>>Alain: In this regard, it is too bad that we chose
>>against HTML/XML/Web as the GUI. Meta-info and
>>accessibility are some of the primary concerns of
>>these W3C standards. Web-based Brail-clients exist.
>Uli: Alain, please do finally throw that XML over
>board. There is nothing we can do with XML that we
>can't do with a binary file format.
Alain: I am not suggesting that we should change.
Please excuse my over-zealous web-centrism.
>Uli: It's the viewer that displays web pages
>as Braille.
Alain: I am aware of that.
>Uli: And we can't display a HyperCard stack in a web
>browser (the way HTML does it).
Alain: I was imagining the (eventual) process as
similar to embedding Quicktime or Java-Applets into
web pages, with the EMBED and/or OBJECT tags. Even
better though would be a browser REPLACEMENT (e.g
Web-savvy FreeCard stacks).
>Uli: A HyperCard stack is supposed to look
>basically the same on every platform,
>and that means pixel-unit positioning,
Alain: In D-HTML, with or without CSS, layers can be
sized and positioned with pixel-precision.
>Uli: ...while HTML is mainly intended to
>hierarchically structure information,
Alain: True, but with a lot of presentation-type stuff
added to the mix since the advent of the Internet and,
in particular, since the Internet became the
mass-public phenomenon that we know of today. CSS is
supposed to be the answer to that, separating
content-structure from content-presentation, as HTML
was supposed to be in the first place.
> Uli: As for meta-data, that could probably be
> stored in user properties, which are a de-facto
> standard in all xTalks except HyperCard, and thus a
> very likely a good candidate to be in FreeCard in
> 1.1 or whatever after our 100% HC clone.
Alain: Agreed.
> Uli: Right. Also, many OSs will certainly provide a
> system-wide technique for improving access for
> disabled people in time, so let's now draw the line
> and hope that when we pick up this topic again
they'll
> all have settled down on a standard or at least
> finalized their proprietary designs so we can
support
> them THEN.
Alain: Agreed.
> Uli: If you find anyone who has time to create a
> version of our web site that includes special
> enhancements for the disabled, that's fine.
Alain: I will eventually get around to these
accessibility considerations, myself. Basically, it is
just a few more constraints to take into account while
coding the templates of my Web pages. The CGI does
all, of the rest after that.
> Uli: But I think most disabled-enabled browsers are
> able to translate HTML to Braille Text themselves
> (after all, it's just a different font, output to a
> special device, there's no translation of text
> involved).
Alain: Yes, but some of the tricks of the trade tend
to make this 'reading' process more arduous. Case in
point: using (nested) tables for optimal page-layout.
When read back with a braille-reader, each row-column
pair (cell) is read out-loud, as if each cell were
significant from a semantic point-of-view.
> Uli: You might want to make sure you have your
> ALT= Tags on all images, but I hope it won't
> involve more.
Alain: Yes, this is the kind of thing that I had in
mind for the short-term.
> Uli: I really think it's premature to care about
these
> things too much this early in development.
Alain: For now and the foreseeable future, I believe
that the scope of accessibility-enhancements will be
limited to our web-site.
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