I meant to also address the Alt+Tab issue. I do recall some .NET programs not announcing their title as consistently when Alt+Tab is pressed. I just tried with JAWS 10 and Windows Vista, however, and found that the EdSharp window title was announced when cycling among active windows with this keystroke. I wonder if this is related to the combination of JAWS and Windows versions. I invite feedback on this from other users of JAWS or different screen readers, in the hope that we can identify a pattern.
Jamal On 12/5/2010 5:04 PM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:
Excellent feedback -- thanks, Sina! I appreciate your taking the time to write with specific observations and ideas. I have saved your message for further review. Let me respond initially as follows. Indeed, the EdSharp installer does not currently ask whether to install a destop shortcut. The choice is only whether to add a system-wide hotkey to that shortcut of Alt+Control+E. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to make that happen on every Windows version, seemingly for security-related reasons. So, even if I accept the default hotkey on Windows Vista, it will not actually be enabled until I press Alt+Enter on the desktop to edit its properties, and instruct the shortcut to run as administrator. The hotkey is not part of the Start Menu shortcut. The reasoning is that it is minimal cost, except for one item in a list, to add the shortcut to the list of desktop or Sart Menu items, but the hotkey should be confirmed so that it does not risk replacing an existing global hotkey. There is no use of the Quick Launch bar by the installer. Neither EdSharp, via the JAWS API, nor the JAWS scripts for EdSharp, intervene in menu processing in ways that could explain the delays you experience, as far as I know. Sorry, but I do not know the cause, other than JAWS processing of .NET menus (which are not Win32 menus). What Windows version are you using? 32 or 64 bit? I will review trigger keys for menu items. In general (with a few exceptions), I find such trigger letters to be of little value to users. In general, I think users either navigate to the menu item of interest and press Enter, or alternatively, learn the direct, accelerator key combination, and press that instead, bypassing the menu system entirely. I am generalizing, and appreciate your points in a systematic analysis for unique trigger letters in menus. I have tried to completely hide Microsoft Word while invoking its spellchecker, alas, without success so far. I have closely studied the COM object documentation. My code sets properties to make Word invisible. I changed calls to VB, which before C# 4.0, considerably worked more harmoniously with COM than C#. If anyone can help me tighten that code, I would appreciate the contribution. I will look at refining speech around the Undo command, and other speech suggestions you mention. Jamal On 12/5/2010 4:41 PM, Sina Bahram wrote:Jamal, I installed ed-sharp, latest version, today, and I ran into the following issues within the first few minutes of use. I just wanted to report them in hopes of making this better for other users. #1: installer doesn't ask about shortcuts The installer didn't let me choose, like most do, whether I want an icon on my desktop. Can this be added? It also concerned me about whether it was putting something in my quick launch. I hope it's not, as I always uncheck this option from every installer I come across, but it would be nice to have that standard installer screen, if possible. I simply deleted the icon, after I installed the program, but it would be nice for it not to get created in the first place. #2: control+alt+e keystroke doesn't work, and in fact isn't assigned. So I was told that control+alt+E launches ed-sharp by the installer, but when I pressed it after the install was done, nothing happened. I tried it several times, and then I actually investigated the "launch ed-sharp" icon in the start-menu, and found that the launch keystroke field was empty; thus, that made sense why it didn't work. After I manually added control+alt+e to that field, it of course started working. #3: the elevate command always updates When in ed-sharp, I pressed f11 just to verify I was at the latest version, but apparently I am not, or the elevate command is broken because it said comparing to server, and then it offered me a download of the exact version I just installed. In other words, it never bothered telling me that the version on my computer and the server are the same, and it also makes the user think that they aren't, since it offers a download. I would suggest maybe changing the button or message to reinstall or something like that, if the versions are identical, so that the user doesn't think they are at an older version? #4: delay in file menus when using jaws I installed the jaws scripts, as I had no reason not to, using the last page of the installer, and they compiled correctly; however, when in ed-sharp, the menu bar is a little laggy. What I mean by this is that if I hit alt, and then arrow through file, edit, delete, navigate, etc, etc ... It's a little slow. I'm guessing that this is possibly because of the JFWAPI being used or something like that; however, it's kind of irritating, especially if you have your jaws set to decently fast; for example, I listen to eloquence at 80% speed, as defined by the jaws verbosity box, and there's about an extra 300 to 600 millisecond delay, as if jaws is being instructed to speak, as opposed to doing it itself. My question would be, A. can this be fixed/sped up? And B. if it's just a file menu, why is the JFWAPI being used? That it of course assumes that it even is being used, and the delay isn't caused by something else of course. Note, this delay is especially noticeable when hitting keystrokes like alt+f or alt+e to bring up menus. Almost to the point where you think you hit the keystroke wrong or something, and then you realize that the menu is coming up, but just slowly. #5: alt+tabbing to ed-sharp doesn't announce the title When you alt+tab to almost any other application, jaws reads the title of the window for you, letting you know two things. It let's you know that the alt+tab successfully completed and that focus is on that window, and by announcing the window title, it gives you whatever information the application developer wishes to convey in their title bar. This doesn't happen with ed-sharp. When I alt+tab to it, I get silence ... Jaws doesn't make a peep. This is a bit jarring. #6: in the file menu, several characters map to different choices: In the file menu, I can hit o to open, open in other format, or open again. Unfortunately, o just activates open, which is the correct behavior according to the underlying technology being used for the file menu. Could the other two options be assigned different menu accelerators? Their menu shortcuts are of course unique, but their accelerators are the same. This is true in other places too, but even in the file menu, you can see it with set favorite and save both being mapped to s. Note: what I've seen adopted as official policy by some UI developers is that you start with the first letter, then move your way through the word for subsequent accelerators. Some folks go further and state that vowels are excluded from this, although I personally disagree with that approach and think all characters are fair game; for example, o for open makes perfect sense, although p for "open again" doesn't because p should map to print, so you have an exclusion tree whereby the first letter of every menu item is put into a set, which by definition is a unique list, and then this set is used as an exclusion list as you step through the characters of the duplicate menu item. One side note, another popular approach, of which I do tend to be a fan of, is to use the first letter of subsequent words, before going back for second and third letters of the original word. E.G. "save as" maps to 'a'. The algorithm for this is rather straight forward, with one huge caveat (discussed below), if you think about it, and goes like this. I have the following six menu items. New Save Save as Open Open recent Exit First I take the six characters and put them into a list, which is technically called a bag: bag(n, s, s, o, o, e) And then I turn that bag into a set, like this: set = unique(bag) So I get: set(n, s, o, e) And then I have a set of characters I've used as accelerators, which starts out empty: accelerators() Now, I add characters to that list, for each menu item, being careful to disallow duplicates, which closure property I get for free as a result of using a set instead of a bag, like so: New gives us n So we have: accelerators(n) Open gives us o So we have accelerators(n, o) Open again gives us o, but wait, o already exists in accellerators, so we go to the first character of the next word which gives us an 'a': // see the cavviot section for why 'a' is a bad choice // the correct choice here is 'g' because 'g' comes after 'a' in the word "again" accelerators(n, o, g) Then we get s for save, and so on accelerators(n, o, g, s) Then "save as" gives us 'a' accelerators(n, o, g, s, a) And then, finally, exit gives us 'e' // again, see the cavviot section for why 'e' is a bad choice // going with x instead accelerators(n, o, g, s, a, x) And of course accellerators == unique(accellerators); thus proving it's in fact a set, and not a bag. *** Huge Haunking Caveat Section: *** Now, the reason that this algorithm unfortunately can't be programmed in, and has to really be done by hand, or at least whose output needs to be revised by hand is that there are idioms users have come to expect. As is the case with all things in computer science, humans get in the way of elegant algorithms, almost always. So, for example, we assigned 'a' to save again, but this really isn't what we want. We really want to assign it 'g', because users have come to expect that 'a' is always save as in a file menu, just like how s is save, and how o is open. Thus, if one is prone to think about things in an algorithmic point of view, just imagine a 2-ply deep file menu priority tree where the semantics of these common idioms are stored; such as, under the file node: 'a' maps to "save as", 'o' maps to "open", and so on. Then use the same algorithm as above, but use the idiom tree as a higher priority exclusion list than the accellerators set, indexing into the idiom tree with the menu item name, of course. To be fair, the above is more of a heuristic than an algorithm, but I do find that it works super well, and takes all the guess work out of picking accelerators in menus. #7: spell check issues When I hit f7 for spell check, I get some rather odd behavior. It initializes Microsoft word, GUI and all, in the background. I understand why it does this, because, why reimplement/reinvent spell check, when Microsoft word exists right there on the user's machine; however, can you just use word as a com object without invoking the UI, just like that code snippet I sent out a really long time ago about how to use Visual Studio 2005 without invoking the UI! This brings up a further question of whether the spell check functionality is able to be used via com, without actually invoking the main MSWord object at all. Is that possible? Moving on. I perform a spell check, and then I'm never told that spell check is over. I don't even really know I'm back in my document in ed-sharp, probably because of the earlier bug where the title isn't read out, but what's even more frustrating is that spell-check didn't clean up after itself, and I have this empty Microsoft word document in the background. Also, sometimes, although I can't replicate this particular issue on demand, so sorry about that, but sometimes, it focuses said empty Microsoft word document, instead of ed-sharp, after the spell-check is complete. #8: undo doesn't announce selection Would it be possible for undo to announce if it's undone action results in selected text? For example, write a sentence, and then highlight that sentence and hit the delete key. Now hit control+z for undo. It would be nice if ed-sharp told you that the sentence that was brought back from the great bit bucket in the sky was highlighted, simply by saying the word selected before reading the sentence, as it does now. There are some other things as well, but the number 8 is a nice binary number, so I wanted to stop there. Thanks much, and happy hacking. Take care, Sina __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
__________View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
