Re: Iggdrasil, a new amazing screenreader
Even with console applications, there are various toolkits that allow
for the creation of pseudo-GUIs and many such applications do have a
number of keyboard commands, though they don't always adhere to the
conventions shared by most GUI applications(e.g. in the Nano text
editor, save is ctrl+o, not ctrl+s, cut and paste are ctrl+k and
ctrl+u instead of ctrl+x and ctrl+v, and find is ctrl+w instead of
ctrl+f)
Most such text-only GUIs are built on ncurses, and there are packages
like dialog that allow shell scripts to to display dialog boxes and
scrollable menus.
I also think it worth noting that, on most distros, there isn't just
one console, but several and that you can easily switch between them
with just a couple of key presses.
As a general rule, each console is reference by the abbreviation tty
followed by a number and if you're in one console, you switch to a
different one by pressing alt+ the function key corresponding to the
number of the console you want. The number varies from distro to
distro, but 12 is common, one for each function key on a standard
keyboard, though I understand setups with 24 and a distinction made
between left alt and right alt when switching aren't uncommon. If
you're running an Xserver, it takes up one of the consoles, and if
you're in the GUI, you typically need to do trl+alt+fn to break out of
the GUI and into the text consoles. If you start x manually, the
xserver will be on whichever console you were on when you invoked
startx, but if your system boots into the desktop automatically, which
console is used for the GUI varies from distro to distro, though I
believe tty1 and tty6 or tty7 are the most common.
I usually have a stripped down Xserver running Firefox+Orca on tty1
and use tty2+ for everything else... at the moment, I have:
Firefox+Orca running on tty1
aumix(a audio mixer) opened in tty2
A text file open in nano on tty3
tty4 at the command prompt in the directory where the text file that's
open in tty3 is located, for easily running wc to get word count of
the file without having to close and reopen my editor or if I need to
pull up a different file to reference something.
tty5 is open to the directory where Firefox dumps all of my downloads.
and from Firefox, I just use ctrl+alt+F2-F5 to jump to aumix, the open
text file, the directory where the file is saved, or my downloads
directory, and can switch between any of those text consoles with just
alt+a function key.
And while I haven't use them, there are utilities like screen and some
others to facilitate multi-tasking in a single console.
And if things are properly configured, switching between the console
running X and one of the text consoles should seamlessly switch
between Orca and your console screen reader, though this can sometimes
be tricky to get working right.
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