[SUE-list] Newsletter September 2009

[Ramona B. <bu...@it...>]

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* SUE Newsletter September 2009 *
*********************************

SUE is short for Screenreader & Usability Extensions, an effort to make
screen reading on Linux more usable. SUE is based on the former Linux
Screen Reader (LSR), an excellent platform for all kinds of assistive
applications. SUE itself is the first of those assistive applications,
namely a screen reader for graphical user interfaces on the GNOME
desktop.

SUE is available either from SVN trunk or in version 0.5.0 from our
download section at Sourceforge.net. Documentation including
installation instructions may also be found at
http://sue.sourceforge.net.


* News:
*******

* General
SUE now places an icon in the upper edge-panel when the screen reader is
running. Using this icon a menu can be accessed that allows you to open
the SUE settings dialog or to quit SUE.

* Braille output
More Braille changes and improvements:
. Submenus are shown with an arrow at the end of the name now. This
indicates that there are more actions available at this point.
. Single line text fields with a label are shown properly now. (label:
text_)
. The index in tables was adjusted for the braille output. (example:
'r5c2')
. A new ellipsis style in form of an arrow is now available.
. There are new ways to navigate with the Braille keys:
.. Within a text body the routing keys can be used to reset the caret
position.
.. Outside of a text body the routing keys can be used to activate a
left mouse click on the currently shown widget.
.. If scroll forward with the Braille keys is not possible, go to the
next line of text or the next item.
.. If scroll backwards with the Braille keys is not possible, go to the
end of the previous line of text or the previous item.
.. The user can move to the next or previous item or line of text with
the Braille keys.
.. The user can move to the beginning or end of a line of text with the
Braille keys.
.. The user can move to the beginning of a text body with the Braille
keys.

* Output
The output order for structured data has been changed for speech and
Braille. The state information like collapsed, expanded and such are now
given after the name of a widget.

* Nautilus
A new script has been written for the Nautilus application which
includes the desktop with its icons and a file browser. For now the
script corrects the output for the desktop. When the desktop receives
focus and no icon is selected, SUE now reads the number of icons on the
desktop instead of some meaningless role information.

* Evolution
SUE now provides better Evolution support:
. The many empty text fields that made it difficult to find the real
information are now skipped.
. Saving attachments used to be a relatively slow opperation. When using
this shortcut from the e-mail body now, this operation works a lot
faster.
. The SUE settings for the Evolution are working again.


* Bugfixes:
***********

Bug 2834889: SUE could not be started in the 'developer' profile.
The error was produced by an incorrect mapping of command constant to
string commands. 

Bug 2078006: SUE sometimes crashed when the Braille device was missing.
This problem is now fixed. SUE does not load the Braille device anymore
when it is not found.

Bug: SUE crashed when a Braille device with less than 50 modules was
connected.
The length of the start message lead to an error that now is fixed.

Bug: The last module of the Braille device was not always used.
The problem was caused by an extra space character that was added to the
message.

Bug: Lately, the shortcuts (Alt+CapsLock+c) and (Alt+CapsLock+h) in
Evolution did not read the e-mail content and header.
This was due to changes in Evolution's new version, so SUE could not
find the correct widgets.

Bug: SUE did not read a new text line while reading an e-mail in
Evolution. The caret had to be moved in order to get the text
information.
This problem is fixed.

Bug: In Thunderbird, the label to a single line text field could not be
found.
This problem is also fixed.


* Current work:
***************

. Braille output enhancements continue.
. Firefox support remains an important issue.
. We are also working on providing speech output that supports the use
of the PulseAudio server. There is a replacement of gnome-speech in
work, so we are looking forward to have a better audio support. This
means the use of Speech Dispatcher as a central TTS server and as
mentioned above the support of Pulse-Audio as our favorite sound server.
. The documentation updates continue both in the German and the English
wiki.
. Right now we are testing SUE extensively to fix as many issues as
possible.


If you are intrested in testing SUE but experience problems at any
point, please don't hesitate to send a message to this mailing list.
If you find a bug, you may add it to our bug tracker on SourceForge.net
or send an e-mail with your bug description to
sue...@it.... A few notes on how to submit a bug in
either of those ways and which information to include are available on
both our project wiki at http://www.sue-projekt.de (in German) and our
documentation page at SourceForge.net (in English). To request a
feature, you may use the same
means of communication.

Thanks a lot for your tests, comments, and feedback!

The SUE team