Survey: An SDK for proprietary systems
- From: "Joseph Lee" <joseph.lee22590@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:58:15 -0800
Dear programmers and engineers,
This is Joseph Lee, a computer science student at University of California,
Riverside. The reason for writing this post is to gather your thoughts and
opinions about a subject that I think a lot of you would be familiar with.
As of 2009, we have numerous blindness PDA's and notetakers on the market,
such as BrailleNote from HumanWare, Braille Sense from HIMS/GW Micro and PAC
Mate from Freedom Scientific. Off all these products, only PAC Mate allows
development of third-party software via SDK's and IDE for Windows Mobile,
such as Visual Studio and BASIC4PPC. For other products, there is no SDK for
KeySoft (BrailleNote) for individuals and an SDK exists for Braille Sense
(in language other than English).
As a student, I thought I could use my BrailleNote as a "test platform" to
develop programs for KeySoft and practice programming skills with it.
However, when I enquired about availability of keySoft SDK (via asking
another person to ask for me), the only response was that only companies who
shows interest in BrailleNote can consult with HumanWare for writing
programs for BrailleNote. A notable example is BrailleNote GPS from Sendero
Group. In other words, there is no widely available SDK so that an
individual can write external applications for KeySoft (just like Blazie
programmers had done and PAC Mate programmers are doing now). While I was
thinking about this, I remembered this list, thus deciding to appeal to you
as to what should I (and other potential student programmers) who are BN
users should do (in order to persuade HumanWare so that an individual can
write external software with a widely available SDK for KeySoft). This
persuasion, if successful with HumanWare, could work with HIMS/GW Micro to
port Braille Sense SDK to English.
I thought of this list mostly because we have programmers who have
experience with this kind of issue, thus can give us (students and users of
these systems) some recommendations as to what we should do.
]Here are the issues at hand:
. If we want competetiveness, I believe that an SDK for BrailleNote
should be widely available (with a cost) so that individual programmers can
develop useful programs for it.
. With the availability of this SDK, blind programmers can write
programs for the blind - thus giving back to the BrailleNote user community.
. In case of an SDK for Braille Sense, if an SDK is available in one
language (in this case, Korean), then I believe that it should be available
in English as well (where we have more potential for useful external
utilities).
So I (and others) would like to ask you as to your opinions and
recommendations as to what we should do next (as a collective action). Thank
you for your considerations.
Sincerely,
Joseph S. Lee
University of California, Riverside
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