Re: MinGW and MSYS
- From: "qubit" <lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 14:53:37 -0500
Hi Jamal -- Ah, I see your point. I wasn't aware you had tried to build
wxwidgets on MinGW.
I appreciate your comments and insights, as you seem to be the most prolific
producer of accessible tools.
I have picked up this work with John Boyer partly because it is a good
project and partly to increase my experience doing windows apps, an area in
which I am still "green".
I have monitored these and other lists with interest for the past 10 years,
but have still not really plunged into programming anything major myself --
call it lazy, or call it diversifying my interests elsewhere...
Hopefully the solution will be as useful as we hope.
I am using MSYS now just to get things set up on windows compiled as a
console app, and then will select an appropriate GUI library.
Take care.
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jamal Mazrui" <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: MinGW and MSYS
Sorry, I meant to copy the whole list. It seems there are some lists
where Control+R does that (in Mozilla Thunderbird) and some lists where
Control+Shift+R is required, which I'll try to make a point of doing
more regularly.
I don't think the accessibility of resulting apps is a given. For
example, wxWidgets is the most accessible GUI library on Windows for
many programming languages that do not have built in support for
creating forms. I tried to create a fruit basket program with MinGW,
including asking for help on this list. I extensively searched for and
tried to follow compilation tips I found on the web. However, I was not
able to get such a program to compile. On the other hand, I was able to
do so with instructions I found on compiling wxWidgets with Microsoft
Visual C++ 2005 Express.
I think a development approach should be considered, not alone, but as
part of an ecosystem. It is probably possible for someone sufficiently
skilled with C++, MinGW, and wxWidgets to compile a program, but the
current ecosystem did not give me enough support to do that. Perhaps
another GUI library like QT or GTK is easier to compile with MinGW and
wxWidgets, but those GUIs tend not to be accessible.
The IDEs for a language are also part of its ecosystem. Visual Studio
and Eclipse tend to be accessible (not VS2010 though!), whereas other
IDEs often have substantial accessibility barriers. All this
information about a language or development approach is useful to blind
programmers who might be considering it.
Jamal
On 4/3/2010 6:50 PM, qubit wrote:
> why not copy the whole list?
> Yes, I think it almost goes without saying that the apps produced by
> coding
> in MSYS and MinGW will be accessible, since they will either be command
> line
> apps or simple windows GUI's.
> However, to make use of the whole .NET framework and current and future
> resources available in VS, it is lacking. It is simply a prototyping
> environment. I am considering this with John B.
> --le
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jamal Mazrui"<empower@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: "qubit"<lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 5:40 PM
> Subject: Re: MinGW and MSYS
>
>
> With a development approach, I think there are often two accessibility
> issues of interest: how accessible it is for a blind programmer to
> develop with that approach, and how accessible it is for a blind user of
> the resulting program. Are there tips to be shared so that programs
> resulting from the MinGW approach are as accessible as possible?
>
> Jamal
>
> On 4/3/2010 2:59 PM, qubit wrote:
>> MinGW is accessible. The only doc I read was a readme, not an online
>> intro
>> which I didn't search for as I probably should have. I will do that
>> later
>> when I get back to it. I only downloaded the setup files.
>> Sorry for bothering the list on this one. It is a no brainer which
>> unfortunately takes study of docs to make a no-brainer.
>> --le
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jamal Mazrui"<empower@xxxxxxxxx>
>> To:<programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Cc: "qubit"<lauraeaves@xxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 5:22 AM
>> Subject: Re: MinGW and MSYS
>>
>>
>> Since that is a GNU-related project, as far as I know, it would be good
>> to have especially good documentation on how to use it. I think such
>> documentation should include any accessibility tips that may be relevant
>> either in the development environment or in building resulting
>> applications that are as accessible as possible for end-users on various
>> platforms.
>>
>> Jamal
>>
>>
>> On 4/2/2010 7:10 PM, qubit wrote:
>>> Greetings. A question:
>>> I need to work on some software that requires MinGW to emulate linux on
>>> my
>>> windows box.
>>> I honestly don't know why they distribute MinGW and MSYS separately
>>> since
>>> they appear to be interdependent. But I built MinGW first as I wasn't
>>> sure
>>> from the documentation which needed to come first.
>>> Both builds went off with no problems, but there are paths that need to
>>> be
>>> reset -- but the problem is that MSYS seems to put the root directory 2
>>> levels down from MinGW and put /MinGW in its PATH variable.
>>> Anyway, to make a long story short, there are several ways I could
>>> proceed,
>>> all requiring altering files in either MinGW or MSYS.
>>> Does anyone else use this environment? How do you do the build?
>>> Slightly annoyed. Oh well.
>>> TIA for any suggestions.
>>> --le
>>>
>>> __________
>>> View the list's information and change your settings at
>>> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>>>
>>
>
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