Gnopernicus/Magnifier on Xubuntu

[Henrik]

If you'd like, I can send you a screenshot of what my setup looks like with and without the magnifier running...just let me know where to post it and if it would be of any help.

Yes please do. You can email it to henrik AT ubuntu.com. I have to warn you though: I might post it on my blog

I'll see what I can find out about Xubuntu, but at the moment the panels (neither top nor bottom) can be moved by dragging them. I found a small workaround by putting handles on the panels through the Xfce Menu->Settings->Settings Manager->Panel applet, but the top panel will not stay (permanently) where I place it. I'll edit the panels.xml file and see if that helps.

Hm sounds odd. Perhaps you can report it in Malone, or point it out in #xubuntu. They eere claiming that it should stay in place. Perhaps the magnifier is causing it to jump back.

[RKCole]

I'll get the screenshots sent out soon. (I have to go and do the dishes first. ). I just hope you don't mind my ocean background...Hopefully I'll get to see it in person one of these days...

As for the blog, that's not a problem at all. I'll send the instructions on how I got it that way, too...maybe it can be used as an accessibility theme or something along those lines...not sure...I just want to be of some help in some way, shape, or form as my ZoomText updater will expire soon...and it's around $200 for a new contract...once it expires, I am not going to use Windows anymore.

Take care.

[RKCole]

I finally was able to straighten some things out, and I am glad to report that the magnifier does work very well in Xubuntu. It is very smooth, and does nto seem to have many problems from first impressions.

What I do see, however, while I am typing this, is taht it does not show the keyboard input as well as it does on GNOME. What I mean by this is that when I begin typing, no letters that are entered are shown until I move the mouse pointer; then everythign which was typed appears on-screen. So basically, when I first begin typing a word, all that I see until moving the mouse pointer is pretty much the first letter of the word.

IN any case, though, this works out a lot better than in using GNOME (for me especially because of only having 256MB of RAM).

The best part of this is that IT WORKS!!

Does anyone know if Gnopernicus comes standard with Xubuntu?

Have a great day, everyone.

[Henrik]

The reason the magnifier does not follow the cursor in Xubuntu is that XFCE does not yet support the Gnome accessibility framework (called AT-SPI). I believe they are working on this support though.

Which editor are you using? I may be that it works if you use Gedit and gnopernicus/Orca, though you'll probably need to install most of gnome and then make sure AT-SPI. It might still be faster though because you don't actually run Gnome.

[RKCole]

Hello, Henrik.

The keyboard entry tracking seems to work on most applications except for entry forms like textboxes in Firefox. I am beginning to think that that is the main issue: Firefox itself.

In any case, I am really enjoying using this on XFCE/Xubuntu. It's quite amazing compared to what I was used to in GNOME. I've been working with it for the past few hours and it works wonderfully.

As for installing GNOME components, that won't be a problem at all. My original install was GNOME/Ubuntu, and I just installed the xubuntu-desktop package. The GNOME components should already be available since I did this, right? In any case, I am very impressed, and until I can afford more RAM (and maybe even after that) I think I am going to stick with the Xfce desktop, but I still have GNOME available if I ever need it or want to use it.

Thanks for all of the input and support.

[jasongrieves]

Hi,

try this...

export GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge

see if that helps in some of the GTK applications. Run it from teh command line to see if the accessibility layers are being loaded

[naelphin]

When I try to use gnopernicus, I get an error:

(process:9838): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: gtype.c:2215: initialization assertion failed, use IA__g_type_init() prior to this function

(process:9838): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_new: assertion `G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed

(process:9838): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Segmentation fault

Using dapper, and used synaptic to install gnopernicus. What should I do?

[octathlon]

In case you are still having problems moving the top panel in Xubuntu -

I was playing with the Xubuntu Live CD the other day and I found that if you right-click on the panel and select Configure Panel, you then have the option of moving it to top, bottom, or sides. Also you increase or decrease their sizes, and even add or remove panels.

[cerdiogenes]

I had tested the magnifier (top/horizontal split) originally on Dapper with the top menu in its default top position, but it appears that anything above the magnifier will be grayed out if you try to view it, even if the magnifier does not cover it. This gave me a LOT of trouble when I first begun using Ubuntu (Breezy back then) until I found out that I could just drag the panel to the bottom portion of the screen. This way seems to be an optimal setup. I've noticed that every program I've worked with so far repositions itself below the magnifier, and every part of the program is usually shown, unless the applet is very long vertically. I'm on my Windows system right now (I'm trying to get my wife to to see the great things Linux has to offer, but a lot of her friends (who have never used it) are making it out to be a horrible thing. As is the case, right? Typically we tend to reject/avoid things that are strange to us...It's going to be a fun thing showing her, though, what Linux is like...

Hi RKCole, I´m writing only to say that when gnome-mag with COMPOSITE support be available to X/Ubuntu this workaround will not be necessary anymore. You will be able to use vertical/horizontal split without seeing the gray area in the magnified aread.

Best regards.