Ah, spelling thew me off, I see we're discussing BRLTTY which is not
a commercial product. That being said, I think most of what I said
still applies i.e. I don't see what's stopping a collaboration if the
developers really desire it. Assuming they have a real interest in
porting to Mac.
Joe
On Mar 18, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
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".
