Its to bad that the new metro system at least on desktops is quite
hard to navigate and quite clunky though.
At 06:32 p.m. 4/04/2012 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Shaun,
You are a bit behind the times. Tablet PCs are already very popular,
and we don't have to wait 10 years to see them dominate the market.
Apple's iPad, for example, is doing very well in the tablet
market and other software developers like Microsoft and Canonical
are attempting to break into the tablet market too.
The big push for the Unity desktop environment on Ubuntu 12 is
geared for tablet PCs and smart phones, and any other touchscreen
type device. However, as Ubuntu Linux is also a desktop operating
system Dell desktops, laptops, and netbooks will begin shipping
later this year with the new Unity interface preinstalled as well.
Bottom line, Linux developers like Canonical are trying to grab the
tablet market early on, and Microsoft's Windows 8 is attempting to
do the same thing.
What this means for us in terms of game development is to begin
thinking of what operating systems will be available for tablets and
perhaps developing software in that direction. Obviously if the
tablet is running Windows 8 or Ubuntu Linux developing software for
the tablet will be easier than for an OS device like Apple's iPad.
However, this is the kind of future we are looking at because it is
relatively in expensive to by a new tablet with accessibility right
out of the box. You can pick up an Apple iPad from just about any
electronics store in the USA, bring it home, enable VoiceOver, and
have a fully accessible portable device to play mp3s, browse the
web, check e-mail, take notes, or carry it around with your shopping
list on it. Portable media like this is the way of the future and
its already here. WE don't have to wait 10 years to see this happen.
It is already a reality.
As to the idea of Microsoft ditching Narrator for NVDA you seriously
need to get a grip on reality. There are a number of reasons why
that won't happen, and why it couldn't happen if they wanted to.
First, NVDA is fully open source. It would be a violation of the GPL
for Microsoft to take the screen reader and sell it as a part of
their commercial software. They'd have to release the source code
for the screen reader, the dependencies it uses, etc which is not
their style. Its just incompatible with their commercial licenses.
Second, NVDA depends on a number of open source technologies not the
least of which is the Python runtime. BrilleTTY, ESpeak, and a few
other components are open source which brings us right back to the
first issue of license incompatibilities.
Third, NVDA is written in Python. Keep in mind Microsoft developers
are trained in Visual C++, Visual C#, and Visual Basic, the
Microsoft languages, so how many Microsoft developers are likely to
actually know and use Python?
The point I want to make here is that they aren't trained or
certified for Python. Microsoft would have to retrain their
developers to work on NVDA development, and then would have to
resubmit any changes back into the open source community. Microsoft
will never do this willingly.
Finally, Narrator, Magnifier, and so on were in development before
NVDA even existed. Microsoft already has a screen reader etc. They
just need to get off their apathy and upgrade it so that it is
comparable to NVDA or something else of equal quality.
Cheers!
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