gsettings dependency is problematic

Bug #1867971 reported by Rich Morin
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
orca (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

A current discussion on orca-list indicates that some blind users are finding Orca's use of gsettings to be problematic:

The most accessible Linux version to use with Orca?
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2020-March/msg00233.html

Here are some relevant snippets:

> ubuntu certainly fails here, the developers locked down orca
configuration attaching it to gsettings and making it impossible to
configure inside orca.

> You can't modify orca configuration settings in ubuntu-mate and save
those modifications. You have to use gsettings to get at orca
configuration and change them so they're saved. Garden variety ubuntu
in 19.10 does the same thing. In earlier versions of ubuntu this was
not the case, you could make your changes inside orca and save those
changes.

> You never heard of gsettings before since using it is about as complex
as editing a windows registry. The gsettings along with dconf-editor
controls the configuration on graphical user interface systems other
configuration files you might find in certain directories does not. In
the case of ubuntu 19.10 orca got strait jacketed into gsettings. This
was not the case in earlier ubuntu versions though.

> I tried installing ubuntu 19.10 a few minutes ago the desktop version
since I couldn't get a download url for ubuntu-mate.org and couldn't
even bring up orca and this was after I verified the download. That
cured me of ubuntu I'm pretty sure permanently. running alt-super-s
didn't work and alt-f2 orca also failed and even alt-f2 screen-reader
failed as well. I waited until all disk action had stopped to run those
commands too.

Revision history for this message
Alex ARNAUD (alexarnaud) wrote :

Thanks Rich for reporting this issue.

The main problem here is because the Ubuntu Orca's version is patched to add GSettings backend not applied upstream.

I don't think having such huge downstream change is a good decision, I think we should remove the downstream patch to let Orca being as it is intended to be by the Orca's team.

Best regards.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in orca (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.