Sodbeans update
- From: Andreas Stefik <stefika@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, sodbeans-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:32:25 -0500
Hello everyone,
I wanted to send an update to the blind mailing list and sodbeans lists to
let everyone know where the sodbeans project, the project to substantially
overhaul accessibility in the NetBeans environment, is at. First, there are
currently 2 active team members and one new one was just added, as southern
illinois university edwardsville has hired a graduate student to work on the
project for a half time research appointment. This is excellent news, as the
more person power we have right now the better.
Second, as part of an independent study, a student at Central Washington
University has been hard at work on the guts of the virtual machine (and so
have I). We have made major progress on both the design of the programming
language, the implementation, and the integration of both into NetBeans. A
large number of op-codes in our custom virtual machine are complete and we
are working hard to complete the rest of the codes in our current design.
Third, as of today, I have completed the auditory mapping utilities between
VM op-codes and sound. Basically, this is the functionality that allows high
quality audio to be output when you step over, or back, in a piece of
executing code. In other words, our debugger is finally learning to talk
rather eloquently about what your code is doing.
Finally, we have made a ton of progress and will probably have the most
important, and major, parts of our virtual machine and sound libraries up
and running within a few months, although there are some pieces for which we
could use some more person power. By far the most helpful contribution we
could use right now would be for someone to work on an open-source JNI
wrapper for VoiceOver on macintosh. If anyone has some experience with mac
programming and wants to contribute; get in touch.
Anyway, I hope everyone in the community is doing well,
Andreas Stefik, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
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