Hi Janina, On 18 Jan 2016, at 22:06, 'Janina Sajka' via MacVisionaries <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, if you mean the integration of all the tools in an out of the box > installed product, it's certainly there on Linux for many users. The > a11y use case has also been demonstrated by small distro knockoffs like > Vinux. > Sorry, I was specifically talking about the difficulty of using VMWare, as illustrated by the difference between using the official and open-VM-tools.
I don’t use the VI-specific distros because they are too out-of-date for my liking. > It's not there, however, at the level that you can head over to Best Buy > and come with a working Linux desktop system. So, it's always possible > you will fail over driver issues and the like. > I use Linux in a virtual environment. Even Mac hardware—which you would hope is more readily supported by virtue of being well-known and invariant—is not well supported. Broadcom Wi-Fi, for example, and therefore single-channel only. The only Linux box I have is my quad-core Mac Mini, now being used as my home router/NAS. We need to get to that magical stage where hardware is open, so distros can in fact come out of the box without fiddling required. > Each to their own, of course. But my main machine remains a Linux, > currently Fedora 23. I turn to my Mac to see how things work elsewhere > by way of comparison. Ditto for my Windows vm. I agree, each to their own. I would love to be able to use Linux as my primary OS, primarily to get away from the various vendor playgrounds. Perhaps I should be trying harder, but so far, I’m happiest using Linux on servers and exclusively in textmode. Meantime, I also have a Windows VM. Perhaps you could find a way to run OS X under qemu/KVM or, if it works, VMWare Workstation on Linux. > I will freely admit there are particular niche tasks I can't do on my > Linux box. But they are few. I 'm perfectly happy with the bulk of what > I need daily, email, web, etc. And, in case your curious, I still spend > more time in Speakup than in Orca. > I have a Windows VM for the tiny number of things that OS X cannot do, and Linux, for braille. I don’t want or need a GUI under Linux at all, and exclusively use braille. > Given what I'm seeing by way of a11y API development, I frankly expect > blink related a11y to actually take the lead. Microsoft have barely > started implementing an API for UI Automation, but they've declared the > DOM dead. Look out JAWS. And Apple won't even let you peek at the OSX > accessibility API--not even if you're a big, stock market listed third > party vendor. I’m not prepared to look into my crystal ball. I have experience with all of the platforms and don’t see any particular reason why any of them should “Win”. Apart from ChromeOS, I don’t see any forward progress at all—for ChromeOS, things are actually regressing as Google finally updates ChromeVox to take advantage of their new APIs, but that should soon right itself. The Apple accessibility protocols are all documented, but the Objective-C runtime isn’t. So, you’re all right as long as you’re within Apple’s prison walls. Outside, I don’t see any developer venturing to hack at the APIs through a non-objective-C language, which means non-Apple toolkits frequently aren’t accessible. But, you could if you wanted to; just reverse-engineer (from the Apple-provided sources) the current Objective-C ABIs, and communicate with the protocol objects using entirely undocumented, likely-to-change-at-any-moment C-based APIs. I have a note here to detail an actual case where this lost us some accessibility to Apple. Cheers, Sabahattin PS: your DMARC policy is causing Google Groups to rewrite your sender address. Perhaps dedicate a subdomain for lists. Also feel free to contact me off-list if there is no further Apple-related matter. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
