[NFBCS] Fwd: Call for testing: vast performance and stability improvements in command consoles for NVDA users

[Jim Barbour]

Given our conversations on this list about terminals, I thought I'd
share this post from the Blind System Administrators list.

JIm

----- Forwarded message from codeofdusk at gmail.com -----

Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2020 20:39:02 -0400
From: codeofdusk at gmail.com
To: 'Mailing list for blind system administrators'
	<blind-sysadmins at lists.hodgsonfamily.org>
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 16.0
Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Call for testing: vast performance and stability
	improvements in command consoles for NVDA users

Hi blind-sysadmins,

Microsoft has been doing a lot of really great work on UI Automation (UIA)
in Windows Console (command prompt, PowerShell, and the Windows Subsystem
for Linux). UIA vastly improves performance and stability in console, but
some issues prevented it from becoming default in NVDA 2019.3.

Many of the bugs in UIA have been fixed, and I'm hoping it'll be good enough
to be default for the Windows 10 21H1 update to be released in the first
half of 2021! However, it's important that all serious bugs are resolved
before UIA becomes the default. The deadline for fixes to make it into the
next Windows update is 30 October 2020.

I'd really appreciate it if people tested this build
<https://codeofdusk.com/conhost20200928.zip>  (extract the zip and run
OpenConsole.exe) of the Windows Console with "use UI Automation to access
Windows Console" enabled in NVDA's advanced settings and reported any issues
to me. Alternatively, you can file issues on the microsoft/terminal GitHub
repo (which also is used for Windows Console). If you file issues with
Microsoft, please provide a test case for them to run in the NVDA Python
console (see this issue <https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/7742>
as an example) and CC @carlos-zamora. If you need help generating a test
case, please let me know.

To aid in testing, you can replace the Windows default console with
OpenConsole. Change the owner of %systemroot%\system32\conhost.exe to
yourself (in security properties), then grant you or the administrators
group full control of the file. Rename conhost.exe to conhost.exe.orig,
paste in OpenConsole.exe into the folder, and rename it to conhost.exe. If
you've done it correctly, running nav.is21H1Plus in the Python console
(NVDA+control+z) started from cmd should return True! To switch back to your
original console, just rename conhost.exe to something else, and rename
conhost.exe.orig back to conhost.exe.

 

Thanks,

Bill

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----- End forwarded message -----