Hi list,
I'm a twenty something legally blind hobby musician, programmer and general
power user from Finland. I've been using MS products literally half of my
life from DOS 4.x onwards to 6.22, WIn 95 through Xp but now am considering
alternatives, for various more or less uninteresting reasons. As I'm,
despite my sight impairement, a GUi guy at heart, OS X seems much more
viable a choice than Linux is. I'm not actually totally clueless about Macs
either having beta-tested Voice Over publically and know a die-hard Mac
friend whose tried to convert me for half a dozen years. To skip to my first
question search forwards for 1 period or better yet the regexp ^\d\.
I've been thinking of my core requirements of switching to a new OS so here
are some rather difficult questions about them in the context of OS X.
Namely: Finnish speech, virtualization, visual customizability, music
software and hardware compatibility. The big problem here is that I would
need to be absolutely certain that the OS can deliver in these areas before
buying a new machine and then finding out the hard way that I'm going to be
running Windows, either virtually or for real, ninety percent of the time.
Of course, I'm glad that Boot cap does exist as a fallback option and have
enough Windows software that I'd probably need virtualization for minor
tasks.
Anyway, here we go with the questions:
1. I'm using Finnish speech on the Web and for e-mail on a daily basis so I
need a Finnish speech synthesizer for OS X. The alternative is to surf or
read mail in Windows which is kinda lame. Are there any Finnish speech
synths for OS X and how expensive are they? Also, Voice Over would need to
switch the language in which on-screen text is being read. Is that already
possible via a hotkey or will it be in Leopard? I don't mind the apps and
screen reader prompts being in English as I've always computed in English.
I do know there's a multi-lingual Linux synth called eSpeak which can
probably be compiled to OS X as well. HOwever, I or someone else would have
to write a wrapper to be able to use that via what-ever speech API the OS
and Voice Over are using which is no easy feat. Going even more hacker, one
possibility would be to run my current SAPi 4 based Windows speech synth in
a virtual machine and then drive it via Windows and Mac wrappers plus a
named pipe to the virtual machine. VmWare server, for instance, includes the
ability to read or write a guest machine parallel or serial port as a named
pipe.
But the trouble with both of these solutions is that they would require
extra work and wouldn't thus be available out of the box and might not even
be feasible. I'd like to rest assured if that if I'm going to get a new Mac
, it will speak my mother tongue as well.
2. I already do know I have important Windows software of which no Mac port
exists. My Finnish-English dictionary is actually a Win 3.1 app and the
local equivalent of bookshare has a proprietry Windows and Linux-only client
program. A third area is sequencing, I'm not sure if it is feasible on the
Mac as well. SO two questions. IS there already or is someone going to write
an OS X native version of the Win32 API emulator wine? Also, what's the best
Windows virtualization solution out there and does it support low-latency
audio and MIDI? Neither VmWare nor Virtual PC expose the underlying sound
card and other PCI hardware, so that means lots of latency and no hardware
specific features.
3. I use a combination of speech, braille and magnification to access the
GUI regardless of OS. I do know Leopard is going to have Braille but
howabout visual customizability? Too get the big picture of the GUI and use
it optimally magnified, it is extremely important that there are no
gradients or transparency and that GUI elements have good contrast between
their background colors. Ideally I would take black title bars and buttons,
white on dark blue text fields and tables as well as a dark turqwoise
background for dialog boxes and menus. THe only GUI environment that offers
this level of customizability without trickery is the currently inaccessible
KDE. Windows isn't quite as good but nevertheless let's me make text fields
stand out against dialogs as well as very clear, no gradiant title bars.
I've tweaked all of the visuals under OS X but it remains subjectively
almost as horrible as Windows Vista is going to be, if you've got a quirky
bit of sight like I do. In a way I do understand Apple. THey've chosen a
cool consistant look for the average sighted user whose probably not
interested in tweaking the look and might even make it worse. But from an
accessibility point of view, OS X gives me very little choice.
I've read about some 3rd party tweakers that let you re-skin the user
interface. So if I made a custom skin with only the desired solid colors in
it it just might work. Are there already such accessible OS X looks out
there and is this strategy feasible? What's the best app to change the look
and how much does it cost?
The last thing that worries me about such apps is the support. It's pretty
bad if minor OS updates are going to break the skin support every time or if
in using OS X with a custom mod like that I'm automagicaly classified as an
unsupported user. I've never needed the MS tech support in dealing with DOS
or Windows, though, so hopefully I won't need to call Apple either.
4. I'm doing music as a hobby and have loads of hardware synths and an
analog mixer. The only two things I need on the computer for making music
are a good MIDI sequencer and a Sound Editor (maybe also a multi-track
recorder). The first is what worries me, though.
As the bear minimum, I absolutely need support for multiple MIDI ports with
instrument definition files for each device, quantization with an adjustable
strength and basic data views such as event list and piano roll. ON the
Windows side I've been using both old Cakewalk products and the MIDI
sequencer QWS, which has been written by a sight-impaired guy. SO which are
my MIDI sequencing choices on the Mac?
I read about Garage Band that its quantize is always at 100 percent which is
just plain unacceptable in the kind of music I'm doing. I've also asked in
the Logic Audio forum and someone there tested it with Voice over saying
that it is not really usable yet, as I suspected having had some horrible
Windows Experiences with Sound Diver. I've tried Cubase and Ableton Live on
the PC and if they're as bad on the Mac, they aren't usable either.
On the bright side I read here that Apple is going to improve the situation.
But I doubt Logic wil be totally accessible. I don't want to be a killjoy,
but I suppose that means partially accessible. If Macintosh soft synths are
as bad as their Windows counterparts, there are loads of instruments with
bitmapped text that shows up as just images, no keyboard interface or even
worse no concept of tab order and focus. Given such problems there's nothing
an accessible host program can do. Also, some concepts such as graphically
editable envelopes and the piano roll are fundamentally visual. Though I'm
suspecting that the points you insert in an envelope could be represented
and edited in a table control.
So the only mainstream sequencer I haven't heard anything bad about is
Digital Performer. How accessible is it? Ar there any shareware or freebie
MIDI sequencers for the Mac which might be more accessible? As I said, my
needs are actually fairly basic.
I suppose I'd better ask these same questions on the audio list. But I
didn't wish to subscribe to two mailing lists just to ask a couple of
questions. It would be great if someone could forward the music related bits
on the audio list and add that people should reply to me off-list. OR I can,
of course, join the list too and repost part of this message.
5. I'd like to be certain that I can reuse the sound card and MIDI
interfaces plus controllres from my Current PC, provided that I'm going to
switch. IS there an official hardware compatibility list? I think both my
EWS88 MT sound card and USB MIDI sport 1x1 and 4x4 are supported but might
be wrong. I also have the HardSID card and an USB based Evolution UC33 knob
box. My synths are normal MIDI devices so as long as the interface works,
they'll work fine.
Any help greatly appreciated. I appologise for the length and the rather
pessimist tone of this mail. But it seems lots of fairly important questions
need to be answered positively or worked-around in some way before I can
honestly consider switching, as much as I'd like to. Dual-booting is not
really a work-around. I'm afraid that if I'm going to boot to Windows I'm
going to stay there.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/
