Orca Configuration GUI

The Orca Configuration GUI enables you to customize the behavior and features of Orca, such as speech, Braille, and magnification. For example, you can select the type of speech synthesis engine you want to use, enable or disable Braille, and the type of magnification preferences you want to set. You can select the keyboard layout you want (desktop or laptop) and also examine and modify the existing keyboard layout.

To open the Orca Configuration GUI, press Orca Modifier+Spacebar, where Orca Modifier is the Insert key when you use the Desktop keyboard layout and CapsLock key when you use the Laptop keyboard layout. To change settings for a single application, press Ctrl+Orca Modifier+ Spacebar while the application has focus.

For more information about the Desktop keyboard layout, see Using the Desktop Layout Commands.

For more information about the Laptop keyboard layout, see Using the Laptop Layout Commands.

Enabling General Preferences in Orca

The General page enables you to customize general settings of Orca such as selecting the keyboard layout and starting and quitting Orca. The options in the General page are described in the following sections.

Keyboard Layout

The keyboard layout section enables you to select the Desktop or Laptop layout.

For more information about the Desktop keyboard layout, see Using the Desktop Layout Commands.

For more information about the Laptop keyboard layout, see Using the Laptop Layout Commands.

Show Orca Main Window

The Orca main window enables you to display the Orca Configuration GUI.

The main window provides a Quit option to close the Orca Configuration GUI. You can also quit Orca by pressing Orca Modifier+Q. Because the Orca main window is included in the window manager's tab order when you press Alt+Tab to switch windows, you might want to deselect the Show Orca main window button.

Quit Orca Without Confirmation

When you press Orca Modifier+K to quit Orca or press the Quit button in the Orca main window, Orca displays a confirmation dialog asking whether you want to quit. Select this option to prevent the confirmation window from appearing again.

Disable gksu Keyboard Grab

When running commands from the Launch menu, many distributions use an application known as gksu to authorize the user to run these commands. gksu is the GUI which asks you for your password. When gksu runs, the application enables the keyboard grab feature.

Keyboard grab is a feature to prevent keyboard actions from going to any other application on the desktop, including Orca. The result of a keyboard grab is that Orca will not receive any keyboard events, preventing it from functioning normally.

By selecting the Disable gksu Keyboard Grab button, you can turn off the keyboard grab behavior, allowing Orca to function normally with system administration applications.

Present Tooltips

The Present tooltips option displays information in tooltips that appear as the result of mouse hovering. Pressing Ctrl+F1 when an object has focus always displays tooltips regardless of this setting.

Speak Object Under Mouse

When the Speak Object Under Mouse option is selected, Orca presents audio information about the object under the mouse.

Start Orca When You Login

When the Start Orca When You Login option is selected, the system automatically launches Orca when you log in.

Enabling Speech Preferences in Orca

The Speech page enables you to customize the Orca speech synthesis settings.

Enable Speech

The Enable Speech option causes Orca to make use of a speech synthesizer.

Speech System and Speech Synthesizer

These options enable you to select the speech system and synthesizer. Orca provides support for a growing number of speech systems. These include GNOME-speech, Emacspeak, and an experimental backend for Speech Dispatcher. Depending on the machine configurations, you might have all or none of these options. By default, only GNOME-speech is available.

First, determine which speech system you would like to use. Then, choose from the Speech Synthesizer list of available synthesizers.

Voice Settings

If your synthesizer supports voice settings, Orca can use multiple voices to identify special cases within an application, such as hyperlinks or uppercase text. Use the Voice Settings and Person options to customize these settings. For example, assume you are using Fonix DECtalk and want the Betty voice to denote uppercase. Do the following:

1. Select the uppercase voice for the Voice Settings option.

2. For the Person option, select the Betty voice.

Use the next sliders to set the synthesizer's rate, pitch, and volume.

Punctuation Level

Use the Punctuation Level setting to adjust the amount of punctuation spoken by the synthesizer. The following levels are available:

• None

• Some

• Most

• All

Verbosity

The Verbosity setting determines the amount of information that is spoken in certain situations. For example, if the Verbose level is set, the synthesizer speaks shortcut keys for items in menus. When it is set to Brief, these shortcut keys are not announced.

Table Rows

The Table Rows option determines the way the speech synthesizer will read items within tables. The following settings are available:

• Speak row

• Speak cell

The ability to adjust this behavior can be useful in many situations. For example, consider the process of browsing email messages in Evolution. In this instance, the Speak row setting is preferable. While navigating through the list of messages, all relevant info, such as the sender, subject, and whether the message has attachments, is read automatically. While the current row setting is active, you can still read individual cells by using the left and right arrows.

Speak Blank Lines

To hear the word blank when navigating to a blank line in a document, select the Speak Blank Lines option.

Speak Multicase Strings as Words

The Speak Multicase Strings As Words option causes Orca to break a word prior to passing it along to the speech synthesizer. So words in code, consisting of several words with alternating case are pronounced correctly.

For example, the word “MultiCaseString” can be broken into separate words Multi, Case, and String.

Speak Tutorial Messages

If the Speak Tutorial Messages option is selected, when moving from one component to another in an interface, Orca provides information about the component that is currently focused.

Speak Object Mnemonics

The Speak Object Mnemonics option causes Orca to announce the mnemonic associated with the object in focus. For example, Alt+O for the OK button.

Break Speech Into Chunks Between Pauses

Depending on the enabled speech settings, Orca might provide some information about a particular object such as its name, role, state, mnemonic, and tutorial message. The Break Speech Into Chunks Between Pauses option causes Orca to insert brief pauses in between each piece of information.

To Speak Child Position

The Speak Child Position checkbox enables Orca to announce the position of the focused item in menus and lists. For example, 9 of 16.

To Speak Indentation and Justification

The Speak Indentation And Justification option causes Orca to provide justification and indentation information.

Progress Bar Updates

If the Progress Bar Updates setting is enabled, Orca periodically announces the status of progress bars. How often the announcement is made is determined by the value chosen as the Update interval spin. This setting is only available if the Progress Bar Updates option is selected.

Use the Restrict to: setting to control which progress bars should be spoken. The default value is Application. The following choices are available:

• All – Orca speaks updates for all progress bars regardless of where they are located

• Application – Orca speaks updates from progress bars in the active application even if they are not in the active window

• Window – Orca only speaks updates only for progress bars in the active window

Say All By

The Say All By setting specifies whether the Say All functionality of Orca speaks by sentence or line.

Enabling Braille Preferences in Orca

The Braille page enables you to customize various aspects about the use of Braille.

Enable Braille Support

Select the Enable Braille Support option to make use of a Braille display. By default, this option is enabled.

If BRLTTY is not running, Orca recovers gracefully and does not communicate with the Braille display. If you configure BRLTTY later, you need to restart Orca to use Braille.

Enable Braille Monitor

Orca's Braille monitor provides an on-screen representation of what takes place on the Braille display. This feature is mostly for demonstration purposes, but is also useful for Orca developers who do not have access to a Braille display.

Enable Abbreviated Role Names

The Abbreviated Role Names check box determines the manner in which role names are displayed and can be used to help conserve real estate on the Braille display. For example, if a slider had focus and the Abbreviated Role Names option is selected, the word “slider” is abbreviated to “sldr”.

Disable End of Line Symbol

The Disable end of line symbol option tells Orca to not present the $l string at the end of a line.

Contracted Braille

Orca supports contracted Braille through the Liblouis project. Refer to the Orca wiki to find additional information about setting up Liblouis with Orca.

Verbosity

The Verbosity options determine the amount of information that will be displayed in Braille in certain situations. For example, if the option is set to Verbose, keyboard shortcut and role name information is displayed. This information is not displayed in Brief mode.

Enable Selection Indicator

When you select text, Orca underlines the text on your Braille display with dots 7 and 8. If you prefer, you can change the indicator to Dot 7 or Dot 8, or not provide an indicator.

Enable Hyperlink Indicator

When you encounter a hyperlink, Orca underlines that text on your Braille display with dots 7 and 8. If you prefer, you can change the indicator to Dot 7 or Dot 8, or not provide an indicator.

Enabling Key Echo Preferences in Orca

The Key Echo page enables you to specify the behavior of Orca when pressing keys on the page and whether words are spoken as you complete them.

The key echo feature offers increased flexibility. For example, one user might choose to enable all the key echo options, while another might prefer to use word echo, but only have locking keys announced.

Enable Key Echo

The Enable Key Echo option provides specific settings for the key echo feature:

• Enable Alphanumeric And Punctuation Keys – Includes all alphabetical, numeric, and punctuation keys.

• Enable Modifier Keys – Includes Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys.

• Enable Locking Keys – Includes Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock keys.

• Enable Function Keys – Includes function key groups.

• Enable Action Keys – Consists of keys that perform some logical action, such as Backspace, Return, and Tab.

• Enable Navigation Keys – Includes the four arrow keys as well as any key combination in which the Orca Modifier key is being held down. The latter is designed to prevent Orca from echoing flat review commands.

• Enable Non-spacing Diacritical Keys – These are the non printing keys that are used to generate accented letters.

Enable Echo by Character

The Enable Echo by Character option causes an echo of the characters you just typed. While echo by character seems similar to the key echo of alphanumeric and punctuation keys, there are important differences related to accented letters and other symbols for which there are no dedicated keys. Key echo announces the key that is just pressed and character echo announces the characters that was just inserted.

The Echo by Character option is always available, regardless of whether any of the other key echo options are selected.

Enable Echo by Word

The Enable Echo by Word option causes an echo of the word you just typed. The Echo by Word option is always available, regardless of whether any of the key echo options are selected.

Enable Echo by Sentence

The Enable Echo by Sentence option causes an echo of the sentence you just typed. The Enable Echo by Sentence control is always available regardless of whether any of the other key echo options are selected.

Enabling Magnifier Preferences in Orca

The Magnifier page enables you to enable or disable magnification and specify how magnification must be performed.

Enable Magnifier

The Enable Magnifier option causes Orca to provide magnification.

Zoomer Settings

Two zoomer GUI controls determine magnification characteristics:

• Scale Factor – Sets the magnification power from 1.0x to 16.0x. Fractional values are supported.

• Position – Sets the location and size of the magnifier window, and provides the following options:

  • Full Screen

  • Left Half

  • Right Half

  • Top Half

  • Bottom Half

  • Custom

  The default position is Full Screen. The Custom setting enables you to define the location of each edge of the zoom window. Units are in pixels.

Border Settings

The Enable Border option determines whether a window border is visible for the magnifier. The Border Size option determines the size of the border in pixels.

Cursor Settings

You can use Cursor Settings to customize the size and color of the magnifier's cursor by using the following options:

• Enable Cursor – If enabled, a cursor is visible and the size and color options are available.

• Custom Size – If enabled, the mouse pointer appears larger than the normal size. The cursor size can be changed from the default value of 32 pixels.

• Custom Color – If enabled, you can apply a custom.

Cross-hair Settings

You can use Cross-hair Settings to customize the magnifier's optional area-targeting cursor by using the following options:

• Enable Cross-hair – If selected, you can configure the clipping behavior, size, and color of the cross-hair.

• Enable Cross-hair Clip – If selected, the cross-hair is clipped (removed) in the area immediately surrounding the mouse pointer.

• Cross-hair Size – Sets the thickness of the cross-hair in pixels.

• Cross-hair Color – Enables you to apply a custom color.

Color Settings

Color Settings enables you to adjust the color of the magnified region by using the following options:

• Invert Colors – Creates a reverse or a negative-image effect.

• Brightness – Ranges from -1 (black or no brightness) to 1 (white or total brightness). 0 is normal or unchanged.

• Contrast – Ranges from -1 (grey or no contrast) to 1 (1 is maximum contrast). 0 is normal or unchanged).

Tracking and Alignment Settings

Tracking and Alignment Settings control the tracking of the mouse cursor. The following tracking and alignment settings options are available:

• Mouse Pointer – Choose from the following options:

  • Centered – Keeps the mouse pointer at the center of the screen whenever possible. This is the default option.

  • Proportional – Positions the mouse pointer in the zoom window relative to its actual, unmagnified position. For instance, if the mouse pointer is 25% away from the left edge of the desktop, Orca positions the magnified mouse pointer 25% from the left edge of the zoom window.

  • Push – Moves the zoomer window to the least amount necessary to keep the mouse pointer on the screen.

  • None – Moving the mouse pointer has no impact on what the zoomer window displays.

• Pointer Follows Zoomer – This option is enabled by default. If the mouse pointer is not on the screen when you initially move the mouse, it is moved into the zoomer so that you can continue to see what you were working on. If your preferred mouse tracking mode is centered, the pointer is moved to the center; otherwise, it is moved to the item with focus.

• Control And Menu Item – These options control additional behavior of the magnifier.

  • Centered – When navigating using the keyboard, keep the focused dialog box control or menu item at the center of the screen whenever possible.

  • Push – When navigating using the keyboard, move the zoomer window to the least amount necessary to display the focused dialog box control or menu item. This is the default option.

  • None – Using the keyboard to navigate among dialog box controls and menu items will have no impact on what the zoomer window displays.

  • Pointer Follows Focus – If this option is enabled, the mouse pointer follows you as you navigate through menu items and move among controls in dialog boxes. This option is disabled by default.

• Text Cursor – These options control how the text cursor behaves.

  • Centered – As the text cursor moves, keep the cursor at the center of the screen whenever possible.

  • Push – As the text cursor moves, move the zoomer window to the least amount necessary to display it. This is the default option.

  • None – Moving the text cursor does not affect what the zoomer window displays.

  • Edge Margin – The edge margin determines how close the caret should be allowed to get to the edge of the screen before the zoomer window is pushed. The margin can range from 0 to 50%, with 50% being the equivalent of choosing centering. The default value is 0.

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    Note - This option is only available if Push is your text cursor tracking mode.

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• Advanced Settings – Clicking the Advanced Settings button located near the bottom of the Magnifier page displays the Advanced Settings dialog.

  

  You can set the following options:

  • Smoothing – Bilinear or none.

  • Brightness – Red, Green, Blue: Individual controls for choosing different brightness levels for each color.

  • Contrast – Red, Green, Blue: Individual controls for choosing customized contrast levels. These settings are not as significant as changes to brightness.

  • Color Filtering – Enables you to pick one of the color blind filters available through libcolorblind.

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    Note - To take advantage of this feature, you need to install libcolorblind and then rebuild gnome-mag.

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  • Multi-Monitor Settings - Source Display X Window System DISPLAY of what should be magnified. Written in the form :0.n where n is the number of the screen whose contents should be magnified.

  • Multi-Monitor Settings - Target Display X Window System DISPLAY of where to put the zoomer window. Written in the form :0.n where n is the number of the screen where the zoomer window should appear.

Enabling Key Bindings Preferences in Orca

The Key Bindings page enables you to examine and modify the key bindings for Orca.

Orca Modifier Keys

The first control on the Key Bindings window enables you to determine which key or keys act as the Orca modifier. The Orca Modifier is the key that you press and hold in conjunction with other keys to give commands to Orca.

For desktop keyboards, the default Orca Modifier is the Insert key. For laptop keyboards, the default Orca Modifier is the Caps Lock key. See the Desktop keyboard layout and Laptop keyboard layout sections for the default values.

Using the Key Bindings Table

The Key Bindings table provides a list of Orca operations and keys that are bound to them.

• The Function column header provides the description of the Orca operation to be performed.

• The Key Binding header is the primary way to invoke the function from the keyboard. If the function description includes the word "Orca", the Orca Modifier key should be held down along with the other indicated keys.

• The Alternate header provides an alternate mechanism for invoking the function from the keyboard.

• To modify either the Key Binding or the Alternate bindings, navigate to the cell and press Return. Then, press a key combination and press Return to confirm the new combination. The new keystroke is saved and the check box in the last column (the Modified column) indicates that the key binding has been modified.

  To undo a modified keybinding, navigate to the modified column, deselect the checkbox, and click the Apply button, Alt+A.

Beneath the list of Orca keybindings, is a group of unbound commands. These commands are useful for some users but not needed by most users. Rather than appropriating a keystroke for such commands, these keys are unassigned.

You can assign a keystroke to any of these unbound commands as follows:

1. Press Return to edit the keybinding.

2. Press Delete or Backspace when prompted for the new keybinding.

3. Press Return to confirm.

Enabling Pronunciation Preferences in Orca

Sometimes your speech synthesizer might not correctly use words to convey or pronounce a particular string. For example, you might prefer to hear "laughing out loud" rather than "LOL," or a name or a technical term the synthesizer might mispronounce. On the pronunciation page, you can add, edit, and delete Orca's pronunciation dictionary entries. The pronunciation page is part of the Application-specific Settings dialog that is started when you give a particular application focus and type Orca Modifier+Ctrl+Spacebar. You can therefore customize your entries as you need for each application that you use.

To Add a New Dictionary Entry

1. Press the New Entry button or Alt+N.
2. Type the text of the new entry and press Return to finish editing the actual string.
3. Move to the Replacement String column and press Return to begin editing.
4. Type the text that you would like to have spoken instead. Press Return to finish editing the replacement string.

To Edit an Existing Dictionary Entry

1. Move to the cell you want to edit and press Return to begin editing.
2. Make your changes and then press Return to finish editing.

To Delete an Existing Dictionary Entry

1. Move to the entry you want to delete.
2. Press the Delete button or Alt+D.

Text Attributes Page

Orca speaks known text attribute information about an object when you press Orca Modifier. The Text Attributes page of the configuration GUI enables you to customize the text attributes that Orca will present.

This page displays a text attribute list, where each row consists of four columns:

• The name of the text attribute.

• A checkbox that indicates whether this text attribute should be spoken.

• A checkbox that indicates whether this text attribute should be underlined on the Braille display.

• An editable Present unless string value. The value of the attribute will only be presented if it is not this value.

  For example, by default, the underline text attribute has a value of none. If this attribute is selected and the user types Orca Modifier+F, and the text in question is not underlined, then this attribute is not spoken. If you always want this attribute to be spoken regardless of whether the text is underlined, select the attribute and clear the Present unless value.

Use the Reset button (Alt+R) to set the list values back to their initial state when the dialog is first displayed.

When you initially display the text attribute pane, all the selected attributes are displayed at the top of the list. They are given in the order that they will be spoken and used in Braille.

To select others or adjust the order, use the Adjust Selected Attributes buttons:

• Move to top (Alt+T) — Moves the selected attribute to the top of the list.

• Move up one (Alt+U) — Moves the selected attribute up one row.

• Move down one (Alt+D) — Moves the selected attribute down one row.

• Move to bottom (Alt+B) — Moves the selected attribute to the bottom of the list.

Use the Braille Indicator buttons to select the cell or cells to be used to indicate text which has at least one of the specified attributes. The choices are:

• None (default)

• Dot 7

• Dot 8

• Dots 7 and 8

Text attributes can also be set on an individual application basis. The Text Attribute pane is also part of the Application-specific Settings dialog box that is started when you give a particular application focus and type Orca Modifier+Ctrl+Spacebar.