Re: nokia ringtone, Sequencing, KBD Ideas
- From: Veli-Pekka Tätilä <vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:28:00 +0300
Hi Jaffar,
Great job. The mix could be slightly better, but the tune itself is
excellent, reminds me of bach in a way. Which version of Sonar, and how
do you cope with that? I'm using Sonar 4 LE myself that came with my
sound card and since there's no Cake talking for Supernova, have to
manage parts of Sonar magnified. Cakewalk used to be much more
accessible in the old days as in Pro audio 6, for instance. Personally I
do my mixing and FX using a conventional analog mixing desk, which is
poor interms of flexibility, but does mean I can use real knobs for the
job, I've never liked the console view in Sonar much, and unlike knobs
in early version of Reaktor, Cakewalk doesn't seem to have borrowed
their keyboard interface from standard Windows sliders.
Speaking of sequencing, I recently wrote an experimental, efficiently
keyboard usable drum machine in Perl. The timing is the worst bit, at
the moment, currently it appears there's no multimedia timer for Perl
and the Win32::SLeep resolution for Swing isn't very good either. Here's
the link:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/beats_me.html
This might or might not work on your machine properly, in terms of
timing.
I'm planning to use some of the keyboard ideas in my master's thesis,
too, which will be about the efficiency of keyboard usability for the
blind in desktop GUIs. Most of the research I've seen so far appears to
be about the accessibility of the Web, even though people use some
desktop apps much more than a random Web page. People tend to stop at a
level where something is technically accessible, rather than looking at
efficiency. The keyboard isn't trendy, either, in these days of GUis and
direct manipulation. Very few keyboard interfaces of OSes seem to have
been consistantly designed from the ground up, and there are some highly
useful coincidences that benefit the blind but not the sighted, such as
skipping of disabled menu items. IF it wasn't like that, menus would be
less discoverable and VF would be required, even in Narrator.
Because VI people still perceive large parts of the GUI through focus
changes, minimizing Windows in Windows is useless, since a minimized
window doesn't disappear from the alt+tab order, and is automagically
maximized or restored when it gets the focus. THese are just some
initial thoughts and I'm going to back these up with literature, should
they turn out to be true.
If some GUI, be it Win32, GTK, QT or whatever changed things at the
library level, a huge amount of software would magically become much
more efficient to use in terms of keyboard, than how they currently are.
New hotkeys for things as simple as tab until control change would give
a different kind of view to the GUI and make navigating to a particular
part much quicker. This is very much evident in the drum machine.
ANother favorite mine are multicolumn list views that still lack a
proper keyboard interface for re-arranging the columns and changing
their sizes, even in Vista. Not to mention disabled controls, if you
disable the focused control, Windows will get stuck in terms of focus.
Just some thoughts. I'm currently conducting a literature review of
what's out there. I've yet to even see a literature review of the big
problems of screen reading out there, as the main topic. And virtual
focus, or its equivalents, is defined very poorly and superfluously in
many many papers, even though that is a fundamental hack that often
makes GUi apps and Web browsing usable in the first place. I just
currently feel strongly about this, which hopefully doesn't come through
in my writing. It will be in Finnish, of course, but if it turns out to
be good, I might be able to write out an English article about the gist
of it.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila
jaffar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi Friends. I hope jim wouldn't mind, but in a way this has got something
> to do with programming because i did this all on my pc. Anyway, Nokia held
> a competition locally whereby we were required to write variations on it's
> standard ring tone and ringing logo. I entered a classical variation of the
> ring tone in question, and against sighted competition, since i was the only
> blind participant, i won first place, 10,000 singapore dollars and a
> contract to write ring tones for nokia for the next 2 years. The
> instruments that i used? a pc, Cakewalk's sonar and a roland module and
> yamaha keyboard. Well, i'm not really good with the keyboard, so some of
> the running notes had to be programmed into the music. Well, i am offering
> the piece for download for you all to listen and comment on. And it's nice
> to share a triumph with all of you. The download link is:
> www.ecstatico.net/nokia-overture.mp3
> Hope you all enjoy it. Cheers!
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