Cara, A caveat re SWT, Java, and Eclipse.
I recently read that there are problems with the latest Eclipse, Java 6, and SWT on the Mac. Can't remember the details, but will post them here tomorrow if I find them. By way of introduction, I code in Java in Eclipse on the Mac all day for the Feds, for a cross-platform Mac/Win/Linux product. Have been coding Java professionally for 10 years, coding Swing since it was in Beta, and even done a little SWT. The blind-accessible computer games I build for my other job at 7-128 Software all use Java / Swing, self-voice using Free-TTS, and work with JAWS on PCs. So if you have any questions about Java, Swing, or accessibility coding hacks, please do ask. That being said, I'm a newbie to really coding for the Mac, as opposed to on the Mac. I know little about VoiceOver. A colleague at Perkins School for the Blind says that someone at Apple wants to talk to us about making our games work well with VoiceOver. So I expect to get into that next month. To respond to your specific questions: would using SWT take care of my above issues so that my GUI would act more like a native Cocoa L/F with VO? SWT should not give you any functionality re Cocoa or VO that Swing doesn't. And I'm not a Swing fanatic. It is said that SWT is "more native" That's just not true, as anyone who's actually coded in both knows. Is anyone successfully using Eclipse with VO, and is it possible to use SWT outside of Eclipse. I'd think so Yes. You can use SWT outside of Eclipse. It is a GUI API that is very much like Swing. I am sighted, so I don't use VO with Eclipse. However, my professional opinion is that the Eclipse GUI is sufficiently well organized, and IBM is sufficiently accessibility-sensitive, that Eclipse could be driven by ear. The caveat there being that Eclipse might have one or more features that are, for whatever reason, not blind-accessible. Lastly, if these aren't good options, is there a way to have the system self voice these controls I'm concerned with via Java? - Perhaps with Java-Cocoa? Don't know about this one. But will find out when I talk with Apple. Oops, getting called to breakfast! Good luck, John Bannick Chief Technical Officer 7-128 Software www.7128.com _______________________________________________ Developer mailing list [email protected] http://macvisionaries.com/mailman/listinfo/developer_macvisionaries.com
