Re: WE on other platforms. Was: Re: Why Narrator will be better as a Screen Reader
David, I would sum it up this way. The very nature of a screen reader inexorably ties it to the operating system it was written to work on. And that in and of itself precludes it from being ported to any other operating system. Regards, Tom On 8/30/2018 4:16 AM, David wrote: There you are, Tom. Would you agree, if we try to cook it down to something even non-tech people will understand, we might basically explain it all like this? When we see a program well-known to Windows users, all the sudden pop up as an app on IOS or Android - it is NOT because the program itself was ported over. Very basically spoken, the ideas or features of the program, even to some extent the layout, will have been transferred. Yet, the very code behind it all, will likely to a very high extent have been rewritten. Let's try this with an example. Again, let's go to the traffic. When you see a family car rolling down the street, will you then exclaim: Hey, look, a mini truck! Well, in essense, the car has a number of features resembling and quite compatible with those of a truck or bus. They all have four wheels (at least). All have a steering wheel, and they all have windows all around. Still, you please talk to the ingeneers who designed the family car, and ask them if they simply just could down-scale a truck, and let it out the doors. Think of the fact, that your car has breaks that operate on hydraulic system, whereas the truck has air-operated breaks (what is known as pneumatic breaks). The truck definitely is running on a diesel engine, likely your car is on gasolin or even all electric. The truck even might have numerous wheels, tell me if you are the owner of a family car with anything more than four. Obviously, both vihicles have been designed for transportation, with some basics in common. And the designers might likely have used the knowledge from one production, in their work on the other. They might even have a certain similarity, for instance if your family car actually would happen to be a pickup truck. Nonetheless, they are such different constructions that they likely are being produced on separate sites, and your local repair shop might only do work on one of them. You even will have to get a totally different drivers license for each. If you Olusegun are dreaming of seeing a screen reader on Android, which will resemble some - or most - of the features of Window-Eyes, your dreams might be valid enough. If, on the other hand, you think someone could simply just take the code of Window-Eyes and process it through some kind of converter; well, just to break your day, don't even waste your time... :) Even on the Windows platform itself, we find several programming languages. Some three decades ago, I started doing small tasks under one of them, named Basic. Later on I moved on to Turbo Pascal, and when Windows started to become the road of the day, I ran into AutoHotkey. Then came the scripting capability of Window-Eyes, and here the VBScript language became much the standard of most apps. I did look shortly into JScript, and have peeked at some of the codes in Python, and even Pearle. No, i don't expect most readers to recognize much of the names, just want to show you some of the variety - and that is all Windows programming. What I want to stress to you all: Believe me, you won't be able to take code from one of these languages, and simply copy it into the other. There does exist NO converters, whatever your dreams might look like, that would let the one program be ported over to another of these languages. And even for a driven programmer, going from one language over to the other, might be quite confusing. Should I please get two seconds of your day, in showing you one simple example? In one language, the calculations performed inside the code, will always be interpretted from left to right. an expression like: 2 plus 3, multiplied with 4 (2+3*4), would result in the computer taking 2, adding on 3, getting 5; and then multiplying it all with 4, resulting in a grand total of 20. Now, bring that simple expression: 2+3*4 into the other programming language, and your surprise and frustration will be complete. Here the interpretation takes place from right to left. 4 will be multiplied with 3, giving us 12; and 2 will be added, resulting in a grand total of 14. Imagine a code of thousands of lines, where each line will be at best wrongly interpretted - if even recognized at all, and see if your code will run anything like expected. For your information, the free NVDA screen reader is based on Python version 2. The newest Python is in the third generation, but is not fully backward compatible, resulting in NVDA still being transcribed into modern versions of the programming language. And all of this confusion is on one and same platform, Windows. Meaning, it all takes place, based on much the same CPU, and underlaying instructions. Now move to Android, you
Re: WE on other platforms. Was: Re: Why Narrator will be better as a Screen Reader
There you are, Tom. Would you agree, if we try to cook it down to something even non-tech people will understand, we might basically explain it all like this? When we see a program well-known to Windows users, all the sudden pop up as an app on IOS or Android - it is NOT because the program itself was ported over. Very basically spoken, the ideas or features of the program, even to some extent the layout, will have been transferred. Yet, the very code behind it all, will likely to a very high extent have been rewritten. Let's try this with an example. Again, let's go to the traffic. When you see a family car rolling down the street, will you then exclaim: Hey, look, a mini truck! Well, in essense, the car has a number of features resembling and quite compatible with those of a truck or bus. They all have four wheels (at least). All have a steering wheel, and they all have windows all around. Still, you please talk to the ingeneers who designed the family car, and ask them if they simply just could down-scale a truck, and let it out the doors. Think of the fact, that your car has breaks that operate on hydraulic system, whereas the truck has air-operated breaks (what is known as pneumatic breaks). The truck definitely is running on a diesel engine, likely your car is on gasolin or even all electric. The truck even might have numerous wheels, tell me if you are the owner of a family car with anything more than four. Obviously, both vihicles have been designed for transportation, with some basics in common. And the designers might likely have used the knowledge from one production, in their work on the other. They might even have a certain similarity, for instance if your family car actually would happen to be a pickup truck. Nonetheless, they are such different constructions that they likely are being produced on separate sites, and your local repair shop might only do work on one of them. You even will have to get a totally different drivers license for each. If you Olusegun are dreaming of seeing a screen reader on Android, which will resemble some - or most - of the features of Window-Eyes, your dreams might be valid enough. If, on the other hand, you think someone could simply just take the code of Window-Eyes and process it through some kind of converter; well, just to break your day, don't even waste your time... :) Even on the Windows platform itself, we find several programming languages. Some three decades ago, I started doing small tasks under one of them, named Basic. Later on I moved on to Turbo Pascal, and when Windows started to become the road of the day, I ran into AutoHotkey. Then came the scripting capability of Window-Eyes, and here the VBScript language became much the standard of most apps. I did look shortly into JScript, and have peeked at some of the codes in Python, and even Pearle. No, i don't expect most readers to recognize much of the names, just want to show you some of the variety - and that is all Windows programming. What I want to stress to you all: Believe me, you won't be able to take code from one of these languages, and simply copy it into the other. There does exist NO converters, whatever your dreams might look like, that would let the one program be ported over to another of these languages. And even for a driven programmer, going from one language over to the other, might be quite confusing. Should I please get two seconds of your day, in showing you one simple example? In one language, the calculations performed inside the code, will always be interpretted from left to right. an expression like: 2 plus 3, multiplied with 4 (2+3*4), would result in the computer taking 2, adding on 3, getting 5; and then multiplying it all with 4, resulting in a grand total of 20. Now, bring that simple expression: 2+3*4 into the other programming language, and your surprise and frustration will be complete. Here the interpretation takes place from right to left. 4 will be multiplied with 3, giving us 12; and 2 will be added, resulting in a grand total of 14. Imagine a code of thousands of lines, where each line will be at best wrongly interpretted - if even recognized at all, and see if your code will run anything like expected. For your information, the free NVDA screen reader is based on Python version 2. The newest Python is in the third generation, but is not fully backward compatible, resulting in NVDA still being transcribed into modern versions of the programming language. And all of this confusion is on one and same platform, Windows. Meaning, it all takes place, based on much the same CPU, and underlaying instructions. Now move to Android, you will have a totally different CPU, with its very own set of instructions. Or, take it to IOS, and see what Apple will want to comprehend of your code. Oh, let's just illustrate once again. The sailor meets with the pilot, and
Re: WE on other platforms. Was: Re: Why Narrator will be better as a Screen Reader
Olusegun, Just for the record, Office was not ported to Android. Generally speaking, programs can be ported between Windows, MacOS, and Linux, or, Universal Windows Platform, iOS, and Android. These are essentially two different classes of platforms: desktop and mobile. The core difference is that they use different CPUs. So Office was rewritten for mobile platforms. This then requires compilation to a machine independent intermediate code layer. That intermediate code must then be separately compiled to each platform or use an interpreter, the latter of which compiles the code on the fly. The bottom line is that programs that have been around since the dawn of Windows have hundreds of thousands of lines of code exclusive to core components of the operating system. There is no automation that can rewrite the meaning of life for these programs. Relatively speaking, designing programs for portability is a new-age approach brought on mostly by the mobile evolution. And still, this is no magic wand. This is why most of the biggest accessibility apps have been developed for iOS and Android users then have to wait a year or two before they're ported over to that platform. Regards, Tom On 8/29/2018 6:27 PM, Olusegun -- Victory Associates LTD, Inc. via Talk wrote: David, I enjoyed reading your post; it did present some interesting angles regarding my thought process. I believe that the impossible is that which has not been tried. We could all wake up tomorrow and hear an important announcement: Jaws for Android is here! Shall we throw up our arms in the air in disgust? I doubt that. If nothing else, many of us will play ball with it and see where its chips land. After all, in Android Land, you can have as many screen readers as you choose--Talkback, ShinePlus can be used in any Android toy; VoiceAssistant and VoiceViews are still partial to their creators, Samsung and Amazon in that order. I've never been a programmer; yet, I've seen Windows apps being ported over to Android. A good example is Outlook, another is Word and, yes, Excel is available on the Android platform. I may be odd, but I do love and appreciate being able to use touchscreen toys! I am, as of the present moment, equally productive on my Shiny Android toys as I am using a keyboard with a computer. I taught myself all that I do and I ask questions of more knowledgeable folks when I am stuck. No, I'm not a guru and do not frankly wish to be one--nonetheless, if it weren't for the legacy Windows app that are work related, I shall have divorced Windows and keep on running with ONLY Android TOYS in my pocket! I do a lot of travel, I see touchscreen terminals lined up forever at airports. Sadly, they are not accessible. To get around that for the time being, I bring all I need with me for my trips. Example, I check in and print my own burden pass all the time before heading out to the airport. I'm STINGY ENOUGH not to CHECK BAGS, so there's never an argument there. In fact, I don't even go to the airline counter, I head straight to the T S A security line. Oh, I have also CLEARED T S A security checks so i don't need to remove my underwear, belts or shoes to pass through the screening process. Guess I'm crazy lucky and I realise that not everyone is similarly situated. The clearance I have is NOT FREE, cost $100 for five years, I renew it again in 2023 if I'm still breathing and a bit less troublesome, There are a heck of a lot of things I can do with my touchscreen phone which a computer or any currently available access technology DO NOT make possible. For instance, if I don't wish to print my burden pass and carry a piece of paper in my pocket, I can simply show it on my touchscreen Shiny Android toy to a screener at the security gate, or at an airline check-in counter. I'm one person who prefers 99% of everything electronically 'cause the prospects of a misplacement is sharply reduced for me. Heck, for international travels, I can CLEAR THE U.S. CUSTOMS electronically on my touchscreen Shiny Android toy even before I board my flight back home. No computer or access technology will help me do that, but my Shiny Android toys do and they fit snugly in my chest pocket. Thus, I can keep hope alive; it may or may not happen. Notwithstanding, I sure hope that someone much more brilliant than I figures out a way to resurrect Window-Eyes as a screen reader on the Android platform! In some shape or form, we've been here before: Window-Eyes was dying, some of us shouted it out from the treetops and were sent to the gas chambers so we could be forgotten and never heard from. Fortunately, the doors of the gas chambers DIDN'T CLOSE before we were vindicated. Should the hope I nurse become a reality, this beggar who wishes for what is classified as impossible surely wants to ride into town with happiness pushing a Window-Eyes for Android cart! Sincerely, Olusegun Denver, Colorado
RE: WE on other platforms. Was: Re: Why Narrator will be better as a Screen Reader
At 06:27 PM 8/29/2018, Olusegun -- Victory Associates LTD, wrote: >I believe that the impossible is that which has not been tried. We could >all wake up tomorrow and hear an important announcement: Jaws for Android >is here! Shall we throw up our arms in the air in disgust? I doubt that. >If nothing else, many of us will play ball with it and see where its chips >land. After all, in Android Land, you can have as many screen readers as >you choose--Talkback, ShinePlus can be used in any Android toy; >VoiceAssistant and VoiceViews are still partial to their creators, Samsung >and Amazon in that order. I've never been a programmer; yet, I've seen >Windows apps being ported over to Android. A good example is Outlook, >another is Word and, yes, Excel is available on the Android platform. The examples you gave share an important commonality: they're all Windows applications ported over to Android for user convenience. The Android versions of these apps are free for a reason. Google can afford to work on Talkback because it's built into every Android phone. But a competing screen reader would have to charge hefty prices to stay in business with Android. >I may be odd, but I do love and appreciate being able to use touchscreen >toys! I am, as of the present moment, equally productive on my Shiny >Android toys as I am using a keyboard with a computer. I taught myself all >that I do and I ask questions of more knowledgeable folks when I am stuck. >No, I'm not a guru and do not frankly wish to be one--nonetheless, if it >weren't for the legacy Windows app that are work related, I shall have >divorced Windows and keep on running with ONLY Android TOYS in my pocket! Really? Can you select Pages of text inn blocks to be moved around? Can you use regular expressions to replace characters in hundreds of thousands of files at a time? I do that with Notepad Plus Plus, even though I love my Galaxy S9+. >Thus, I can keep hope alive; it may or may not happen. Notwithstanding, I >sure hope that someone much more brilliant than I figures out a way to >resurrect Window-Eyes as a screen reader on the Android platform! In some >shape or form, we've been here before: Window-Eyes was dying, some of us >shouted it out from the treetops and were sent to the gas chambers so we >could be forgotten and never heard from. Fortunately, the doors of the gas >chambers DIDN'T CLOSE before we were vindicated. Should the hope I nurse >become a reality, this beggar who wishes for what is classified as >impossible surely wants to ride into town with happiness pushing a >Window-Eyes for Android cart! I too would love that. But Android as an operating system doesn't need a robust screen reader like Window-eyes. I ultimately think that Doug Geoffray will have the last laugh when Narrator becomes robust enough to displace Jaws.Orlando Enrique Fiol Ph.D. Candidate in Music Theory University of Pennsylvania Professional Pianist/Keyboardist, Percussionist, Arranger, Performer and Pedagogue ___ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
RE: WE on other platforms. Was: Re: Why Narrator will be better as a Screen Reader
David, I enjoyed reading your post; it did present some interesting angles regarding my thought process. I believe that the impossible is that which has not been tried. We could all wake up tomorrow and hear an important announcement: Jaws for Android is here! Shall we throw up our arms in the air in disgust? I doubt that. If nothing else, many of us will play ball with it and see where its chips land. After all, in Android Land, you can have as many screen readers as you choose--Talkback, ShinePlus can be used in any Android toy; VoiceAssistant and VoiceViews are still partial to their creators, Samsung and Amazon in that order. I've never been a programmer; yet, I've seen Windows apps being ported over to Android. A good example is Outlook, another is Word and, yes, Excel is available on the Android platform. I may be odd, but I do love and appreciate being able to use touchscreen toys! I am, as of the present moment, equally productive on my Shiny Android toys as I am using a keyboard with a computer. I taught myself all that I do and I ask questions of more knowledgeable folks when I am stuck. No, I'm not a guru and do not frankly wish to be one--nonetheless, if it weren't for the legacy Windows app that are work related, I shall have divorced Windows and keep on running with ONLY Android TOYS in my pocket! I do a lot of travel, I see touchscreen terminals lined up forever at airports. Sadly, they are not accessible. To get around that for the time being, I bring all I need with me for my trips. Example, I check in and print my own burden pass all the time before heading out to the airport. I'm STINGY ENOUGH not to CHECK BAGS, so there's never an argument there. In fact, I don't even go to the airline counter, I head straight to the T S A security line. Oh, I have also CLEARED T S A security checks so i don't need to remove my underwear, belts or shoes to pass through the screening process. Guess I'm crazy lucky and I realise that not everyone is similarly situated. The clearance I have is NOT FREE, cost $100 for five years, I renew it again in 2023 if I'm still breathing and a bit less troublesome, There are a heck of a lot of things I can do with my touchscreen phone which a computer or any currently available access technology DO NOT make possible. For instance, if I don't wish to print my burden pass and carry a piece of paper in my pocket, I can simply show it on my touchscreen Shiny Android toy to a screener at the security gate, or at an airline check-in counter. I'm one person who prefers 99% of everything electronically 'cause the prospects of a misplacement is sharply reduced for me. Heck, for international travels, I can CLEAR THE U.S. CUSTOMS electronically on my touchscreen Shiny Android toy even before I board my flight back home. No computer or access technology will help me do that, but my Shiny Android toys do and they fit snugly in my chest pocket. Thus, I can keep hope alive; it may or may not happen. Notwithstanding, I sure hope that someone much more brilliant than I figures out a way to resurrect Window-Eyes as a screen reader on the Android platform! In some shape or form, we've been here before: Window-Eyes was dying, some of us shouted it out from the treetops and were sent to the gas chambers so we could be forgotten and never heard from. Fortunately, the doors of the gas chambers DIDN'T CLOSE before we were vindicated. Should the hope I nurse become a reality, this beggar who wishes for what is classified as impossible surely wants to ride into town with happiness pushing a Window-Eyes for Android cart! Sincerely, Olusegun Denver, Colorado ___ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
