Re: iPhone development
- From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:55:01 -0400
The student understood what the FB projects were all about but the professor,
not one who knows anything about accessibility, refused to let her use the
existing ones as the basis for her assignments in her computer languages class.
I doubt the professor looked for or, for that matter, cared about the reason FB
exists at all.
This is life in an International mob of volunteer hackers. The landscape is
always shifting and well intentioned individuals find that they cannot meet
commitments due to forces outside of their control.
So, I continue to search for someone who can bring FB to GTK and the Gnome
Accessibility API and went as far as to sweeten the deal by throwing in a free
computer that runs the Vinux distro of GNU/Linux really well.
I'll go back to my cave now...
On Oct 11, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:
> It sounds to me like whoever that person is, he or she has not been truly
> serious about contributing a fruit basket program. On the present web site
> of the project
> http://FruitBasket.QuantumMyst.com
>
> the purpose of the project is explained and there is a link to the specific
> criteria for a fruit basket program. For even easier reference, I am pasting
> the text of that file below.
>
> While the current organization of the page may not be optimal, it is not
> difficult to follow. There are clearly program samples that do not use the
> unified code approach, and as mentioned, the criteria (pasted below) makes no
> mention of code structure.
>
> Jamal
>
> [F[From the link entitled "Fruit Basket Demo criteria,
> "]
>
> hello friends,
>
> On the Blind Programming list (www.blindprogramming.com), we developed
> specifications for a sample program with a graphical user interface (GUI)
> that could be implemented in various languages. It became known as a fruit
> basket program. The purpose is to help teach people how to code a GUI
> program in a particular language. Someone considering the language can
> examine the code and evaluate the syntax and other development steps involved
> based on his or her own knowledge, skills, and preferences. By running the
> program, one can also make observations as an end-user, evaluating such
> aspects as the size, speed, and accessibility of the program.
>
> The specifications for a fruit basket program are as follows:
> 1. The program is a GUI interface, or the equivalent with at least an edit
> box, list box, and two buttons.
> 2. The user can type the name of a fruit, e.g., apple, in the edit box.
> 3. When the Add button is activated, the fruit is copied into the list box
> and the edit box is cleared to be ready for another entry.
> 4. When the Delete button is activated, the currently focused fruit in the
> list box, or basket, is removed.
> 5. For accessibility, static labels should be associated with the edit box
> and list box, since these controls do not have captions like buttons.
> 6. Keyboard users will also appreciate a unique hot key for each control.
> 7. Making Add the default button allows a fruit to be added by simply
> pressing Enter after typing its name.
> 8. An error message alerts the user if Add is pressed without a fruit in the
> edit box or Delete is pressed without a fruit in the list box.
>
> ** Important** please! annotate your program files, make text copies if there
> not readable as such in there native format, add notes on easy to find and
> use applications for compiling the project if you can and include the text
> files, project files, and an compiled executable for your version of the
> Fruit Basket Demo Project, in a zipped file for uploading to the site.
>
> thank you, Inthaneelf, Jamal Mazrui, James Homme, Eunice Clicker, and
> everyone else who have contributed to the fruit basket demo project.
>
> On 10/11/2010 10:21 AM, Chris Hofstader wrote:
>> Jamal et al,
>>
>> I did not say that the single source file approach to some of the Fruit
>> Basket programs is essential to their value, I'm just a little frustrated
>> trying to find someone to port the baskets to a GNU/Linux, Gnome based
>> system. We have a call for volunteers out in all of our international
>> locales and in the US asking for help in this porting but we've no takers
>> and the one person we did have was stopped by her professor because he found
>> the code to be oddly organized.
>>
>> If someone can write up a few paragraphs describing in general terms what FB
>> is and why it is important, I'll get it up onto the FSF web site as soon as
>> I can. If you don't look at www.fsf.org much, you won't, therefore, be able
>> to see how rapidly we are improving it and an accessibility section is under
>> way but, except for our original statement, still not there but will be
>> soon. Anyone who wants to write articles about FLOSS at on GNU/Linux
>> platforms (it's ok if they also run on Windows or Mac but they must also
>> work as well on free operating systems) should write to me off-line to
>> discuss topics of interest and how best to present them.
>>
>> If anyone out there wants to help port FB to a Gnome desktop, I can send
>> them a pretty good computer that they can keep as their own once they
>> complete some subsection of FB in Gnome desktop.
>>
>> Currently, from Gnome Foundation, Linux Foundation, FSF and elsewhere, the
>> absolute highest priority is that we work with Gnome 3 as soon as it ships.
>> This requires that we make a major change to DBus which means that it's
>> really "under-the-hood" system hacking and lots of regression testing to
>> make sure that Orca and other AT for Gnome weren't broken by one of these
>> new changes.
>>
>> Again, any help would be greatly appreciated. Getting a free computer in the
>> bargain should also alleviate fears of damaging one's main machine by
>> polluting it with a GNU/Linux distro.
>>
>> Lastly, I will pay for shipping out of pocket for the computer in the US but
>> I need to ask that anyone outside the country pay for shipping and whatever
>> customs charges come with taking receipt of a desktop computer.
>>
>> HH,
>> cdh
>>
>> PS: The computer cannot be shipped until 10/25 or so as it is in my house in
>> Florida and no one will be there until the twenty-fifth of this month.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 11, 2010, at 9:27 AM, Jamal Mazrui wrote:
>>
>>> There is absolutely nothing in the criteria for a fruit basket program that
>>> says UI and other code need to be mixed. That is a design choice that some
>>> have made, but there are other samples, e.g., Visual Studio projects, where
>>> UI and other code is separated. So, those folks should be encouraged to
>>> submit programs that meet the criteria and separate the code and files
>>> however they think is best. The criteria specify how the dialog should
>>> behave, not how the underlying code should be structured.
>>>
>>> Jamal
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/10/2010 2:30 PM, Chris Hofstader wrote:
>>>> Thanks Ken.
>>>>
>>>> I hadn't heard of Appcelerator but I'll look around for it and see what
>>>> I may be able to learn about it. It would certainly be convenient to get
>>>> iPhone and Android all in one project. How accessible is it?
>>>>
>>>> I know that Fruit Basket is intended to show blind people how to do UI
>>>> without sighted help. I was just mentioning that I don't do a lot of UI
>>>> stuff as my UI ideas tend to suck and someone always needs to jump in
>>>> and help me out before shipping a program.
>>>>
>>>> The problem with our friends in Venezuela didn't object to a blind
>>>> person writing UI code, they didn't like the entire program being placed
>>>> in a single source file as that would make for a lot of difficulty
>>>> working on multi-hacker projects and generally more difficult to find
>>>> any specific item.
>>>>
>>>> Blind people should learn how to make GUI code but I am still willing to
>>>> bet that the marketing department will want things rearranged as this is
>>>> the issue even with sighted hackers. Personally, I think emacs has the
>>>> greatest UI in the world so the average man on the street thinks I am
>>>> probably seriously mentally ill.
>>>>
>>>> I would like to see FB for Gnome and for the Apple operating systems but
>>>> no volunteers have come forward yet.
>>>>
>>>> cdh
>>>> On Oct 10, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Ken Perry wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Actually you can also use Appcelerator and when using it under Mac you
>>>>> can actually code for IPhone and Android both at the same time.
>>>>> Remember though the fruit basket was originally designed to show how
>>>>> to make UI for blind people. Using a sited person to do it really
>>>>> doesn’t count. That is why I have not done one already.
>>>>> Ken
>>>>> *From:* programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> <mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Chris
>>>>> Hofstader
>>>>> *Sent:* Sunday, October 10, 2010 1:09 PM
>>>>> *To:* programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> <mailto:programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> *Subject:* Re: iPhone development
>>>>> 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/
>>>>> Skype: lilmike2
>>>>> Gmail: ai5hf.lilmike@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:ai5hf.lilmike@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> msn: ai5hf@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:ai5hf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> PC details:
>>>>> Intel quad core 2.66 ghz; 4 gb duel channel ddr2 ram; 1 TB harddrive.
>>>>> "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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