RE: Sodbeans 0.5 Release in Early July
- From: "Homme, James" <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:17:50 -0400
Hi,
They probably have friends who can see, so it would be a cool peer group thing
for them.
Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme
Internal recipients, Read my accessibility blog. Discuss accessibility here.
Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news and accessibility advice
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andreas Stefik
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 7:56 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Sodbeans 0.5 Release in Early July
Jamal,
Sure, we can take a look at it, if you think it's important. I hadn't
personally considered GUI environments yet for these students, as they
are only like 13 or 14, so we have figured that they might be too
advanced. Hmm, I'll put some thought into this for possible inclusion
in year 2 of the curriculum.
Can you send me some more details on Layout by Code? I'm not sure I
completely understand how it works.
Stefik
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:46 AM, Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I do think a fruit basket example would be useful, as it facilitates
> comparisons with other development approaches. More importantly though, I
> am thinking that developing GUIs is a valuable skill for blind programmers
> to learn, so I am suggesting that it become part of the curriculum you are
> preparing whenever technically feasible.
>
> I hardly know Java or Swing, myself, but think that the GUI building
> approach I call Layout by Code (LbC) could probably be adapted to Java-Swing
> and/or Java-SWT (which may yield more accessible GUIs on some platforms).
>
> LbC involves a set of convenient wrapper methods that internally use
> auto-layout mechanisms of a GUI library (which Swing and SWT both include).
> One of the most challenging areas for blind programmers has been the layout
> of GUIs in a visually acceptable manner. Most layout tools are highly mouse
> and visually oriented. Making pixel calculations manually is possible but
> tedious and error prone. LbC tries to simplify this for common layout
> patterns. Good use of auto-layout mechanisms also benefit cross-platform
> portability, since the GUI can adapt appropriately to conventions and
> capabilities of the client platform.
>
> Jamal
>
> On 6/15/2010 8:56 AM, Andreas Stefik wrote:
>>
>> Jamal,
>>
>> Yes, Hop has access directly to the JVM and you can access swing
>> directly. In fact, there is actually one command in there that uses a
>> swing class as a popup input window for grabbing some input from the
>> user. There's also a currently very small standard library, where you
>> can wrap the VM access, so that users can just use normal hop calls.
>>
>> Are you thinking about this cause you think we should make a fruit basket?
>>
>> Stefik
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Jamal Mazrui<empower@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Unfortunately and to my surprise, I do not think there is a reliable,
>>> programmatic technique available for determining when JAWS, System
>>> Access,
>>> NVDA, or Window-Eyes has stopped speaking, or put another way,
>>> determining
>>> whether speech is currently being output. I think there is a way with
>>> the
>>> SAPI API, at least SAPI4.
>>>
>>> Does the Hop language run on top of the Java virtual machine? If so, I
>>> guess it may have access to Swing classes for building a UI. That
>>> approach
>>> would be similar to Jython, JRuby, and Grails.
>>>
>>> Jamal
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/14/2010 10:59 AM, Andreas Stefik wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Jamal,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks on the SayTools material. We've been wanting to add in windows
>>>> eyes support, pulling support from say tools, but haven't had a chance
>>>> to add it yet. We also have mac support, so if you want to add that
>>>> into say tools from our implementation, feel free. Actually, I was
>>>> wondering, have you figured out any way to get the screen readers to
>>>> inform you when text is finished speaking or when the screen reader
>>>> decided to start speaking something else on its own?
>>>>
>>>> As for user interfaces, we won't have UI support before this release.
>>>> However, we just finished a way to make native calls down to Java or
>>>> C++ from Hop, and as such, creating an API for user interfaces is
>>>> definitely possible. If cooking up an API for that sort of thing
>>>> interests you at all, I certainly wouldn't complain.
>>>>
>>>> Stefik
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Jamal Mazrui<empower@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Congrats, Andreas, on the pprogress your team has made!
>>>>>
>>>>> Let me make sure you are aware that SayTools includes code for speaking
>>>>> through the APIs of Window-Eyes and System Access.
>>>>>
>>>>> One question I have is whether it is currently possible to create
>>>>> graphical
>>>>> user interfaces with Sodbeans. Sorry if that has been explained
>>>>> already.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jamal
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 6/13/2010 4:10 PM, Andreas Stefik wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hey folks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I know some of the folks on the list (e.g., Sina, Jamal, Louie Most),
>>>>>> have been involved in the Sodbeans project, which my team and I are
>>>>>> designing as a prototype to show how to make programming languages and
>>>>>> development environments easier to use for blind users. My team, which
>>>>>> is both at southern Illinois university edwardsville, and washington
>>>>>> state university, has made significant progress, and a working, alpha,
>>>>>> build of our tool is nearly ready for release. As I've been working to
>>>>>> develop this technology now for almost five years, I can't tell you
>>>>>> how personally excited I am to get the software finally out there.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It looks like our final feature set for this first release is going to
>>>>>> include the following:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. Talking debugger, which aurally tells the user what is happening as
>>>>>> you debug. For example, our debugger might tell you the values of
>>>>>> variables as they change, whether you have called a function, created
>>>>>> an object, or done other actions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. Talking compiler, which tells you whether there are compiler
>>>>>> errors, and summarizes aurally the problems, if any, in the source
>>>>>> code.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3. A custom programming language called Hop. Hop is a fully
>>>>>> functioning programming language that we've designed in formal
>>>>>> experiments where we watch people program using audio only
>>>>>> environments. Besides typical features you would expect in a modern
>>>>>> language (e.g., control structures, objects), in Hop, accessibility is
>>>>>> a first class citizen. To give you an example of how HOP can help
>>>>>> blind users, if you wanted to write a computer program to make your
>>>>>> screen reader speak in C++ or Java, it's time consuming and you need
>>>>>> some expertise on how to connect to various screen reader
>>>>>> architectures. In Hop, you can connect to any arbitrary screen reader
>>>>>> the user has loaded by saying:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> say "How's it going, screen reader?"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and you will hear the TTS routed appropriately. Right now we support
>>>>>> JAWS, NVDA, SAPI, and Mac out of the box and we're working on adding
>>>>>> more readers as we go.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4. Full integration into Oracle's NetBeans IDE. The accessibility
>>>>>> support in Sodbeans is built on the Sappy platform, which is built on
>>>>>> the NetBeans platform. We have fixed an enormous number of
>>>>>> accessibility problems and bugs since our Sappy 0.5.3 release and have
>>>>>> added NVDA support (Thanks, Sina!).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, that's what we've been working on. After we release, we would love
>>>>>> to get the community even more involved. We welcome contributions to
>>>>>> the standard library in Hop, like classes for data structures, more
>>>>>> screen reader support, or other features. We would also love to get
>>>>>> feedback on how we can improve the user interface for the blind or
>>>>>> even get just general opinions on where the research should go.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for listening everyone,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andreas Stefik, Ph.D.
>>>>>> Department of Computer Science
>>>>>> Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
>>>>>> __________
>>>>>> View the list's information and change your settings at
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
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