interacting with the cursor:

[Janina Sajka]

David, I don't believe any of this is specific to how AT works, it's all
in how the OS works. Note also the definition of cursor:

>From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  cursor

          1. <hardware> A visually distinct mark on a display indicating
          where newly typed text will be inserted.  The cursor moves as
          text is typed and, in most modern editors, can be moved around
          within a document by the user to change the insertion point.

That's all it is. What backspace or the delete key do is something
that's definable and has been defined differently by different
environments. Fortunately, for those of us here on Linux, we can adjust
those defintions to suit us, if we don't like default behavior in some
app or environment.

I don't think you're going to find any sympathy for giving up this
freedom. And, I can't imagine a better definition for cursor. So, what's
the problem?



david poehlman writes:
> Hi all,
> 
> Sorry if this appears twice, I sent it out from the rong address.
> 
> I have a question for users of graphical and non graphical linux users 
> concerning its screen reader behavior regarding cursor interaction.  In 
> windows screen readers and in dos screen readers with the accetion of some 
> older dos screen readers, when interacting with the cursor, the screen 
> reader interacts with the character that is heard when a say character 
> request is sent.  In other words, if I am told by say character that I am 
> sitting on t and I hit backspace or delete, t is gone.  If I type, t is 
> pushed to the right as I type.  If I move to the left of t and type, the 
> character to the left of t is pushed to the right.  If I move to the right 
> of t and type, the character to the right of t is pushed to the right as I 
> type.  My question then is whether this is the behavior in all flavors of 
> linux with screen readers and if not, how do the ones that differ behave? 
> In windows, the cursor is a thin vertical line which is never on a character 
> but always between characters or to the left of the character or to the 
> right of the character.  The net effect would then be that if one were to 
> want to delete a character with back space, one would have to be certain to 
> be to the right of the character to be deleted and if one wanted to use 
> delete to delete a character, one would need to be the left of the character 
> to be deleted.
> 
> Answers and discussion would be greatly appreciated.  Should windows screen 
> readers or linux screen readers adopt this strategy if they don't employ it 
> already?  Are their better strategies than those described above and if so, 
> what are they?
> 
> It might be that the later strategy would be closer to the sighted 
> experience.
> 
> -- 
> Johnnie Apple Seed 
> 
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-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org

If Linux can't solve your computing problem, you need a different problem.