Re: FYI - Command Line Programs for the Blind

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These debates can be both informative and useful for those new to linux
who haven't made their choices yet.


On Wed, 13 Apr 2022, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

> I think the most important things to remember here are that:
>
> 1. People are different and that's okay.
>
> 2. Blind people are just as diverse as people in general.
>
> At the end of the day, debating Mutt versus Thunderbird has about as
> much impact as debating Coke versus Pepsi. Hardcore fans of either
> aren't likely to change their mind for any reason, there's no way of
> doing an objective comparison, and just as how which cola is better
> comes down to the individual's tastebuds, which e-mail client is
> easier to setup and use ultimately comes down to which software
> idiosyncrasies the end user is more comfortable with.
>
> Though, for what it's worth, just as I'm not a fan of colas and much
> prefer Dr. Pepper when it comes to caramel colored fizzy drinks, I'm
> not a fan of e-mail clients and prefer to just use my e-mail's web
> interface... and the last time I checked my e-mail on a machine other
> than my personal one, doing so was as simple as launching Firefox,
> typing gmail.google.com into the address bar, entering my e-mail
> address and password, and then once logged in, I just used what of
> NVDA's navigational hotkeys matched Orca's to check level 3 headings
> for how many unread messages were in my inbox and spam, and jump to
> the checkbox on the first message in the message list... Granted, that
> was years ago, so its entirely possible paranoid security on Google's
> part would make logging in difficult, and they might try forcing me to
> use their bogged down with JavaScript standard view instead of
> respecting my preference for the HTML view.
>
> Granted, the only time I've ever used an e-mail client was theGmail
> app on android 2.2 back when I still had a working eyeball, so I
> suspect I'd find both Mutt and Thunderbird perplexing if I ever gave
> them a try, and the only things I know about SMTP, pop3, and imap is
> the first stands for simple mail transfer protocol and they all have
> something to do with the technical details of e-mail most people are
> ignorant of... Though, I'd probably give Mutt or Alpine a try befor
> Thunderbird or whatever Chromium's companion e-mail client is called
> if only because my setup doesn't really let me run GUI applications
> other than Firefox.
>
> And while I agree the massive overlap in key bindings makes switching
> between GUI applications easy, and its great that Micro exists for
> those wanting to reduce their GUI dependence without having to learn
> an editor with key bindings that predate standardization, I must
> confess that I'm so used to nano's key bindings that I wish I could
> make Firefox switch over to nano-like bindings when I focuse a
> multi-line textbox and the only modern convention I miss when typing
> in nano is the ability to select text by holding shift and using
> arrow/navigation keys...
>
> Honestly, the application I most want that doesn't seem to exist would
> probably be a text-mode web browser that:
>
> 1. Arrow and navigation keys move around the page like in an editor.
>
> 2. Has Firefox-like keybindings for all the common web browser functions.
>
> 3. Has Orca-like keybindings for page navigation.
>
> 4. Has a browse/focus mode toggle equivalent to Orca+A.
>
> 5. Forces pages with multi-column layouts into single column for
> presentation(or at least as the option to)... This is to avoid
> situations where a console screen reader tries to interleave text from
> a list of links in the left column with the page's main content in the
> center/right column.
>
> 6. Supports the functional aspects of JavaScript, HTML5, etc. while
> ignoring the eyecandy aspects.
>
> 7. Disables rich web content by default, but has a keyboard shortcut
> to activate it for the current page and a menu for fine tuning which
> rich content is allowed, and whether the allowance is temporary or
> permanent(essentially providing No-Script-like functionality).
>
> 8. embeds nano(or the text-mode text editor of the user's choice)
> within focused textboxes(so, if I wanted to post the contents of a
> file on my hard drive via a web form, instead of opening a second tab,
> navigating to the file on my system, and copy and pasting it into the
> form, I could just go into thetext box, get an embedded nano window,
> and use Nano's insert from another file command... and if there's
> multiple files, I could just do that repeatedly... and unlike with
> Firefox's address bar, I'd have tab completion for getting the path to
> the file).
>
> 9. The ability to import bookmarks, saved passwords, etc. from a
> Firefox(and other popular browsers) profile would be a nice bonus,
> especially if it was done via a supplementary package that could be
> removed after migrating.
>
> There are probably other features I'd want in my dream text-mode web
> browser, but something that provides a remotely similar browsing
> experience to Firefox+Orca would be amazing and would probably be
> enough to make me ditch the GUI altogether... though I confess, a
> simple means of launching arbitrary GUI applications in a kiosk-like
> manner with Orca would be nice for those rare occasions I'm curious to
> give a GUI application a try... sadly, maintaining a full desktop is
> over kill with how much I live in the GUI, and the script I use to
> launch Firefox with Orca suffers from crippling overspecialization and
> its someone else's work that I don't begin to understand how to adapt
> to applications beyond the handful it was designed for.
>
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>
>

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