https://github.com/c-loftus/orca-controller-client
An experiment for controlling the Orca screen reader from other clients using Linux named pipes
https://github.com/c-loftus/orca-controller-client
a11y orca
Last synced: 7 months ago
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An experiment for controlling the Orca screen reader from other clients using Linux named pipes
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/c-loftus/orca-controller-client
- Owner: C-Loftus
- Created: 2025-03-15T16:12:37.000Z (7 months ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-03-15T18:05:58.000Z (7 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-03-15T19:19:43.955Z (7 months ago)
- Topics: a11y, orca
- Language: Python
- Homepage:
- Size: 7.81 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# Orca Controller Client Experiment
This repository is an experiment for controller the Orca scren reader from external clients. It has been tested with Orca version 46.1 on Ubuntu 24.04
This repository's eventual goal is to provide a simple way for clients to send commands to Orca like speaking text, or changing settings. The design of this is inspired by the interface provided by the [NVDA controller client](https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/extras/controllerClient/readme.md). In an ideal world there would be a full fledged Orca plugin system, however, this is not the case yet and it would be a significant amount of work to implement while doing so in a way that prevents unintended user code from breaking the screen reader. A simple controller client like this still allows for a lot of customization while preventing users from messing with Orca internals.
## Installation
Run `./install.sh` to install. Fundamentally all this does is copy `orca-customizations.py` to `~/.local/share/orca/orca-customizations.py`. However, we also check to make sure that file doesn't already exist, since we don't want to overwrite user changes.
## Running
Run `make test` to run a test which sends a healthcheck message to the screen reader and waits for a response. More tests and clients for other languages could be added in the future. All that a client needs to do to communicate with this server is send a message to the named pipe `/tmp/orca_controller_request.pipe` and receive a response on the named pipe `/tmp/orca_controller_response.pipe`
## Limitations
To my understanding at the moment Orca only imports directly from `~/.local/share/orca/orca-customizations.py`. As a result, you have to bundle all your Python code in this file, else it will not work. I have tried putting helper code in a `lib/` package with a corresponding `__init__.py` file, but it did not work. All user code being in one file makes installing scripts a bit harder and we need to check more edge cases to make sure that we don't break user customizations.
`~/.local/share/orca/orca-scripts/` appears to be another location that Orca imports from, but in my testing it does not seem to auto import nor run the Python scripts inside.