Re: iPhone developement
- From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 13:08:47 -0400
To develop iPhone apps you are almost forced to use the xcode development
system that ships with every Macintosh. I know a few blind people who use it
with pretty good success. The hardest part, of course, is arranging controls in
your UI as there is no accessible way to do this.
When coding for iPhone, I use emacspeak as my editor and xcode as an IDE and
get help from a sightie for layout issues.
I thought of trying to find someone to help make a "fruit basket" for OSX and
iOS but haven't had any takers so far. I'm not even sure that OSX or iOS permit
putting all of the UI code in the same file as the rest of the program which is
how many of the Fruit Basket programs are designed. Also, while it's possible
to write iOS code in C or C++, for all intents and purposes, you are forced to
use Objective C, an odd language that only Apple supports as far as I can tell.
So, a fruit basket program for a single language (Objective C is preferred for
OSX as well) might be something we can find someone to do. Of course, if you
embed a WebKit control in your iOS program, you then need to follow the WCAG
guidelines for the content you expose using it so JavaScript and some other
things become important but doing an FB program would be silly as it is all
described nicely in the WCAG and other W3C standards documents.
I had thought I had a student in Venezuela who was going to make Fruit Basket
ports for GNU/Linux systems running the Gnome desktop. She is taking a class
called "Computer Languages" which, when I took it back in 1980 or so, taught us
13 languages in 13 weeks and, as I saw it, it was a pretty major waste of time
and, to this day, I've never seen anyone ask for Snobol/V, Wafter, Spitbol and
a few of the others we had to learn back in the dark ages. Our Venezuelan
student's professor liked the idea of the Fruit Basket for Gnome until he found
files that contained the UI and the rest of the program as he thinks it is bad
software engineering practice. Our student friend is doing all console programs
instead and we're still looking for a volunteer to do the FB port.
I do not find asking for sighted help on UI layout to be a problem for me. When
I could see perfectly well, I made sucky user interfaces that someone would
need to rearrange in a manner that the marketing people approved of. So, as far
as I go, UI layout always required asking for help and I can usually find
someone to spiff up my programs pretty efficiently.
On Oct 9, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Michael Taboada (AI5HF) wrote:
> Hi,
> I was wondering if anyone knew of an accessible way to develop for the iPhone.
> I could use apple's software, or I could use a third party software solution.
> I am running windows.
> Thanks,
>
> -Michael.
>
> AI5HF
>
> http://mtgames.org/
> http://u4u.be/
>
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>
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>
> "The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living." -- Christopher
> Paolini, Eldest.
> "A world that contained a creature as amazing as that bumblebee was a world
> he wanted to live in." -- Christopher Paolini, Brisingr.
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