Florence is a virtual keyboard for GNOME. It is useful if you can't use a real keyboard either because of a disease, broken keyboard or tablet PC but can use a pointing device.
Why not just use gok?
Gok is wonderful software, but I believe Florence is cuter. If you don't need all the functionality of gok and value cuteness, then perhaps Florence is better for you.
What do I need to use Florence?
Florence runs on top of GNOME. You need a GNOME desktop and two technical dependencies of Florence: libgnomecanvas and at-spi.
Your distro should have the devel packages for those. Check with your distro support.
Installation:
Currently, there is no pre-built package that I know of. I'm afraid you'll have to build from source until I get the packages ready.
Building from source is not that hard anyway:
Uncompress the downloaded file:
$ tar -xvf florence.tar.bz2
Configure Florence for your machine:
$ cd florence && ./configure
Compile Florence:
$ make
Install Florence:
$ su
# make install
Usage:
First you need to activate technical help in Gnome:
Go to System->settings->technical help (or somewhere near there).
Activate the technical help with the check button.
Click close and disconnect: this will close your Gnome session.
After that Florence will work.
Currently, there is no automatic launch.
To launch Florence, use this command:
$ florence
If nothings happens, this is because Florence is in waiting mode: Florence will appear if you click on an editable widget (like the address bar in epiphany or the text area in a text editor). If you click on an uneditable widget, Florence will disappear.
If you don't like this behavior, you can switch to normal virtual keyboard always on screen.
The configuration file for that is there /usr/local/etc/florence.conf
To edit it:
$ gedit /usr/local/etc/florence.conf
(note: you may need to be root to do that)
Set ShowOnEditable (in the [Settings] section) to false and restart Florence.
It is a very good idea to also set Shaped to false then, or you won't be able to move Florence around anymore.
You have also the AutoClick setting which sets the number of milliseconds the mouse is over the key before the key is automatically pressed. If you don't want auto click, set it to 0.
You can also change the colours in the [Colors] section.
You can set the zoom factor that determines the size of the window in the [Window] section.
You don't need to touch other settings for now.
Product's homepage
Requirements:
· GNOME Assistive Tech Service Provider Interface
· Gnome2 Canvas Lib
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· This version introduces some interface improvements: there is now audio feedback when pressing or releasing keys and the policy is configurable.
· A new D-Bus interface has been added to control the keyboard from other processes.
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