running 
on a laptop so maybe you don't have to kill off speechd-up, and actually 
I can't remember if you have to install it or not on vaniula trusty. 
Orca has made great strides with firefox since versions that worked with 
precise, and now I think firefox support is up there with good windows 
screenreaders. 
Orca have been very stable with Ubuntu lts 12.04 and 14.04, so I would not wait 
to upgrade if you are running older Ubuntu. 
Vinux5 based on 14.04 should be out soon, and it will be still nicer for screen 
reader users and will offer a choice of desktops, unity, gnome and mate, 
or you could try ubuntu-gnome or mate if Unity is not your cup of tea or you 
find it taxing a slower computer with limited ram. 
Evince is now usable with orca for many pdfs.
 
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  Cleverson Casarin Uliana wrote:
Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:52:27AM -0300

 Dear all,
 
 I'd like to know how is Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 the LTS regarding accessibility
 for the blind and also its performance and stability as a whole. Does Orca
 works well, and how about speakup for the console? Also is there any issues
 with non-english languages such as Brazilian Portuguese? Does anyone know if
 Voxin works well under it? Finally, is Orca relatively up to date regarding
 new features?
 
 Thank you,
 Cleverson
 
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Re: how to get Orca to speak in lightdm

2015-04-28 Thread B. Henry

I almost nevr install via the software center, so do not know commands for 
checking dependencies from there. 
I'd make sure that I removed the extra packages . In a terminal or console run 
apt-cache depends lubuntu-desktop or what ever the original thing 
you installed was called. You can pipe the output to a textfile for later use. 
Then see if you still have any of those deps installed, but as far as I know 
what you want to get rid of is  lxdm. 
dpkg -l|grep lxdm
and see if it returns anything II means that a given pkg is installed. 
sudo apt-get purge for anything lubuntu specific to remove...
Then reconfigure lightdm. Actually, it may have been removed as a conflicting 
package when you installed lubuntu stuff, so use dpkg -l to see if you 
have it still, and if not reinstall it. I hope nothing else required by  a 
standard unity install was removed. 
It's worth checking log files to see exactly what was done if you still have 
trouble.
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  Milton wrote:
Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 08:30:58AM +0200

 In lightdm I use ctrl_S to start Orca to speak. But now it won't work. a
 sighted person told me that there is only one account shown in the login
 screen. so I think it is not lightdm. In the software Centre I delete the
 Lubuntu-desktop but I still stay with another dm.
 Milton
 
 Op 28-04-15 om 05:39 schreef B. Henry:
 It is once logged in for sure, but I thought it was different on log-in 
 screen, aI may be wrong though, but now that I hear the lu instead of ubuntu 
 I'm
 wondering if lightdm is even used .
 LXDM does not speak as far as I know, but perhaps it is not used.
 
 
 
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Re: how to get Orca to speak in lightdm

2015-04-27 Thread B. Henry

It is once logged in for sure, but I thought it was different on log-in screen, 
aI may be wrong though, but now that I hear the lu instead of ubuntu I'm 
wondering if lightdm is even used . 
LXDM does not speak as far as I know, but perhaps it is not used. 
 

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   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 07:59:11PM -0500

 I think it's control+super+s in Trusty.
 
 On 04/27/2015 07:33 PM, B. Henry wrote:
 Doesn't control s still start orca on the log-in screen in ubuntu?
 
 
 
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 Chaltain at Gmail
 

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Re: how to get Orca to speak in lightdm

2015-04-27 Thread B. Henry

Does lxde use lightdm in Lubuntu? 
LXDE has its own DM, but perhaps it's not used by default when installing to 
Ubuntu.

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  Andy B. wrote:
Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 10:38:40PM -0400

 Not in 15.04.
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com
 [mailto:ubuntu-accessibility-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of B. Henry
 Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 8:34 PM
 To: Milton
 Subject: Re: how to get Orca to speak in lightdm
 
 Doesn't control s still start orca on the log-in screen in ubuntu?
 
 
 -- 
  B.H.
Registerd Linux User 521886
 
 
   Milton wrote:
 Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 09:56:36PM +0200
 
  Hello List,
  
  I use Ubuntu Trusty with Orca 3.14.3 in Unity. I thought to show some 
  friends the Lubuntu desktop and install this with the help of the 
  software centre. But after this I have no Orca in the login screen. I 
  did in a
  terminal:
  sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
  without success.
  can you tell me how to get Orca to speak again in the login screen? 
  Thank you.
  Milton
  
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  https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
 
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[FWD: and...@pipkrokodil.se] VINUX-SUPPORT: Sofware center keeps refreshing.

2015-02-18 Thread B. Henry

This was asked on another list, and I do not know the answer. 
Anyone?
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- Forwarded message from Anders Holmberg and...@pipkrokodil.se -
Subject: VINUX-SUPPORT: Sofware center keeps refreshing.

Hi!
Is it possible to make Ubuntu software center not to refresh evry now and then?
Its very annoying when using a braille display.
Thanks in advance.
/A

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Re: lite versions of ubuntu

2014-08-13 Thread B. Henry

You have enough with the system you mention to run normal ubuntu more or less 
well if you do not multitask much, but 
Ubuntu gnome should be a bit lighter on memory usage, and do better with 
accessibility in some areas.
You will have to configure things a bit using any other desktop, but this can 
be done. 
XFCE will not be 100% accessible, but you can use your apps fine, the main 
men's accessible, and there's a lot to like 
about this desktop.
You can install Mate, XFCE and other desktops on a standard Ubuntu, or 
Ubuntu-gnome system, and switch between desktops on 
the log-on scree.Vinux wiki for some inforemation on Mate. 
It should work nicely on 14.04 as the 1.8 packages are available.
I've run Fluxbox, Mate, and Unity all on the same Ubuntu or Vinux installation, 
and Have XFCE, Mate and  Fluxbox 
installed side by side here on Arch.
I had a pretty good experience with the 14.04 version of Ubuntu-gnome on this 
netbook which only has one gig of ram,and a 
slower processor than the machine you are using.
--
B.H.


See my article on the 
On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 01:53:19PM -0400, chad baker wrote:
 hi i just tried ubuntu 14.04.1 and it don’t like my system it has 2 gb of ram 
 and a 2.26 ghz processor i did try xubuntu 
 but no orca
 
 
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Re: lite versions of ubuntu

2014-08-13 Thread B. Henry

Can't help with only this to go on, but sounds like either a bad burn of the CD 
or USB-media, dirty disk drive or disk, 
really hard to say with out something much more specific than what you said, 
but if it's not working check the image 
download with the md5 sum, check the disk, make sure drive is clean.

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 02:13:42PM -0400, chad baker wrote:

 hi when i installed 14.04.1 during the install speech was repeating itself it 
 would say something screen reader screen reader over and over again then quit 
 i tried relaunching it with no luck
 
 On Aug 13, 2014, at 2:05 PM, B. Henry burt1ib...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  You have enough with the system you mention to run normal ubuntu more or 
  less well if you do not multitask much, but 
  Ubuntu gnome should be a bit lighter on memory usage, and do better with 
  accessibility in some areas.
  You will have to configure things a bit using any other desktop, but this 
  can be done. 
  XFCE will not be 100% accessible, but you can use your apps fine, the main 
  men's accessible, and there's a lot to like 
  about this desktop.
  You can install Mate, XFCE and other desktops on a standard Ubuntu, or 
  Ubuntu-gnome system, and switch between desktops on 
  the log-on scree.Vinux wiki for some inforemation on Mate. 
  It should work nicely on 14.04 as the 1.8 packages are available.
  I've run Fluxbox, Mate, and Unity all on the same Ubuntu or Vinux 
  installation, and Have XFCE, Mate and  Fluxbox 
  installed side by side here on Arch.
  I had a pretty good experience with the 14.04 version of Ubuntu-gnome on 
  this netbook which only has one gig of ram,and a 
  slower processor than the machine you are using.
  --
  B.H.
  
  
  See my article on the 
  On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 01:53:19PM -0400, chad baker wrote:
  hi i just tried ubuntu 14.04.1 and it don’t like my system it has 2 gb of 
  ram and a 2.26 ghz processor i did try xubuntu 
  but no orca
  
  
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Re: ubuntu server

2014-08-13 Thread B. Henry

That's right, everyone knows this. 
You can find a post on the vinux list regarding how to install ubuntu-server 
with speech.
It's been reposted a few times, starting maybe a year and a bit ago.
server's do not have graphical interfaces traditionally, and if one is 
installed it's usually something very light weight.
Do you want to run a server?
You can install Vinux, or standard Ubuntu and remove non-serverish packages you 
won't be wanting. 
There is no major difference between server and desktop as before, i.e. Ubulntu 
is using the same kernel for both now 
unless my memory is failing badly.
So, most applications you run on a server will not work well with orca even if 
you install a graphical desktop. 
Server-users who need speech use speakup.
We work on the commandline. 
There are certainly many cross-over usage cases where one is mostly running a 
server, but will want some desktop type apps 
available, and others where one is mostly running a desktop OS with some server 
software running on it.
I've run both Ubuntu and Debian servers with some non-traditional for servers 
software on them. 
YOu need to learn about speakup, the console screenreader. It's very stable and 
snappy, quite simple, but does a great job 
with most commandline programs. 
I am using the Mutt email client with speakup to write this message, have a 
media stream play8ing with mplayer in another 
console, and have a search going on using surfraw with the Lynx web-browser. 
Oh, and I also have a VOIP applicationcalled 
linphone running in yet another console for making and receiving phone calls. I 
do most of my system administration and 
configuration with commandline programs. 
I use Orca for firefox, wireshark once in a while, mumble, mangler, (for 
ventrilo), teamtalk, and libreoffice writer to 
name some of the GUI programs regularly started here.
There are some nice programs for the commandline that have menus, i.e. one is 
not always just typing command names.
--
B.H.





On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 01:42:45PM -0400, chad baker wrote:
 hi i just grabbed ubuntu server 14.04 and orca isn’t on it
 i tried ctrl plus s with no luck
 thanks
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Very bad news for meI do not know how many others/UbuntuOne cloud storage service to be shutdown

2014-04-08 Thread B. Henry

Subject says it:
Ubuntu One is going away, most of it anyway. The most important part for me and
probably a few or more of you is that the Dropbox-like synchronized storage is
being shutdown with all content to be deleted in July.
Here's a link to read the basics.
Canonical to close Ubuntu One cloud-storage service - Computerworld
URL:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247405/Canonical_to_close_Ubuntu_One_cloud_storage_service?source=CTWNLE
_nlt_linux_2014-04-08#page_wrapper

The music store and streaming is also being shutdown. I never tried that, but
would certainly try it before ITunes and many of the other alternatives, and
had actually intended on checking it out soon.
There are other alternatives, but I already use a lot of my free dropbox, and
have maxed it out at least once and had to do emergency housekeeping.
I've found google docs/drive less than wonderful with screenreaders, and only
practically usable with chrome/chromevox, and the two are not really
comparable.
The integration with Ubuntu made it especially nice for us Vinux users, and I
have just been taking good advantage of UbuntuOne to transfer some things I've
worked out while using arch to my Vinux installation.
Who is using other cloud storage services that they likecan recommend to
fellow screen-reader users?
For me must meet criteria are:
Accessible/efficiently usable on Linux, prefferrably with both CLI and GUI
access.
a full featured free account option.
The more free storage the better of course, but 1GB as a bare minimum,
hopefully at least 2GB for basic/free accounts.
A way to share files via links with users who do not have an account with the
service.
Less important to me, but nice would be a way to share files and folders for
cooperative projects.
More important than that last one for me is a dropbox-like ability to retrieve
old versions of modified files for some limited time.
The other thing I did not mention but will miss is using Ubuntu1 to handle
attachments sent with thunderbird. For those who have not used this, you
basically send a link after thunderbird has uploaded the file to be attached to
your UbuntuOne storage. This gets around both size and filetype restrictions
that most email systems impose on users for mostly good reasons. There are
other services that do this, but as I've had a UbuntuOne account for almost as
long as I've been using Vinux it was a no brainer to use this account once
thunderbird added this feature.

Some of you also know that I started using U1 via ftp a bit a while back, and I
do not know of other services that have this type of access.
Also, while not 100% necesary for me right now, good cross-platform
supportaccessability are very important.
Having access to some of my importantfrequently used files with no planning on
the occasions I boot in to Windows is sure nice, and when ever I geet a
smartphone I'll probably be using it much more than Windows..lol.

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions and experiences. I remember
checking in to a couple of the interesting dropbox alternatives a year or two
ago and finding they were mostly or completely inaccessible.
I know I could make a gmail imap folder and use it to store email to myself
with attached compressed files and folders, but that's hardly elegant,
efficient, and would be very limited because of those attachment type and size
limits.
Cheers,
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Re: partitions and logging out help

2014-04-05 Thread B. Henry

I do not know from your message  for sure what's going on as orca should be on 
the ubuntu10.10 disk, guess you updated to a newer orca. Remember that unless 
you got something from the xdesktop branch it either won't work, or won't 
perform correctly. 
You want orca 3.1.9 something, xdesktop, or I think from what I have read 
there's an orca 3.2xdesktop version. 
Anyway, I do not have anything here I can directly check  to see what the 
gnome2 logout program is called. I'm using xfce desktop on the machine I'm 
using right now.
the program name, and thus command for this is xfce4-session-logout
Go to /usr/bin and look for things that start with gnome, maybe gnome2, or 
perhaps logout. Once you find the program name, or a list of suspects, do man 
program name to see what if any option you should run, e.g. m;an 
gnome-session-logout
Have you tried control alt backspace? As I remember that should log you out of 
a gnome2 session, or look under keyboard (can't remember exactly how the menu 
item is named, but it's in system, under admin I think, maybe prefs), and 
expand the keystrokes section where you do things like change layout, which is 
on the layout tab, and I think the last entry is called something like kill or 
stop graphical session more or less.
HTH
--
Burt


On Sat, Apr 05, 2014 at 11:36:58AM -0500, Lenny wrote:
 Hi,
 I'm running a live Ubuntu 10.10 to try to remove the partitions.
 After installing Orca, I need to log out and back in to get Orca to work.
 I have tried all the obvious keyboard commands for logging out, and they 
 don't work.
 What is the CLI for logging out?
 Thanks.
 Glenn 
 
 
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Re: XpLike Ubuntu again

2013-11-10 Thread B. Henry



 Although I to at least partially agree with some of Gabes opinions, it seems 
 that he is quick to post steriotypical generalizations. 
 My observations  are very much in line with yours, CJ, although of course 
 there are a few of the types floating around that Gabe mentions. i do find 
 these, mostly guys, but some women for sure, floating around on pop-tech 
 comment pages. There are always going to b be people who try to make 
 universal truth out of personal experience that is often limited to very 
 specific conditions that they don't realize are case specific in it seems.
The real point is that in this conversation I don't think anyone has taken a my 
way or the highway attitude. 
If anyone takes my advice regarding using supported releases unless there's a 
very good reason as being hardcore, well... A specific interface that's  only 
available in an out of date distro could be a special case in my opinion, but 
it does seem likely to me tht this interface is unlikely to be very accessible, 
and it's really unlikely that anyone will work on this if the distro  is no 
longer being maintained. 
This conversation has gone off of the original topic, and analizing 
personalities and behavior amoung Linux-using mailing list and forum posters 
and commenters is probably yet another conversation that should be taken 
somewhere else if people wish to continue the discussion. 
--
B.H.
 

   
 
 On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 12:22:24AM -0600, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
  This has not been my experience with the Linux community. I know the
  Linux community has a reputation of being a bunch of tech savvy
  nerds who have no patience for the new comer, but this has not been
  my experience as of late, and especially not in the accessibility
  community.
  
  I wouldn't use the fact that no one else was familiar with this one
  flavor of Ubuntu as being an example of people being too wrapped up
  in their own flavor or distribution. In fact, I think it
  demonstrates just the opposite. This is a Ubuntu list and yet people
  were willing to talk about other distributions and flavors to try to
  help someone.
  
  I think you'll find that it's more the norm than the exception to
  find people using Linux familiar with multiple operating systems,
  Linux distributions and Ubuntu flavors. After all, not many people
  started off on their computing experience with Linux, but rather
  came here from some other operating system. You'll find Linux
  mailing lists are littered with people who dual boot multiple
  operating systems or run other operating systems in virtual
  machines. You'll find this much more so on Linux related lists than
  you will on windows or Apple centric lists.
  
  I know it's just anecdotal evidence on my part, but I actually find
  the Apple lists seem to be more full of misinformation about
  anything nonApple than other mailing lists. I say this as someone
  who's on a few Apple lists because I use and like my iPhone. Linux
  users may have some strong opinions from time to time, but it's
  usually based on some hard won experience or founded in some pretty
  strong technical reasons.
  
  On 11/09/2013 12:56 AM, Gabe Vega - CEO Commtech LLC wrote:
  Unfortunately you will get that with Linux users sometimes. It's
  either Linux or nothing, you bunches or nothing, this just show
  that distro or nothing, for some reason it is common to have that
  behavior in the Lenix community. Fortunately you have people like
  me, who use a variety of distro's operating systems and computer
  platforms too many in fact to actually stick to and be loyal to
  one. Do I favor one yes, and that is Mac OS but hey, what can I
  say. I also have Windows virtual machines, and Linux and , they
  all get the job done. And that's what is important. please note, I
  am speaking this message via my iPhone and Siri. If their spelling
  mistakes or word mistakes that you know or understand. Please take
  it for what it is, I apologize for not editing this message before
  sending.
  
  Gabe Vega  - CEO
  Commtech LLC
  The leader of computer support, training and web development services
  Web: http://commtechusa.net
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/commtechllc
  Facebook: http://facebook.com/commtechllc
  Email: i...@commtechusa.net mailto:i...@commtechusa.net
  Phone: (888) 351-5289 Ext. 710
  Fax: (480) 535-7649
  
  On Nov 7, 2013, at 11:19 PM, Lenny ger...@cableone.net
  mailto:ger...@cableone.net wrote:
  
  this will be my last post on this, because either folks have no
  clue of what
  I was asking about, or they are so wrapped up in their own
  flavor of Ubuntu
  that the only advice I got was to try either a newer version, or
  try vinux.
  I have extensively used Ubuntu, and it has gotten me out of
  binds with my
  windows systems in the past, like saving data.  and I have tried
  vinux and I
  prefer a clean Ubuntu to it.
  but the Os of my choice is windows, XP, with all of its flaws.
  Clearly there are

Re: XpLike Ubuntu again

2013-11-08 Thread B. Henry

You were unclear as to your past experience, or actually mentioned nothing, so 
as is usually the case people try and give more basic information than may be 
called for just in case. 
You certainly miss the main point though. 
The interface must be accessible, and I for one tried to steer you towards how 
to investigate this. 
I and others mentioned that you are not going to have that great of an 
experiennce with any Ubuntu spin-off based on 11.04 as it's not supported and 
newer orcas wouldn't be able to run on it even if the iterface were accessible. 
Lastly, if this is the last version of the distro you mention available it's a 
sign that it's either no longer maintained, or not popular enough to be 
maintained agressively. 
It may be a very stable ad comfortable interface, but if it's so good why does 
it ever get any attention  from pop tech writers who'd love to give XP 
die-hards something to use. That last one is certainly ot a definitive 
argument, and my opinion of pop-tech bloggers and reporters is mixed with more 
being yet more examples of folks living in data echo chambers and otherwise not 
worth reading than actual qualified and motivated tech journalists, but...
As for HKK's comment, unless this is something different from what I've heard 
about, (yes, and even know ppl who've tried), it's not what Mint's been using. 
I think one of the interfaces that Mint had available was partly accessible, 
but would like to hear from anyone with any experience. 
Was it the mate interface, or sinimun, (or neither), that was somewhat 
accessible with Orca?

Also, i'm interested in what you prefer, Linny, in straight Ubuntu over Vinux, 
and of course which Ubuntu and Vinux releases  were you comparing? 
   
   

On Fri, Nov 08, 2013 at 12:19:49AM -0600, Lenny wrote:
 this will be my last post on this, because either folks have no clue of what 
 I was asking about, or they are so wrapped up in their own flavor of Ubuntu 
 that the only advice I got was to try either a newer version, or try vinux.
 I have extensively used Ubuntu, and it has gotten me out of binds with my 
 windows systems in the past, like saving data.  and I have tried vinux and I 
 prefer a clean Ubuntu to it.
 but the Os of my choice is windows, XP, with all of its flaws.
 Clearly there are Linux users out there like me, such that a distro of 
 Ubuntu was made to act like windows.
 I guess I was barking up the wrong tree on this list with my quest for the 
 benefit of someone's experience of this distro of Ubuntu.
 Thanks though.
 
 Glenn 
 
 
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Re: XpLike Ubuntu

2013-11-07 Thread B. Henry

For sure fogrget 11.04  unless it's already working well for you as updating is 
problematic, and at best requires changing software sources.
Also, that unity is not as accessible as 12.04, and the orca you can run on the 
classic gnome desktop for 11.04 doesn't work with quite a few things that newer 
orca does and you can't upgrade to a very recent orca, not even with unity will 
you get a very new orca to work. 
It's not hard to learn unity, but if you don't like it after a fair trial you 
can install gnome3, (which you are less likely to like...lol.), or xfce which 
will require a bit more work, but should work for most things from an 
accessability standpoint. 
I'm scheptical of the interface you are talking about in general, and very 
seriously doubt it's accessible. Check to see if it's based on GTK+. If so, or 
they used QT's accessible bits then if there's an xp-like based on 12.04 give 
it a try if you are bored, but again, I'd bet against it working with Orca and 
you'll probably have some other issues even if it does. 


On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 05:26:48PM +0100, Jimmy Sjölund wrote:
 On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 5:20 PM, Lenny ger...@cableone.net wrote:
 
  Hi,
  Has anyone ever ran Orca in XpLike Ubuntu?
  I burned an image of the 11.04 version, but I was not able to get speech
  going.
  I am not sure if I actually got booted into it, as I don't know if this
  flavor uses a Ubuntu boot-up sound.
  Thanks for any insight.
  Glenn
 
 
 I'm not sure what you mean with XPlike unless you mean something else than
 Unity? 11.04 is quite old and I would suggest using another flavor of
 Ubuntu like Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu. I'm not sure on how accessible
 their ISOs are so perhaps you're best bet is to install plain Ubuntu 12.04
 or 13.10 and then replace Unity with another Desktop Environment. Or just
 install Vinux (http://vinuxproject.org/) right away which is based on
 Ubuntu 12.04.
 
 /Jimmy

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Re: What happened with Firefox 25?

2013-11-05 Thread B. Henry

Yes, this is  all of course very true, and sometimes it's actually easier for a 
person with a stable life/employment to set asside a few hours a week to 
contribute to something  important.
In Spanish a word for will/willingness is voluntad. It takes a certain level of 
will, and a willingness to forgo some perhaps more pleasurable activities to do 
significant work on an open source accessability project; to be a volenteer! 
Making a commitment to give a lot of ones time aand energy to something that 
may not have any short to medium term payoff is not something that everyone can 
do, especially someone who has children to support or other first teer 
responsibilities. On the other hand people who are able choose to give their 
all to a project and make huge differences in the lives of many every day, not 
many people percentage wise, but examples are not hard to find when you look. 
In our case all we have to do is start our computers and we should be reminded 
of a personal hero of mine, Tony Sales. Other people with the right skill set 
can and do make a difference over the long haul like Luke who gives of his 
personal time along with his payed work on Ubuntu accessability. 
It's about the coming together of time/mental and emotional energy, the right 
skill set, and some vollenteer spirit. If one has  the latter, and some of one 
of the first two then they are certainly part of the potential team down the 
line. If you have a bit of all three and are not already doing so, what are you 
waiting for? Find where you fit in and start working!
   Enough anylizing and cheerleading. It's time that I get some stuff out of 
the way so I can work on my skill set!
--

   

On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 04:17:13PM -0600, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
 I agree with this, but I do have a few caveats. First, looking for a
 job, whether you're between jobs or between projects, can be a
 pretty time consuming effort requiring a lot of hard work and a lot
 of mental toughness. Someone in this position may not have a lot of
 time to do some programming for free. Second, a programmer looking
 for that next job or that next project does have to sharpen their
 skills and make themselves as employable as possible. Although
 working in the accessibility infrastructure and working on an open
 source project like Orca or NVDA would definitely build some
 marketable skills, it isn't going to do as much as contributing to
 some popular open source project like OpenStack will do for
 someone's employability. I'm not discouraging anyone from working on
 AT or contributing to Orca; I'm just saying a blind programmer
 between jobs or projects may have very legitimate reasons to spend
 some of that time working on something else or in some other area.
 
 On 11/03/2013 11:11 AM, B. Henry wrote:
 Of course. The other part of this includes more willingness to back such 
 projects financially, but the other angle to consider is that so many blind 
 people are unemployed now. Even if they become pretty good programmers 
 there's not likely going to be work for them all, and  even less traditional 
 fulltime work. While one is looking for work they could also sharpen their 
 skills working on the kind of software projects we're talking about here. 
 Others may be content to dedicate some window of time to this work living on 
 some kind  of disability paymentss, and on the more extreme edge of the 
 conversation there's the alt economy model. Whether its possible to  create 
 a group with the critical mass of talent and deverse skillset needed to be 
 sustainable is not one I'm willing to bet on; but I would certainly consider 
 donating some labor to a person who has made my computer more usable above 
 and beyond the very limited money I can donate to open-source projects.
 While I don't see a revolution in the making, maybe we can see a significant 
 evolution in thinking and behavior where more users of FOS-access-tech 
 donate to developers. While there's a long way to go, NVDA has made notable 
 progress getting donations from  end-users over the last few years.
 Another thing to consider is that many programmers work on a project basis, 
 not a salary payed by one company. This means that even very good coders 
 with contacts and good work habits are likely to have some down time between 
 projects that they could dedicate to accessibility work, or they could 
 choose to give a couple weeks here and there to something that interests 
 them.
 Get a job with Google and use your discressionary time to improve 
 g-access...lolThere's nomagic bullet, but I think many of us can organize 
 our lives better on an individual basis, and we can perhaps create some 
 support systems making this easier.
 --
 B.H.
 On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 04:44:35PM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
 I agree with this sentiment, but one challenge I see is that it's
 hard to make a living doing accessibility programming. If a blind
 person has the aptitude and becomes

Re: dreams and schemes

2013-11-05 Thread B. Henry

Note the subjectline.  Dreams and schemes implies that this is at best an 
untested theory, and assuming for the moment that this is something new and 
innovative, obviously there's no base of time prooven research and studies to 
build on. 
No barter will not pay for a cell phone network, gasoline refinery, nor 
expensive medical equiptment. It can on the other hand  greatly reduce the need 
for cash, creddit cards or bit coins. One could for example trade somthing that 
they grow, make or do for locally produced alcohol fuel, or even a welders time 
to make  a still so that a person or better yet a co-op could produce their own 
fuel. A doctor may not be able to  provide  MRI services free, but could 
certainly give consultations and in-house tests in exchange for work setting-up 
and maintaining an e-documents system, fresh vegies, or transportating her or 
his kids to swimming lessons, or the swimming lessons themselves. 
I believe that people who are interested in such arrangements are also more 
likely than the gneral population to see contributions to open source projects 
that benefit the society at large or under served sub-sets there of as worth 
paying for in some way. 
I don't think a completely cashless society is a practical efficient option, 
nor am I particularly interested in working towards this or most other 
extremes. 
There are any number of successful barter networks in existence today. Quite a 
few of these sprung up in response to the relatively high unemployment and 
under employment that we've seen in the last few years. (don't have the time to 
give any hard percentages, nor enough info to make an educated guess re this 
for that matter).
Lastly, and most importantly I was chiming in to a conversation that had not 
only strayed rather far from the original topic, but gone pretty much  OT for 
the group. I was answering a hale Mary pass of a solution proposed by a 
fellow group member. Do those kind of passes always work? Of course not, and 
when they do they require excellent coordiniation and timing combined with 
athletic ability and perhaps some luck.
I for one won't be continuing this discussion here because I feel it's gone too 
OT for the group, and I don't have time to attempt to write more or less well 
crafted email that could possibly take the discussion/debate forward in useful 
directions. 
Some of the ideas I and others have mentioned are worth persuing, but as is 
usually the case starting with the small and doable  is much more valuable than 
proposing grandios dreams and hoping that others will decide to follow up. One 
must lead by example.
--
B.H.
 
  

On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 01:33:07PM -0500, Andy B. wrote:
 How does bardering with people pay the bills? Do you have time proven
 research that shows industries that are making a nation-wide sweep with this
 bardering system, or is this a fruitless, wishful, and carefree dream?
 Bardering will never feed family, pay the phone bill, get the credit card
 collectors off my back, get me to and from the store 3 times a week, and let
 me keep my internet that is required for school. For this type of problem, a
 job is the best fix. The major problem I see in the US is that too many
 blind people want everything for free, they whine about anything that
 doesn't go their way, and believe employers should exempt them out of every
 minor aspect of a job that requires them to work hard.
 
 -Original Message-
 From: B. Henry [mailto:burt1ib...@gmail.com] 
 Sent: Sunday, November 3, 2013 11:47 AM
 To: Andy B.
 Subject: Re: dreams and schemes
 
 My take on the suggestion is not a social club/I'm totally uninterested in
 such an animal as there's not that much reason I'd have anything socially in
 common with blinks more than other folks. 
 I was considering the type of organization where qualified folks barter
 their skills for products and services with other people who are ot having
 success in the cash driven society. This is being done in who knows how many
 areas in the U.S. as a partial work arounnd for the unemployment crisis.
 Unemployment has always been a greater problem for the disabled in general
 and the bind in specific. When there's the kind of general ecoomic  crisis
 that so much of the world has been living over the last several  years we
 obviously have it even  worse.
 To be truly successful we'd need  more than blind people involved in our
 less cash society. It'd also require some truly top notch talent as well to
 get the attention  of others who were not onboard. 
 The only thing I see that might make this more than just another utopian
 dream/posibe footnote in history is our interconnectivity and instant global
 communication. Of course much needs to be done locally, e.g. a good driver
 in India won't be of much help to a  guy in Chile who  needs a ride, nor
 would a cook in England be able to get a good meal to a family in Canada for
 a reasonable price. On the other hand colaboration

Re: What happened with Firefox 25?

2013-11-03 Thread B. Henry

Of course. The other part of this includes more willingness to back such 
projects financially, but the other angle to consider is that so many blind 
people are unemployed now. Even if they become pretty good programmers there's 
not likely going to be work for them all, and  even less traditional fulltime 
work. While one is looking for work they could also sharpen their skills 
working on the kind of software projects we're talking about here. Others may 
be content to dedicate some window of time to this work living on some kind  of 
disability paymentss, and on the more extreme edge of the conversation there's 
the alt economy model. Whether its possible to  create a group with the 
critical mass of talent and deverse skillset needed to be sustainable is not 
one I'm willing to bet on; but I would certainly consider donating some labor 
to a person who has made my computer more usable above and beyond the very 
limited money I can donate to open-source projects. 
While I don't see a revolution in the making, maybe we can see a significant 
evolution in thinking and behavior where more users of FOS-access-tech donate 
to developers. While there's a long way to go, NVDA has made notable progress 
getting donations from  end-users over the last few years.
Another thing to consider is that many programmers work on a project basis, not 
a salary payed by one company. This means that even very good coders with 
contacts and good work habits are likely to have some down time between 
projects that they could dedicate to accessibility work, or they could choose 
to give a couple weeks here and there to something that interests them. 
Get a job with Google and use your discressionary time to improve 
g-access...lolThere's nomagic bullet, but I think many of us can organize our 
lives better on an individual basis, and we can perhaps create some support 
systems making this easier. 
--
B.H. 
  
 
On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 04:44:35PM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
 I agree with this sentiment, but one challenge I see is that it's
 hard to make a living doing accessibility programming. If a blind
 person has the aptitude and becomes a programmer then they may have
 a hard time getting paid to do any accessibility related coding. Of
 course they could do this in their spare time, but then their time
 is constrained and it takes a while to come up to speed on some of
 this access technology infrastructure.
 
 
 On 11/01/2013 07:39 PM, B. Henry wrote:
 Ah_men!
 
 Sadly, neither drugs nor prayer seem to be able to give many blind folk 
 that; and I think we all know of more than a couple bind folks who have both 
 1 or more degrees and above average inteligence who are unemployed.
 
 One alternative is for more of those who have some potential as far as 
 logical thinking and such, and a fair math back ground to learn to code.
 It's a longer and harder row to hoe, but if enough folks got in to the nuts 
 and bolts of the tech they use so much then most of the money could be taken 
 out of the equation.
 I have a terrible math background, am over 50 with responsibilities, and a 
 few not very promising hours looking at beginners programing tutorials; so, 
 I''m probably not our boy, but there must be othrs who could really do 
 something.
 I'm still hoping I can say I've done something real to advance Linux 
 accessibility before I die, but this may not be as concrete as I'd like.
 On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 07:24:25PM -0400, Doug Smith wrote:
 No, the thing we need is to become those rich visionaries.  How in infinity 
 can we do it?  What is the over night, have nothing to have it all quick
 fix approach to getting blind people into areas of work where they will 
 have real incomes and earn that kind of money so that each of us might be
 willing to put that few million into it.  Instead of waiting for someone 
 else to do it, how in the known universe can we become those people?
 
 
 
 I'm serious.  Any possible answers that might be doable for all of us?
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Doug Smith: Special Agent
 S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
 Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
 
 
 -- 
 Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
 Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
 
 
 
 -- 
 Christopher (CJ)
 chaltain at Gmail
 

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dreams and schemes

2013-11-02 Thread B. Henry

Fair and far enough! 
I doubt I'll live to see any other star, nor earth critters traveling to one; 
but a viable sub-culture seems completely reasonable. 
If we continue down this path of the 1% vs. the 99% then I think some 
groups must inevitably split off from, or better coaless out of the 99%. 
Education is the key no matter what though, so thanks for the suggestions in 
other messages. 
We're going pretty OT, but if one or 10 new contributers come out of this then 
this will be perhaps the most important thread I've ever seen on thhis mailing 
list.
Cheers.
--
B.H.



  

On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 10:28:06PM -0400, Doug Smith wrote:
 Nuke degrees.  I am not the best at math, but I have real savant skills when 
 it comes to anything with a digital component.  I am working with 
 tutorials to try and catch up on the stuff that I didn't have access to in 
 school.  I like coding, in fact, it's what I actually got this machine for, 
 and I hope to put it to good use one day soon.  
 
 As for math, it was my worst skill in school, but having all the math tools I 
 have on here seems to solve that problem.  Once more, a few learning 
 ally textbooks and some net-based tutorials can take care of the problem.  
 
 You're right, I think that, if we can take most or all the money out of these 
 tech situations, the best possibility for blind people to be employed 
 would be to form our own society, build some kind of generation ship and 
 attempt to colonize another star.  This would keep the pervasive low 
 expectations out of the equation as well and we would have only ourselves to 
 blame if something went wrong.  
 
 
 
 Thanks. 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
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 S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
 Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
 
 
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Re: What happened with Firefox 25?

2013-11-01 Thread B. Henry


Ah_men!

Sadly, neither drugs nor prayer seem to be able to give many blind folk that; 
and I think we all know of more than a couple bind folks who have both 1 or 
more degrees and above average inteligence who are unemployed. 

One alternative is for more of those who have some potential as far as logical 
thinking and such, and a fair math back ground to learn to code.
It's a longer and harder row to hoe, but if enough folks got in to the nuts and 
bolts of the tech they use so much then most of the money could be taken out of 
the equation. 
I have a terrible math background, am over 50 with responsibilities, and a few 
not very promising hours looking at beginners programing tutorials; so, I''m 
probably not our boy, but there must be othrs who could really do something. 
I'm still hoping I can say I've done something real to advance Linux 
accessibility before I die, but this may not be as concrete as I'd like.
 
On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 07:24:25PM -0400, Doug Smith wrote:
 No, the thing we need is to become those rich visionaries.  How in infinity 
 can we do it?  What is the over night, have nothing to have it all quick 
 fix approach to getting blind people into areas of work where they will have 
 real incomes and earn that kind of money so that each of us might be 
 willing to put that few million into it.  Instead of waiting for someone else 
 to do it, how in the known universe can we become those people?  
 
 
 
 I'm serious.  Any possible answers that might be doable for all of us?  
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Doug Smith: Special Agent
 S.W.A.T  Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
 Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
 
 
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 Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
 Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility


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Re: accessible weather and radio apps

2013-10-23 Thread B. Henry

Thanks much, will take a fresh look at this progra
m soon.




























































































































































































































































































































































































































































On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 08:10:51AM +0200, Hammer Attila wrote:
 Hi,
 
 Me not have problems the Radiotray indicator usage with Orca in Ubuntu
 12.04. Only difficulter task the radio stations editing, need using
 flatreview command to click the prober button to add radio stations to
 the station list.
 
 Attila
 
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Re: accessible weather and radio apps

2013-10-22 Thread B. Henry

So the radio-tray indicater does not have accessibility/usability issues now in 
12.04-precise? 
I tried this before, I think on Lucid anddon't remember anything accept that it 
seemed to be useless with orca. Perhaps the change from an old style applet to 
an indicator has made things work differently, or Orrca improvements have made 
the difference. 
Thanks for any thoughts, tips, or tricks for using this. 
What does it do that is better than just using a media player to play streams.
--
B.H.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 03:55:02PM +0200, Hammer Attila wrote:
 Hi cad,
 
 Radio listening related:
 You tryed radiotray indicator? In Ubuntu 12.04 I use this indicator.
 I think default enable this indicator with Ubuntu repository the newest
 releases too. Possible you need enabling the universe and multiverse
 repositories.
 
 Attila
 
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Re: accessible weather and radio apps

2013-10-22 Thread B. Henry

I also have good results with the weather indicater which is similar to the 
weather applet I used in earlier Ubuntu releases. It does crash sometimes, but 
not that often for me. Others have reported some issues, but I don't know of 
any comon denominater between the users who've had more problems. 
I play streams with almost any of the media players that are accessible, and 
while I sometimes add a url or stream-playlist file to a player's favorites 
directly I usually just open a directory of playlist files for the audio I 
frequently stream and either enter on the files so that they are played by the 
default application for the file type, (customizable in file properties), or  
choose what player to use from contextual or files  menus. 
I also have a file of raw urls that open streams so that I can paste them in to 
a media player directly either for onetime use or as a favorite. 
These methods have the advantage that once created they can be copied on to any 
computer, OS/distro independent. It's handy to put such a folder of playlists 
and a file of stream urls in to your UbuntuOne or DropBox directory so that 
they can be updated as you encounter new streams or as data changes for 
existing ones. 
Lastly I make bash_aliases for the streams I play most so that they are easily 
started by typing a few characters on the commandline, e.g. bbcworld will start 
streaming the BBC World Service with mplayer or VLC. If you don't already have 
it I strongly suggest getting VLC as it is now accessible both with it's 
graphical interface andwhen working in the CLI. 
There are some players that open a browser on shoutcast and similar pages, but 
as I don't live in the U.S. I can't directly access these steams. There are 
quite a few very good websites where you can access many streaming readio 
stations, some with thousands of streams if you are looking for new places to 
listen. Just save playlist files, (you'll often need to label them as they are 
not labeled with anything that  sounds like a station's name, and sometimes 
your browser may save all streams from a site with the same name). In other 
cases you will need to copy urls for the streams you discover. 
HTH
--
B.H.


On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 09:31:40AM -0400, chad baker wrote:
 hi does anyone know any accessible weather apps on the ubuntu software center 
 thats accessible with orca and a radio app to listen to stations
 thanks
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Re: Anyway possible using Svox Classic TTS engine with Ubuntu?

2013-05-10 Thread B. Henry

I totally agree that we need to work on FoS alternatives to the IBMtts; but for 
now for some languages voxin is the most viable  alternative. I don't want to 
see the day where folks must keep using old operating system(s) just to have an 
understandable voice in their language, but this day is at hand, or close to 
it. 
As I said in another msg having more than one option is also important both 
because what is good for one person isn't for another and because just feeling 
that one has a choice makes people feel better.
The pico voices I tried in Windows were certainly equalized for phone speakers, 
and for most people with nnormal hearing found the tone quite muffled. I 
tried English pico a few times for minutes on my Linux installation(s) and 
think it was the same or similar; but one would think adding a bit of mid-high 
pitch in to the voices to improve clarity. 
The other drawback to svox was how it sounded at relatively high word per 
minute rates, but my brief experiments under Linux were pretty responsive at 
voice rates fast enough to be practical in production use for, I think, most 
users. 
Bottom line: WE should all try and do what ever we can to advance work on Linux 
voice alternatives asap. I wasn't so impressed with openmari, but it seems that 
many found this quite listenable and saw/see promise...The more the merrier.
--
B.H. 
  

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 09:13:19AM -0400, Kyle wrote:
 According to Fernando Botelho:
 # Well, since Voxin is no longer for sale, this might be a good time for
 # us to get started on improving espeak in Spanish.
 
 Googling and looking on the website, I don't think it's no longer for
 sale, but it's so badly outdated, and takes so much ancient code to run,
 that it might as well be no longer for sale. It will only get harder and
 harder to run Voxin as hardware and software become newer. It's like
 putting that old floppy drive in new computer after new computer until
 it eventually no longer fits, even with adaptors. Eventually, if you
 still want to use your old floppy collection, you will need to move the
 files to something like a flash drive or purchase a USB floppy drive.
 Voxin is much the same, in that eventually people who are currently
 making it work will need to improve the more maintained bits of code
 such as eSpeak, because eventually, all the adapted and ancient
 libraries in the world won't make it work. The website indicates that it
 just uses an old C++ library, but there's no way that old library will
 work in the future, as it's already well over 10 years old. Eventually
 it will become incompatible with the entire system bit by bit. I said
 all that to say that Voxin may still be for sale, but it's much more
 profitable for the community to work to improve eSpeak, SVox Pico,
 Festival, Flite or any of the other freedom synthesizers available with
 source code that can be freely modified and improved than it will ever
 be to keep trying and trying to make Voxin or any other packaged version
 of this speech synthesizer run just a little longer.
 ~Kyle
 http:/kyle.tk/
 -- 
 Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?
 Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - The Amazing Evie
 
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Re: Anyway possible using Svox Classic TTS engine with Ubuntu?

2013-05-09 Thread B. Henry

The svox voices were donated I thought, or was this only for Windows usage? 
I don't like pico svox at all for English, but found them quite listenable in 
French, and a much better alternative to espeak for Spanish; and at the moment 
the only alternative for Spanish in Linux that's of quality for
 the average user to use on a production system is Voxin, (IBMtts).
I certainly don't mind paying the $5 U.S. that a Voxin voice costs, but 
alternatives would certainly be welcomed. I am a big espeak fan, and do want to 
work with J.D. to try and improve Spanish when ever I get the chance to make 
some decent recordings, but no one nor two synths will be for everyone. 
BTW-does anyone have experience with Festival and Spanish?
--
B.H. 

 

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 08:28:46AM -0400, Kyle wrote:
 According to Fernando Botelho:
 # Someone with experience adapting voices for use with Orca/speech
 # dispatcher is:
 # Bohdan R. Rau
 # etha...@polip.com
 #
 # He was working on adapting SAPI voices for use in Linux through Wine.
 # Maybe his experience would help with this.
 
 Android voices should be even easier than SAPI voices to make work with
 speech-dispatcher, since x86 builds of Android are now available, and
 the voices need to be built for it, making them one step closer to
 x86-based desktop Linux. The main issue is going to be convincing the
 developers of such voices that many of us would be interested in
 purchasing them for a desktop Linux operating system, which would go a
 long way toward resolving any remaining incompatibilities and also would
 avoid licensing problems that could arise from running a voice on
 something other than the intended platform. Only the speech-dispatcher
 module would need to be figured out at that point. Of course the voices
 would need to be built for x86_64 as well, but in most cases this
 shouldn't cause significant problems.
 ~Kyle
 http://kyle.tk/
 -- 
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Re: Resignation

2013-03-04 Thread B. Henry

Yours is one of the first names I noticed on the U.A. list which I subscribed 
to with-in days of starting to use Vinux and Ubuntu in mid 2010, and while 
we've had very little personal interaction your contributions have been noted 
and appreciated by me. paths do diverge as they come together, and while yours 
is  no longer on the same vector as Cananical's I have no doubt that your 
contributions will continue to be of value when and where you make them. 
Thanks, and the internet will surely bring us in to contact again one way or 
another.
Best wishes, 
--
B.H. 
 

On Mon, Mar 04, 2013 at 01:36:36PM -0700, Charlie Kravetz wrote:
 
 After much thinking and consideration, I am resigning from all Ubuntu
 related activities. I can no longer say I agree with most of the
 decisions being made by Canonical. While I wish this distribution all
 the best, I can not consider myself of something that I am no longer
 finding expresses my ideals and actions. I will also be resigning my
 Ubuntu membership.
 
 For those wishing to keep in touch, I will remain active on google+ and
 will maintain my email at charlie.kravetz
 AT
 gmail
 DOT
 com
 
 Thanks to everyone for fantastic memories.
 -- 
 Charlie Kravetz
 Linux Registered User Number 425914
 [http://linuxcounter.net/user/425914.html] Never let anyone steal your
 DREAM.   [http://keepingdreams.com]
 
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Re: shrinking a partition on a thumb drive

2013-02-15 Thread B. Henry

Maybe this has long since been answered, but as I just saw this for the 
first time and don't see any replies perhaps it hasn't been answered.
I'm assuming that you are using a standard squashed file system 
installation on the thumbdrive and that the whole drive's formated 
fat32. Is this correct? Have you done much customizing, or installed 
software that you built from source or that comes from non-standard 
repos, etc? If not I'd just re do things from scratch after making the 
4gig fat partition and what other one you want.
What are you planning on doing with the other partition? How did you 
want to format the other partition?

Regards,
--
B.H.


 On 08/13/2012 06:36 PM, Lenny wrote:

Hi,
I am running Ubuntu 10.04, and I have it installed on an 8GB thumb drive as
well.
I boot from the CD, and unmount the thumb drive.
I open gParted, and select /dev/sdb1 which is correct.
Then I go to move/resize and I change the unallocated size to 4096 MB.
then when I apply the action, it fails every time.
I tried this in Parted using sudo as well, and it said that the action is
not supported at this time.
My goal is to make a 4GB partition on the SD card.
Thanks for any help.
Glenn




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Re: network card problem

2013-01-29 Thread B. Henry



 Well, if you are missing this it's most likely called either linux-headers, or 
linux-headers-generic, unless names were changed after natty.
I have 0 idea if this is the actual problem, but it is worth looking in to.
--
B.H.


 
 
 
 
 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 05:01:12PM -0200, José Vilmar Estácio de Souza wrote:
  Hi.
  If memory serves me, I had a similar problem when I used Ubuntu 12.10.
  
  Not sure, but I think the problem was caused by lack of installation
  of header files from the new kernel, which prevented the compilation
  of modules related to this card.
  
  Look for a package named linux-kernel-headers, linux-headers  or
  something of that sort and see if it is installed. I am not sure
  about the correct name.
  If it is installed, check if the installed version is compatible
  with the version of the kernel.
  
  Hope that helps.
  Thanks.
  On 01/29/2013 03:08 PM, Tom Masterson wrote:
  Yes I know this is probably not the list for this but it is the best I
  have at the moment.
  
  Over the weekend I did an update on an older dell laptop running 12.04.
  It has been doing fine with that os until now.  After the update when I
  rebooted it is no longer loading the modules for the BCM4401-B0 ethernet
  card whic means that of course that computer no longer has access to any
  network.
  
  Can anyone think of any reason this may have happened and if there is a
  solution to it.  I have done a serch of the internet especially ubuntu
  and found no information.
  
  Thanks
  Tom
  
  
  -- 
  {}S José Vilmar Estácio de Souza
  
  -- 
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  Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
  https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility

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Re: network card problem

2013-01-29 Thread B. Henry

I might have not been clear in my other reply; so, you  will probably need both 
linux-headers and linux-headers-generic with numbers that are in sync with your 
kernel version.




On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 05:01:12PM -0200, José Vilmar Estácio de Souza wrote:
 Hi.
 If memory serves me, I had a similar problem when I used Ubuntu 12.10.
 
 Not sure, but I think the problem was caused by lack of installation
 of header files from the new kernel, which prevented the compilation
 of modules related to this card.
 
 Look for a package named linux-kernel-headers, linux-headers  or
 something of that sort and see if it is installed. I am not sure
 about the correct name.
 If it is installed, check if the installed version is compatible
 with the version of the kernel.
 
 Hope that helps.
 Thanks.
 On 01/29/2013 03:08 PM, Tom Masterson wrote:
 Yes I know this is probably not the list for this but it is the best I
 have at the moment.
 
 Over the weekend I did an update on an older dell laptop running 12.04.
 It has been doing fine with that os until now.  After the update when I
 rebooted it is no longer loading the modules for the BCM4401-B0 ethernet
 card whic means that of course that computer no longer has access to any
 network.
 
 Can anyone think of any reason this may have happened and if there is a
 solution to it.  I have done a serch of the internet especially ubuntu
 and found no information.
 
 Thanks
 Tom
 
 
 -- 
 {}S José Vilmar Estácio de Souza
 
 -- 
 Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
 Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility

-- 
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Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

2013-01-07 Thread B. Henry

I don't see how it's so hard, or detramental to your points to remove the shiny 
stuff line from a comment is hard, or in  anyway takes away from the force of 
what you are saying; butt burnout is burnout.
I wouldn't have even written to say that. I will say that you have just 
discovered or admitted or something  what many, probably most people feel 
regarding accessible-web-browsing. For me, nvdafirefox is the current gold 
standard for web-browsing with  a screenreader. Chrome is certainly usable with 
nvda as well, and chromevox adds another option although keystroke conflicts 
make  that a harder than it should be. And yes, nvda works very well with ie as 
well and will get you access to some pages and content that don't work with 
other browsers in an accessible way. From what this non-coder understands there 
are basic accessibility infrastructure reasons that some things are easier to 
do under windows than under Linux, but no matter what NVDA is an impressive, 
I'd even say amazing, (awesome...lol.) program/project! 
The beauty of Linux, its flexibilitly/range of choice, specifically multiple 
desktop environments, means that for the blind person to have anywhere near the 
range of options that a sighted person has developers of multiple projects must 
think about accessibility. This means that the devs' hearts and minds must be 
in the right place as I doubt there's enough economic incentive to go around to 
be had from the  blind-user market. 
OK, so it's unlikely that all the major desktops will be recoded so that 
accessibility is given a high priority, but it's ashamed that Mozilla  and Orca 
can't or don't work together more; enough to give us a high quality experience 
navigating the range of websites that we are likely to encounter day in and day 
out. 
If web-browsing was all I did with my computer then no matter that my heart is 
with Linux I'd not be able to justify using GNU-Linux as my primary OS. 
Honestly, the browsing-experience on Linux is just not in the same league with 
what's available on Windows. On Windows I can do almost everything with 
Firefox, or IE if that was what I wanted to use, and seldom need to change 
browsers or screenreaders. I could get at almost everything I want to between 
these two browsers, and with one or two aditional browsers can get at a few of 
the bits that don't currently work with NVDA. Using Linux, as I do, as my 
primary OS I need to use a combination of Lynx and Firefox and for a few sites 
chrome/chromevox to approach the browsing efficiency i'D have if I used 
Windows. This means I need to know where I'm going when I start a browsing 
session so that I can pick the best browser or perhaps have to copy an url and 
switch browsers. Also it requires practice to have a decent experience with 
firefox. Some things I can do and not have any problem on a windows box are a 
mess with firefox/Orca such as using up and down arrows to get somewhere on a a 
webpage. If I press the arrow a bit to long and go past my goal I havwe to wait 
till Orca catches up and speech stops before  changing direction. Even pressing 
the arrow too long can mean getting text repeated and again having to wait till 
things settle down to get an idea as to where I am. I could go in to much more 
detail and explain several similar problem s that make the learning curve much 
steeper for the blind-Linux-using web-browserk, not to mention many sites that 
just don't work, or don't give access to important content that's no problem 
under Windows. Even after over two years using Linux %95 of the time I still 
find myself clicking on the wrong link or button because I've not waited long 
enough for Orca to finish speaking or sometimes because it doesn't speak what's 
in focus. I'm taking a look at ELinks now as it has some java script support 
and other options that may mean I can do more browsing from the command line.

Some of this would not be so troublesome on more powerful computers, but I 
don't know just how much difference a faster box with more cores and RAM would 
make. I'm also using older Ubuntu with gnome2 which means I'm not using the 
latest Orca as the xdesktop branch is no longer developed, but I've not heard 
many people say that their firefox experience is much better with latest Orca. 
I use Linux in spite of the browsing experience because I like most everything 
about it much better than Windows. There are notable accessibility issues 
besides browsing, and there are bright spots even with browsing such as surfraw 
and googleizer. Chromevox has a lot of potential. Someone who's not a tinkerer 
or not comfortable on the command line should probably not consider Linux as 
their primary OS at this point unfortunately. 
This post has been mostly about web-browsing. I don't think this is something 
that Ubuntu devs can do much about how firefox or  other browsers work with 
Orca, so I really will stop going down this discussion path this time. To make 
one

Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

2013-01-07 Thread B. Henry

Agreed as is often the case. 
I will say that vinegar's fine, but well applied. Take that how you as the 
readers will...lol.
I just want to add that no one has to take the lead, or decide they want to 
take the lead to be of value in the fight. And if it turns out not to be a 
fight and more of a discussion then there is a God!
We who care should all try and do a little. If your heart, mind and energy 
level make you able to do more then please consider doing so, but I suspect 
that a hundred more or less well thought out from the heart emails from a 
hundred different people are worth much more than a few people trying to say it 
all, whether tactfully or not. If a more hardline radical line is what is in 
your heart then that is where your words need to come from. The good cop/bad 
cop approach is often needed in this world. 
Again, there's so much to do that there's plenty of work for everyone!
Regards, and hope to see lots of others commenting other places.

--
B.H.
  

On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 09:52:12PM -0600, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
 Whether you advocate for greater accessibility in Ubuntu or not is a
 decision only you can make. I would not interpret the responses of
 two or three people though to be all this talk of diplomacy and
 catching more flies with honey is what people want. First, two or
 three people is not all of this talk or what people want, it's just
 the opinions of two or three people on a relatively low traffic
 list. Don't blow it out of proportion.
 
 For my part, the only point I made was that I don't consider Unity
 or Ubuntu Phone to be trivial or flashy. I think these were hard
 efforts involving quite a few people in an effort to make Ubuntu
 more popular, running on more devices and in the hands of more
 people. I know people have criticized Unity for being dumbed down,
 but I don't know what that means, and I'm not sure why it's a bad
 thing to make Ubuntu more popular and get it used by more people.
 Obviously, if you want to use the argument that Canonical is
 spending resources on bright new shiny things instead of
 accessibility then that will strike a chord with some Ubuntu and
 Unity critics, but I'm not sure it'll sway the decision makers at
 Canonical.
 
 I also wouldn't be too worried about what I or are other people
 think. The goal here is to get Ubuntu more accessible in all of it's
 releases and on all of the platforms where it's supported. If that
 means using honey then that's what should be done, if it means using
 vinegar then that's the way to go. I prefer honey myself, but I know
 there's a need for vinegar too. If you're not comfortable being
 diplomatic, political or tactful, but you want to fight for more
 accessibility in Ubuntu then do what you're comfortable with.
 
 At my previous employer, I got into quite a few debates with another
 blind person. I thought he was a bit hysterical at times and made
 outlandish claims. We debated quite a bit on our internal mailing
 list. I was surprised though when I found out how much he was
 appreciated by those working on accessibility within the company. I
 thought my more balanced and reasonable approach would have been
 more appreciated, but I found out that in the accessibility
 community you need the radicals, those calling out to man the
 barricades and the squeaky wheels.
 
 For my part, I hope you take up the fight, and I hope you don't take
 the fact that I'm a different person with a different approach as a
 reason not to take up the fight yourself.
 
 On 01/06/2013 08:21 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
 Great ideas and thoughts here, folks.
 
 To put my words in context, I've used Linux since Slackware '96 which,
 as its name implies, was released in 1996. I started using GNOME
 accessibility in the Gnopernicus days, and at the moment it is my
 full-time operating system of choice.
 
 However, my experience under Windows and NVDA is making me sit up and
 take notice. Firefox works very well. Similarly, I can run Chrome and,
 gods forbid, IE reasonably well. I have a level of choice that I don't
 seem to under Linux, and there are other areas in which Windows is
 excelling for me. I'm not saying that it's the best choice, or the right
 choice for everyone. I'm just starting to give it a serious look,
 because the latest state of having to reboot multiple times per day
 under Ubuntu because accessibility is behaving oddly is starting to get
 to me.
 
 I hope that this discussion leads to someone taking up this cause. I did
 some soul-searching over the last two days, and am not the one to take
 this up--if all this talk of diplomacy and catching more flies with
 honey is what people want, that is. Having pushed and advocated and
 developed for Android for the past few years, I'm burned out on the
 access fight, and no longer have much diplomacy left in me. Best of luck.
 
 
 On 01/05/2013 06:12 PM, Kyle wrote:
 The spam system is completely automated and Akismet has been known to
 mark quite a large

Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

2013-01-07 Thread B. Henry

Hi KK and all,
I certainly was not trying to suggest that writing about Windows should be 
anyone's focus in their interactions with Canonical execs, or any Linux devs. 
On the other hand howeverknowing that others have managed to make important 
bits accessible lets folks know that they need to find a way to give access to 
these same functions whether in similar or quite different ways. I'm not saying 
that ORCA should try and be NVDA anymore than I think NVDA should have tried to 
be jaws or Hal. 
At any rate these comments were part of an internal discussion between users of 
access tech, not my ideas as to what anyone should say to Mark Shuttleworth, or 
Orca devs in case that was not clear. I'd hope it would be sufficient to say 
that Orca needs to  have a way to clear its buffers and speak where one 
actually is on a page instead of reading everything that the cursor has passed 
over, or perhaps that's not the right way to explain it, but anyway instead of 
saying that I want Orca to work like other screen readers manage to do and have 
done for years. 
It is important to say thank you. Sure, some people don't really care, but 
many, I reckon most do; and I always try to do so, and I try to find something 
possitive to say even when expressing major concerns or noting serious 
improvements that are needed and while some people will prefer you get to the 
point in as few a words as is possible I think the thank yous usually are worth 
the extra characters.
Lastly, while I'm a serious supporter of FOS, it's unfair and just wrong to say 
that no one who makes proprietary software cares about what people ask for, 
even accessibility. Some do and will, many don't and probably never will. 
Same's true for FOS devs. 
I'll always choose FOS if all is equal as far as functionality and efficiency 
and then some. I won't do with out or spend twice as long doing something on a 
regular basis just to say I only use free software. Sure I can't afford some 
useful proprietary programs that exist, and others may not be able to even 
afford the $5 that a good Spanish voice costs for Linux, but I won't choose to 
starve to death because there's someone in the world who can't afford the price 
of their next meal. 
I'd be better off studying programming instead of commenting on such debates 
perhaps, but for the moment I do have a vague idea  how to express myself so 
I'm doing so. 
I guess I mostly want to say that anyone who has subscribed to this list has an 
interest in Ubuntu and accessibility and I don't think the big decission makers 
at Canonical do read this list, but even if they do I don't see how the 
discussion would do anything but show them where things really stand; at least 
in the minds of many of the people who use and might use their products. 
Read my emial headers and you'll see I'm writing and pretty mucfh always do 
from a Linux box, usually a Ubuntu or Vinux built on Ubuntu box. I'm sold, but 
things can change. Let's make them change for the better, not slowly slip away 
from us. 
And sorry, I know I wasn't going to continue to post on this, but I've not 
heard from Krishnakant for a while and instinct got the better of me...lol.
Regards,
--
B.H. 




On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 11:33:01PM +0530, Krishnakant Mane wrote:
 +1 Kyle,
 And I would say the work has been awsome and Ubuntu 12.04 fits my
 bill very wel.
 I would take this opportunity to strongly urge all users to be
 positively critical and instead of saying what is great about
 Windows or any closed software for that matter, better tell
 developers what is required.
 I would go one step ahead and say, one encouragement for developers
 is to tell them what even your favorite non-free OS and software
 does not have and that you wished it was there in Orca/ Ubuntu/ what
 ever.
 This helps because proprietary fokes are not going to listen any
 ways, FOSS hackers do.
 happy hacking.
 Krishnakant.
 On 01/07/2013 11:20 PM, B. Henry wrote:
 I don't see how it's so hard, or detramental to your points to remove the 
 shiny stuff line from a comment is hard, or in  anyway takes away from the 
 force of what you are saying; butt burnout is burnout.
 I wouldn't have even written to say that. I will say that you have just 
 discovered or admitted or something  what many, probably most people feel 
 regarding accessible-web-browsing. For me, nvdafirefox is the current gold 
 standard for web-browsing with  a screenreader. Chrome is certainly usable 
 with nvda as well, and chromevox adds another option although keystroke 
 conflicts make  that a harder than it should be. And yes, nvda works very 
 well with ie as well and will get you access to some pages and content that 
 don't work with other browsers in an accessible way. From what this 
 non-coder understands there are basic accessibility infrastructure reasons 
 that some things are easier to do under windows than under Linux, but no 
 matter what NVDA is an impressive, I'd even say amazing

Re: Campaign for Ubuntu Accessibility [was Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone]



 Very good point. I am not sure that shiny things reffed mobile Ubuntu, and 
 my first thought was not this; but even if a spiffier more polished graphical 
 experience was what was being talked about your take is still valid. 
 There are probably some less than ideal moves being made at Canonical, but at 
 least if and until someone in a position of power says that the choice was or 
 is being made to prioritize some bell or whistle over accessibility it is 
 both counter productive and unnecesarily antagonistic to include the shiny 
 things bit in an otherwise good and important message.
 Regards,
 --
 B.H.
 
   
 On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 07:13:04AM -0600, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
  Below, you mention that Canonical is throwing resources at shiny
  things. I'm not sure if you're referring to Ubuntu for the phone as
  a shiny thing or not, but if you are or that's what you're implying
  then I'd suggest refraining from that in your push to get more
  resources committed to Ubuntu's accessibility. Shiny things in this
  context refer to frivolous waste of times, and I don't think
  Canonical trying to get Ubuntu into the phone space is a shiny thing
  in this sense. Remember, Canonical is a privately owned company that
  is still trying to become profitable. Having Ubuntu run on more and
  more platforms, phones, TV's, tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops,
  servers, clouds and so on is part of the strategy to create enough
  revenue streams for Canonical to become profitable. Note that I
  don't know that Canonical is actively working to have Ubuntu run on
  all of those platforms or not; I'm just basing this assumption on
  public comments from Canonical.
  
  I think you make a lot of good points below, and I think this is a
  laudable effort, I just don't think you serve your goals by implying
  that something as significant as having Ubuntu run on smart phones
  is somehow frivolous or trivial.
  
  Note I also changed the subject line since this discussion seems to
  be much broader than just the Ubuntu Phone OS announcement.
  
  On 01/04/2013 10:50 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
  Here is Jono's announcement of Ubuntu for Phones:
  
  http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/02/announcing-ubuntu-for-phones/
  
  My comment there appears to still be around, but I find that under
  Ubuntu 12.10 I cannot arrow down the list of comments. Focus appears to
  bounce to the top. That isn't Canonical's fault I'm certain, but one
  would hope that a distribution that is changing so much about how we use
  our computers could afford to hire enough of an accessibility team to
  work on these types of issues.
  
  If people want to work on this then I'm happy to help. Quite honestly,
  I'm burning out on accessibility. I've used and have developed for
  Android since 1.6, when the accessibility situation there was barely
  tolerable, and even today I'm trying so hard to contribute to the
  Android accessibility ecosystem and am being snubbed by Google. I don't
  know what it is about accessibility and open source culture that makes
  it so hard for people to contribute. My girlfriend has CP, and she too
  wishes she could use Ubuntu but doesn't because of accessibility issues.
  I'm almost to the point of replacing my Ubuntu system with Windows just
  because I'm tired of battling with these access issues. I have a lot of
  respect for Canonical's small access team, but if Canonical just wishes
  to stick its head in the sand again and again, to throw a bunch of
  resources at shiny things while ignoring the disabled, then it will
  quickly become apparent that Linux for Human Beings *really* means Linux
  for Completely Able-bodied Human Beings. I understand that other
  distributions may not be accessible either, but that is no excuse for
  Canonical, Redhat, etc. to simply stand aside and let Linux become less
  accessibly relevant than Windows. It's sad that I enjoy using my
  VirtualBox Windows 7 install more than I do Ubuntu for many tasks, and
  is sad when accessibility developers ask me why I don't just abandon
  Linux for the far more accessible Windows.,
  
  -- 
  Christopher (CJ)
  chaltain at Gmail
  
  -- 
  Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
  Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com
  https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility

-- 
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https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility

Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

 to work on these types of issues.
  
  If people want to work on this then I'm happy to help. Quite
  honestly, I'm burning out on accessibility. I've used and have
  developed for Android since 1.6, when the accessibility situation
  there was barely tolerable, and even today I'm trying so hard to
  contribute to the Android accessibility ecosystem and am being
  snubbed by Google. I don't know what it is about accessibility and
  open source culture that makes it so hard for people to contribute.
  My girlfriend has CP, and she too wishes she could use Ubuntu but
  doesn't because of accessibility issues. I'm almost to the point of
  replacing my Ubuntu system with Windows just because I'm tired of
  battling with these access issues. I have a lot of respect for
  Canonical's small access team, but if Canonical just wishes to stick
  its head in the sand again and again, to throw a bunch of resources
  at shiny things while ignoring the disabled, then it will quickly
  become apparent that Linux for Human Beings *really* means Linux for
  Completely Able-bodied Human Beings. I understand that other
  distributions may not be accessible either, but that is no excuse
  for Canonical, Redhat, etc. to simply stand aside and let Linux
  become less accessibly relevant than Windows. It's sad that I enjoy
  using my VirtualBox Windows 7 install more than I do Ubuntu for many
  tasks, and is sad when accessibility developers ask me why I don't
  just abandon Linux for the far more accessible Windows.,
  
  On 01/04/2013 09:06 PM, Robert Cole wrote:
  Hello, Burt.
  
  Your e-mail was accidentally sent to me, but not to the list. I am
  forwarding your message to the list. I hope that this is alright.
  
  Kind regards.
  
  Take care.
  
  On 01/04/2013 07:00 PM, B. Henry wrote:
  Well, I certainly am behind, and if the opportunity presents
  itself alongside of those who would like to see an effort made
  to make all Ubuntu releases as accessible as is reasonably
  possible.  The big word is of course reasonably.
  I am someone who wants things to work for me and those with
  similar and other limitations when it's practical. Personally
  I'm not that unhappy with using LTS releases, but enjoyed using
  Maverick on several machines and I'm writing to you from the
  version of Vinux based on Natty, so I'm certainly not one who'd
  never use a mid-term Ubuntu version.
  Perhaps if Ubuntu can gain market share and hence money from
  some of the changes that are being implemented then some of that
  money can be put back in to accessibility development. I can be
  patient with a short term lapse in accessibility, but do
  sincerely hope that this is not a strategy that is considered
  good enough for the long term, and I'll certainly add my voice
  to those who are calling for  a more inclusive Ubuntu.
  On the other hand I can't see that out of the box accessibility
  is better with Fedora, or for that matter any major cutting
  edge/rapid release distro. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but even
  if I'm not there's no reason why just keeping a half a step
  ahead of average is good enough when it comes to accessibility.
  Regards, and yes special regards and thanks to Luke and others
  who work with what they have to give us the accessibility that
  they can.
  -- 
  Burt Henry
  
  On 01/04/2013 01:09 AM, Robert Cole wrote:
  Hello, Nolan.
  
  When I first switched to Linux, I did so because I fell in
  love with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is what I used (exclusively) until
  the accessibility issues began to kick in. I am very
  appreciative of the hard work which the Accessibility team
  puts into Ubuntu, and I understand that they are very limited
  because fo various reasons. My frustration si most certainly
  not with them, but with teh company whose operating system I
  fell in love with back in 2006. I still remember the
  excitement I felt when I saw the Ubuntu philosophy for human
  beings.
  
  But then, as time moved on, I had to move on as well. I really
  enjoyed using Unity, and I absolutely loved all that Ubuntu
  had to offer. If it was always as accessible as it once was, I
  would definitely go back. I don't want to sound strange in
  saying this, but I am kind of homesick for my first Linux
  operating system. While I am enjoying my experience with
  Fedora, I really miss what I had come to know in Ubuntu.
  
  I am not sure how I can help. I had posted a comment on Mark
  Shuttleworth's blog sometime in 2012, but it seemed to go
  unnoticed.
  
  I forwarded this message to the AccessibleFreedom Support
  mailing list; I hope that this is alright.
  
  In this world's eyes, I am basically a nobody, but if I can
  somehow lend my voice in support of what you are standing for,
  I will certainly do so. I am not online as much as I used to
  be, but as I am able I will help you in making this call for
  accessibility known.
  
  Kind regards.
  
  On 01/02/2013 03:50 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
  I would like

Re: Campaign for Ubuntu Accessibility [was Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone]

Well, for better or worse, out of sight, out of mind, seems to be standard 
human behavior. 
Hopefully a firm but gentle reminder about accessibility will be enough to get 
an honest reaction from Canonical, but  there's always the chance of yet 
another fight on any given day; and a garanty of more fights ahead in general. 
--
B.H.

I did think it was on a Ubuntu blog that I saw folks writing about the need to 
have accessibility baked in from the get go, not  added on as a patch to 
otherwise more or less mature software. Maybe it was just some posts on this 
list that I'm remembering. 
Anyway, no matter who you are dealing withyou do need to get in to the habit of 
being diplomatic unless you know the person very well if you want positive 
results. Catching more flies with honey than vinegar and all that you know...
And yes, Canonical  wouldn't get a mainstream tech writer's attention by having 
a distro that  is rated the most accessible Linux ever nearly as fast as they 
will by having  a unity that not only works, but looks good. Getting the toe in 
the door of the computer novice who's tired of Windows and doesn't hve the 
money for a mac isn't very likely if things don't look very good, and  while 
there's money to be made from blind users there will likely be less of them 
than the fed up with Windows crowd. So, as Christopher was saying, not 
innovating and trying to get in to mobile space so that more resources can be 
thrown at accessibility just isn't an option. The same goes re unity. Maybe 
gnome will get it's head out of the sand, but from most of what I've read 
sticking with stock gnome as the Ubuntu desktop has become a non-starter. Even 
if the Gnome-team was more responsive to what the average user and or the 
potential new Linux user wanted Ubuntu needed a look that'd separate it from 
other distros to break out  of the limited box it was? is? in, or at least this 
was core thinking.
The only way to go is to do what was planned and is being done, plus dedicate 
more towards accessibility. The only way to do so effectively I think is to 
have accessibility given the same importance as all other core functions 
starting from the beginning of design and planning. Considering all the major 
changes going on under the Ubuntu hood I'm far less concerned about
not having good accessibility with the mid-term releases than I am about a 
mobile platform that's not accessible from day one. This is not only true for 
me as an end user, but also it'd be true if I were thinking of Canonical's 
potential profitability. 
I am certainly a bit concerned about the idea of accessibility being once again 
in the position of having to play catch-up, but  don't know enough about 
technical details of what all is going on now and over the next year+ with 
Ubuntu to know exactly where to place my concern. 
At least by writing this you have me and probably several others interested in 
getting to the bottom of Ubuntu accessibility plans, and yes, making sure that 
Mr. Shuttleworth and crew remember that blind folks are real people/real market 
share.
   
On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 08:07:10AM -0600, Nolan Darilek wrote:
 All valid points, and while I agree in spirit, I'm not sure that I
 have the patience or tact to worry about things like PR or
 perception. Are they necessary? Perhaps, but my hope is that we
 don't have to keep fighting these same fights from square one each
 time a new platform emerges. After nearly 3.5 years I feel like I
 can finally back off of Android a bit; we have decent web
 accessibility and the ability to do text review, and things are
 steadily improving. I've been asking myself for the past few days if
 I'm ready to start this fight from scratch again, and if sentiment
 is that I can't call out Canonical for being shiny in its pursuit of
 Unity and other pretty tech while having an accessibility team of
 1-2, then the answer likely is no. I don't have it in me to do a few
 more years of time only to have the next shiny hotness surface in
 2016 and be just as inaccessible.
 
 So yeah, maybe I'm the silly one for emailing this list and saying
 that I'm not the right person for this. But whether or not I take up
 the cause, it is one that needs to be taken up. Ubuntu and Linux
 have succeeded all the more because for-profit companies like
 Canonical and Redhat advance the state of the art. For them to do so
 and not prioritize accessibility is irresponsible stewardship at
 best, and it saddens me to look to non-free operating systems
 because those *have* to be more accessible to keep government or
 educational contracts. I'd hope that free software in general, and a
 company that builds Linux for human beings in particular, would
 strive to improve accessibility without having the threat of
 contract compliance hanging over their heads.
 
 
 On 01/05/2013 07:13 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
 Below, you mention that Canonical is throwing resources at shiny
 things. I'm not sure if

Re: Here it is...Ubuntu Phone