[xgl-mag] XGL/compiz screen magnifier planning

[Henrik Nilsen Omma]

James King wrote:
> Up until yesterday, i couldn't see well
> enought to find out how to move the Magnifier from its initial position
> attached to the middle of the top of the desktop where it blocked all other
> dialogs 
Yes, this bug is annoying. Hopefully we can get get this working before 
6.06, but we are anyway moving on to new and better things. I guess a 
simple, interactive way of moving and resizing the zoom window would 
help. Could be using the mouse or the arrow keys.

> that were large enough to be read with the standard cursor using
> Screenreader with the High-Contrast Big Print Enverted Theme turned on and
> the Theme's Recommended Font turned on.
There is a bug filed on that as well. It should default to the larger font.
>   
>
> I want to move "Interaction with screenreadder and Braille systesm":into
> the above "must-have" list from the following "desirable features" list.
>   
The problem is that this is probably also them most complicated feature 
to implement. When making a magnifier, the primary task is to grab parts 
of the display and do a simple translation to a larger size. Getting the 
text information and piping it to a screen reader is a different game, 
but unquestionably useful.

I can understand why this might be a must-have feature for an end-user, 
but it is probably beyond the scope of the limited Summer of Code project.
>
> JK:  I agree with Henrik's proposed solution to the problem of keeping the
> 3-D objects (with the menus, status bars, etc.) the same size while zooming
> in and out on the written text, calculation cell, database line, etc. in
> the Open Office productivity applicaitons.  Generally, I use the zoom
> feature from the mouse rather than changing to a new theme.  So making this
> easy with configurability by mouse (with at most, cntrl, alt, and shift key
> combinations.  His hover feature solution -- should be very helpful, and I
> believe that it would have saved me some of the time that I had to give to
> customizing separate themes.
>   
This reminds me of a general magnification question. Sven mentioned that 
he had set up the magnifier on a separate X display and was therefore 
able to use the whole screen. This is probably a bit more tricky to set 
up (shouldn't be) but it seems to me that it would be the best solution 
for most people.

Is this true, or are there some very good reasons why you would want to 
have parts of the screen appear in it's original resolution? (ignore 
reasons relating to the magnifier not functioning as it should, these 
are bugs that should be fixed). I know some people have a limited field 
of view and would only be able to use as small region of the screen at 
any one time, but even then is it not better to move your gaze rather 
than scroll the content?

I'm wondering if perhaps our default mode should use the whole screen, 
and just make sure that navigation works really well, in different ways 
that will suit different users.
> Still, one reason I keep harping on finding some analog to Dragon Naturally
> Speaking Professional's voice macros is that the voice macro feature can be
> used to control not only Gnopernicus' Magnifier and Scroonreader
> configuration changes but also theme changes.  
Voice macros should be possible, though it is a separate project. Doing 
voice dictation like Dragon is highly complex, but a few dozen voice 
macros is much easier. (there is already something on KDE isn't there?)
>
> The "Examples" icon on the Gnome desktop was a gateway that was very useful
> to me when I was totally stuck because I couldn't find a magnifier good
> enought to tell me how to get to Gnopernicus.  If you all can't at any time
> soon find a way to put a "Highly Visualy Impaired" track under the F5 key,
> to go along with the "Moderately ...," "Blind," etc. tracks
Sorry, I should have replied to your last email about this. We run the 
risk here of getting an infinately long list of user settings. We could 
easily add another mobility option, hearing, and more.

I would prefer we put some more effort into making the existing options 
work better. The point of the Live CD is not to have an ideal setup for 
anyone, but one that works well enough for most people to get it 
installed. The settings can then be tweaked to suit the individual.

You say in effect that the gap between the moderate VI and Blind 
settings is too big, but it is largely a result of neither of those 
options working as well as they should. Each tool should be more 
powerful and more flexible (and less buggy).

If someone can write an Accessibility Getting started guide in 
OpenOffice format in the next week or so, I can arrange to have it 
placed in the Examples folder for the release.
> I wish I could help you solve these problems, but all I can do is
> pose them and ask for help.
>   
Testing and feedback is also very important. We cannot do this in a 
vacuum. When we have a basic working version of the XGL magnifier we 
will certainly ask for testers :)

- Henrik