universal access zoom unusable

[Ken Anderson]

Filed by mark on behalf of low vision user Ken. Ken is able to read 56 point type without magnification at normal reading distance and can barely read the universal access "large text" from a distance of about 2.5 inches from a 26inch monitor at 1360x768. So he really needs magnification and a lot more than the 2x default I used here for testing. We do not live in the same town so providing additional details would be slow.

Turned on zoom from the universal access button on top panel.
Default settings were used including Zoom = 2.0, screen part = full

Several areas are corrupted. These zoom and scroll separately from the rest of the screen and in a way that severely impairs use as portions may not ever be visible. Portions of these subwindows cannot be used because you have to move the mouse off them to be able see them so you can either see or click but not both.

These areas are:
  - The top panel
  - The left panel (launcher) (intermittently)
  - pull down menus, particularly the universal access pull down from the top panel

Also, the zoom randomly every couple seconds. jumps to a different position without the user's consent. This appeared to be because text was printed by a program running in the terminal window (long apt-get install) but continued to happen even when that window was minimized and even when that program stopped printing.

These problems persisted with all the other zoom modes. One mode, however, created new bugs. With "magnifier extends outside of screen", you lose the ability to see the top and left panels at all; you can pan over where they would be but they are not drawn. Can't open the pulldown menu since there is no icon, so who knows how it would be rendered.

These bugs made it very difficult to get screenshots, especially with the defective screenshot program gnome-screenshot which ships with system. Also, the bug-reporting program did not permitted attaching additional screenshots once spectacle was installed.

Ubuntu 18.04, fresh install, only a few added packages (ham radio related, chrome). Not using wayland, though a wayland session runs concurrently with X11 even though no one has logged in with wayland.

Another problem in making the bug report is the irresponsible practice of failing to identify the software being used. The accessability man in circle menu does not have a heading to tell you what program is run for the accessability menu or any of the functions thus invoked. Nor does the settings. And there is no tooltip, popup, or about menu item to convey this information to the user. And running a diff on ps doesn't show any new processes started when zoom is turned on.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: xorg 1:7.7+19ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
BootLog: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/boot.log'
CompositorRunning: None
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat May 5 00:04:35 2018
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: bionic
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 NVIDIA Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2] [10de:06e4] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] G98 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2] [1462:1163]
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-05-05 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
MachineType: Dell Inc. OptiPlex 760
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-20-generic root=UUID=6a7e27f6-5135-461e-9e6b-fea68756ed37 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=1
SourcePackage: xorg
Symptom: display
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 04/29/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A03
dmi.board.name: 0M858N
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A01
dmi.chassis.type: 6
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA03:bd04/29/2009:svnDellInc.:pnOptiPlex760:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0M858N:rvrA01:cvnDellInc.:ct6:cvr:
dmi.product.name: OptiPlex 760
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.91-2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 18.0.0~rc5-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 18.0.0~rc5-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.19.6-1ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:18.0.1-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20171229-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.15-2

[Ken Anderson (w4jqt)]

added screenshot

[Ken Anderson (w4jqt)]

added screenshot

[whitis (whitis)]

Problem reproduced on separate (virtual) machine, unmodified ubuntu live image.
   - Host system AMD Phenom II X6 1090T with 16GB RAM Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS
   - virtualbox 14.3.36-dfsg-...
       - SATA 0: 8GB VMDK drive (new)
       - SATA 1: CD/ROM: ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso
       - Base memory: 4GB (important, if you use 1GB, ubuntu will boot to desktop but nothing works)
         must have enough ram on host machine to permit this
       - Specific Virtual machine -> System -> Motherboard: Enable EFI: On
         otherwise it will not boot
    - Boot menu: TRY ubuntu without installing
    - Show Applications (dash)-> Terminal
    - Show Applications -> Settings-> Universal Access -> Always Show Universal Access Menu: On
    - don't dismiss settings, we will use it about 8 steps below.
    - Universal Access menu (round man in circle on top panel) -> Zoom: on
    - Move pointer to upper left corner of desktop: note left panel (launcher) icons
      cut in hafl, note top panel cut in half
    - move to top right
    - click on whats left of universal access menu icon to pull down menu, note it is drawn incorrectly
    - move mouse down and to the left and notice how these panels/pull down menus scroll independently and incorrectly.
    - try to turn off the zoom in the univeral access pull down menu. Try to read the word zoom, now you cant see the control, move to see the control now you can't see the word. But in this case, you can actually get there.
     - turn zoom back on
     - move mouse pointer to upper right hand corner. Make sure either the universal access or the system menu is pulled down
     - move mouse down and left to the words "sound keys" in the settings menu (control panel,
     not the pull down menu) for universal access. Leave the mouse pointer there for a
     few seconds. Display will pan to upper right hand corner without permission.
      - If you repeat this without either of the two pull down menus activated, it will jump
        to the highlighted "Universal Access" on the left side of the settings window.
     This jumping action severely interfered with issuing screenshot commands in terminal and
     it will interfere with many other operations as well.

Behavior of program suggests that the screen is being composited of the following elements:
   - desktop background
   - application window 1
   - application window 2
   - application window 3 ...
   - top panel
   - left panel (launcher)
   - pull down menu
The first four items appear to be correctly composited together before applying the zoom and pan operation but the last three appear to not be composited onto the desktop+applications before zoom and pan is applied. The size of their windows has not been enlarged, only the contents.

Add to paragraph about obfuscating the identity of the programs the user is interacting with: Universal Pull down menu also doesn't have "Help" or report bug menu items.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1767648, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Alejandro Fabre (a-fabre)]

Have the same problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Lasse Kliemann (lxkl)]

I confirm the jumping problem. It seems to be a related to gnome terminal. Using kitty or deepin terminal, I can have a program writing text to the terminal continuously and not experience any jumps.