interacting with the cursor:

[david poehlman]

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