[jawsscripts] Re: What tools can i use to write jaws scripts for different applications?

Hi david.
Marlon has spelt out some of the difficulties David about
scripting, which I added to earlier this week as well.

but, just to add to what he indicated,

there are many applications today which don't conform to the old standards
of what we'd regard as keyboard accessible, i.e. you tab or arrow about, and
here buttons and controls that immediately intuitively indicate their names
and what they're for.
Sadly, many modern apps, though not all, no longer work like this now, and
one must often make extensive use of the jaws/mouse cursor, to see what one
can learn from exploring the screen with it.

now one standard that is also going out of fashion it seems a bit, though it
still is used by some, and, when it is, it's a very helpful one if the
programmer of the application has used the standard class to do this, is
called ToolTips.  they are little popup events, which sometimes, if they are
of the standard class, jaws will read, if, and only if, toolTip reading is
turned on. for some absolutely bizzarre reason known only to freedom
scientific, this setting of ToolTip  announcements, is, not, turned on in
jaws by default. though it is in window eyes.

if toolTip reading is enabled, then sometimes, when moving over various
graphics, or even, when your feeling very adventurous and determined, just
crawling around the screen with alt+shift+Arrow keys,
if you do it slowly enough to not potentially cut off jaws with one's next
navigation keystroke, then if their are tooltip popups which might indicate
what certain graphics are for, then you may well hear jaws speak those
popups to you.  these can often be very helpful in trying to suss out an
application, just to work out what graphics might do what, besides just
clicking on them as marlon suggested.

to turn toolTip reading on in jaws globally across all applications, and for
all verbosity levels, do the following:

note: if you only wish to turn on tooltip reading for the application your
exploring, then omit step 2 below.

1. open the configuration manager with jawsKey+f2, then c, then enter.

2. to load the default config such that changes made will effect all
applications, hit controlShiftD.
you should hear jaws prompt that the default configuration has been loaded.
3. open verbosity dialog with alt+s, then v.
Note there are 3 verbosity levels, beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
I'd advise turning on toolTip reading for all levels, but of course, you can
choose to only enable it for one of any of the three verbosity levels if you
prefer.

4. tab past the verbosity selection set of radio buttons, and you should
hear jaws say something like, "beginner preferences, dot dot dot button."
successively pressing tab here should take you between the beginner,
intermediate, and advanced preferences for each verbosity level.

5. hit spacebar upon the first button to open the beginner preferences
dialog.

6. hit the end key, to jump to the bottom of this list. ToolTip reading
should be the bottom entry. if it's unchecked, then hit spaceBar to check
it, then hit enter to close the dialog for this verbosity preference level,
and back out to the general dialog.

7. repeat these steps for the other verbosity levels if desired, then tab to
ok and hit enter to close the verbosity options dialog.

8. hit control+s to save this new configuration setting, then alt+f4 to
close the configuration manager.


now, as I say,what you then need to do, is ask a sighted friend to see if
any of your particular applications, have little popup toolTips, (although
they won't know them as being called that,) and move the mouse/jaws cursor
over an area to cause one to pop up. then see if jaws speaks it to you.
note: not all popups are standard toolTip class events which jaws has been
coded to watch for and read, so, you may find that their are popups which
aren't being spoken by jaws. but, this may be a good start for you.
tip: to test whether toolTip reading is working, unless they've changed this
recently, you can do the following to hear it in action.

1. open winamp.

2. press control+p to open the preferences dialog.

the first control in here should be a tree view.

3. hit home to be at the top of the tree view.

4. then hit the letter o, until you hear something with the word, "output,"
in it. it might say, "direct sound output," or something like that. you can
check if your on the right entry by hitting up arrow, if it says input, then
down arrow again to the output entry.


5. tab twice, till you get to the configure button.  now because this has
all been scripted etc, everything already speaks nicely in here, but, just
to test this feature.
6. now hit routeJawsToPc, i.e. take the mouse to the place of the currently
focused item, using jawsKey+NumpadMinus.
if toolTip reading is working, then doing this, after a slight pause to give
the program time,
should generate a little popup window, which should say something like:

"This button configures the currently selected pluggin." ... etc.

7. now tab to the next button, which is the about button, and repeat the
process of routing jaws to the pc Cursor focus. again, if all is as it
should be, and as it is in my old 5.24 version of winamp, which of course it
may not be but it's the best I can do right now, you should hear another
little popup message indicating what the about button will do.



now, explore your applications by roaming around with the jaws cursor, and
see if you get any joy with any popups which might tell you what some of
your graphics that jaws may find, wil do.

note: it's worth noting that sometimes, jaws tells you there's a graphic
with a particular number,
but it may not be actually a button or control at all, but may just be part
of a picture, or pannelling of something visual on the screen that left or
right clicking will do nothing to activate. so be aware of this.

I know it's not a total complete lesson David, but as you can see, this
stuff is compleicated, and explaining things indepth does get pretty
involved.

then, once you've connected hotspot clicker to your application, and learned
how to start the spot creation wizard, if you find any places in your apps
that do indicate what they will do if clicked, you can begin creating
hotspots, with meaningful labels, and attach those to keystrokes of your
choice, to more easily take your mouse there and click without stumbling
around tediously to find it. note that hotspot clicker also takes a bit of
learning, and you must take considerable care to delete all the dynamic
information from each level of application, real, toplevel, and Current
window, as your creating your spot, that is, any information which you feel
might not be there the next time the application is opened, leaving only the
barest amount of information in most of those window titles.  if you don't
do this carefully and accurately, (and it's not always easy to guess what
information will be static, always there, and which dynamic, always
changing,) then you may find your spots will fail.
hope this helps you a bit.

To: <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 4:00 AM
Subject: [jawsscripts] Re: What tools can i use to write jaws scripts for
different applications?


> See responses below.
>
> 2008/6/13, David ingram <dingram269@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> > HI list members, i'd like to know what tools can i use to write jaws
> > scripts.
>
> Hello,
> Please look at the list archives, since this topic has already been
> discussed. Specifically, you can refer to the following link
> http://www.freelists.org/archives/jawsscripts/09-2007/ and there look
> for "What jaws scripting tools are available besides the manuals?"
>
> The reason why i ask is because i not only want to learn how to
> > write the scripts but i also need to know what types of things that i
need
> > to be looking for in terms of if there might be a chance that i might
have
> > to do a reclassing of a window.
>
> This is a good comment, but it seen you are a newbie to scripting.
> Make sure to read the manuals (look the list archives to find topics
> pointing out what are the best manuals amd where they are located) im
> order to understand the windows hierarchical structure, what is a
> handle, control id and etc before trying to use any of these features.
>
> > The next question is how will i know if a graphic really refers to a
button?
>
> This question is closely related to the next comment. The short answer
> is that you don't know unless you try to click it and see what
> happens. If you look at the list archives, however, you will find some
> mails explaining that jaws uses a patern constant to number graphics
> and that this patern does not guarantee that graphics will be numbered
> the same way in all the machines, making any serious scripting based
> on graphics numbered invalid.
>
> >  These are questions that i don't remember asking before.  I would
> > appreciate any information that anyone has.  I know about the manuals
but
> > there has to be something more that explains in greater detale with
> > illustrations that i can follow.
>
> There are no other tutorials or any other related things to teach one
> to script besides the manuals. When you understand everything
> contained in the manuals then you are ready for trying to script. When
> you script an application you're trying to turn  something not planned
> to be accessible into something accessible. This is not easy and there
> is no way of knowing how to do this kind of thing, because each
> application is built differently from each other. Further more, as
> most part of application guis now adays are generated by autonmated
> processes such as rad environments, most part of the time even the
> programmer who wrote it won't know how to help you. So far, the only
> way of scripting an application is siting and looking at it and
> figuring out what could be done ... and, once you have a good guess,
> you keep trying trying and trying again untill you arrive at some
> usefull point. That's the reazon why no more samples are available.
>
> Amother helpfull thing is getting a scripted app, and start to try to
> script it and compare your ideas to the originally writtem scripts.
> And you can always ask the list for help, since several of the best
> available scripters are subscribed.
>
> hth,
> Marlon
> > __________
> > View the list's information and change your settings at
> > http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts
> >
> >
>
>
> -- 
> When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows," people just
> stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, for
> free."
> Linus Torvalds
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> http://www.freelists.org/list/jawsscripts
>

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