Hi Cheryl,
I'm actually interested in hearing more about this. How much of the
britty program has actually been ported? In an earlier post you said
the developer: "Dave Mielke says that the main missing piece is
access to an API system that inspects what's on the screen." If it's
true the API described is really what's required to complete the port
(and this requirement is not simply extrapolated from how Windows
screen readers work [vs. the way VO works]) - and the britty
developer has not found what he needs in Apple's comprehensive Device
Driver and Accessibility API documentation - then this is not just a
little gotcha. It sounds more like the whole ball game.
I'm not sure it's at all obvious that "people on this list do not
particulary want the excellent brltty program ported to the Mac and
do not want to discuss their reasons." Commercial developers/vendors
often can't and won't collaborate with outside developers...so the
kind of collaboration you're suggesting may not be easy or even
desirable (for the practical reasons David Niemeijer (from
AssistiveWare) and I described in our recent posts). We don't really
know what communication has taken place between the developers on the
list and vendors. Further, I don't see how any of the work being done
by folks on the list could be described as anything less than
constructive. To me, it looks like people being admirably proactive
and searching for reasonable solutions to some of the
incompatibilities that exist (which the commercial vendors may or may
not be working on themselves). This kind of development is not at all
unheard of (there is a long tradition of third party device driver
development) - it fills in gaps left by vendors and helps keep
vendors honest. Vendors are perfectly free to join this list and be
active in the discussions. In fact, it seems clear that commercial
developers are welcomed pretty warmly on the list. There's nothing
secret happening here. Greg Kearny's work is completely open source
and free under GPL. So, what's to stop collaboration if a vendor
really wants it? I think it's pretty clear that none of the folks
doing the work we're discussing would refuse an active collaboration
with any commercial developer who wanted it.
Joe
On Mar 18, 2006, at 10:35 AM, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
Oh yes, that would be cool, Scott. But that wasn't the point of
this subject line. I asked a very specific question about a very
specific project as the subject line was about developing braille
on the Mac, and instead of specific answers I've gotten general
discussion of development plus a response that seemed to claim I
just wanted braille to give extra information that would be of no
help to deaf-blind. I give up!!! It's obvious that for some reason
people on this list do not particulary want the excellent brltty
program ported to the Mac and do not want to discuss their reasons.
Much of the work for porting brltty has been done but the comments
being made are as if this would be aeons in the future if we went
that route. And how porting brltty would be of no help to the deaf-
blind is way beyond my comprehension. But people have a right of
course to choose their own paths and there's no use in me pursuing
this on this list when people apparently don't want to discuss it.
--
Cheryl
"Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also".
