Hi! Yes there is ncurses. But with ncurses as is you can just position characters on the screen, whereever you like and in which color you like. Yet I want to design a library, that is useful for blind and possibly other disabled people. This will incorporate predefined keys for movement, ALWAYS AND ONLY moving the hard cursor, don't use color-attributes. Try to display objects so they are useful on a braille-display. This library should come with a good set of objects and init and fini (start and exit) routines. So programmers have a standard library with objects they know. Yet in contrast to just writing direct ncurses code: they don't have to know what is good for a blind person and what is not. This library is intended to be used for applications, thatdon't already have a textbased interface (synthesizers, sequencers...). Using this library enables the user to get it "a bit more the GUI way". A sequencer (especially a step-sequencer) is very easy to handle from such an interactive UI. This library can't do everything, that the real gui can do, but about most of the main objects I have some definite ideas. That means buttons, sliders, checkboxes, not canvas, window, panel. Kindest regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net - the Linux TextBased Studio guide

Mario Lang <mlang(a)delysid.org> writes: OT: I find that applications for blind people suits me perfectly. Everything has a clear way of doing things; issuing a simple and clear command. Being able to issue commands yields more benefits; f.ex speech recognition; it's very easy to bind a speech recognition system to direct commands (while watching an rms speech). Also would be the same for a speech synth telling you the command that the system did. (when you're eyes are closed in bed, listening to an rms speech). When you build in a scheme interpreter into an application, f.ex at the bottom of ardour, you're not only doing it for the blind people, you're also empowering the user. -- Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a http://www. s t n m irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact [sip|iax]: e e jid:b0ef@ n n

Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> writes: Awesome. Looks great in snd and emacs for a scriptable extensible environment;). It should be, in my opinion, also scriptable from the terminal shell. How else could we do it; if not modeling after emacs? Sorry, I'm very interested in this issue. Care to elaborate?. Any chance for rebirth?. Maybe in the gtk+-2 version?. This is, for me, the most wickedly nice way to work. -- Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a http://www. s t n m irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact [sip|iax]: e e jid:b0ef@ n n

On 9/20/05, Aaron <aamehl(a)actcom.net.il> wrote: /me too VBA? Visual Basic for Ardour? Arnold -- visit http://dillenburg.dyndns.org/~arnold/ --- Wenn man mit Raubkopien Bands wie Brosis oder Britney Spears wirklich verhindern könnte, würde ich mir noch heute einen Stapel Brenner und einen Sack Rohlinge kaufen.

Hi! First of all: Thanks for all the answers, ideas and discussions. I enjoyed reading it. Mario: Sometimes I couldn't figure out against what you are protesting? Is it things like gnopernicus or also things like my library idea? - I know of midi.el, but I second Arnold and Aaron, I don't like lisp and emacs. I've great dificulties using it. Fons: This MVC concepts sounds very good. And yet I do like applications where you can use commands (as long as you have some help and info available). BTW: Do you know a program besides telnet to access LS? I hate it that I can't move the cursor and I can't do line-editing. Besides that it's a nice thing to use. As stated: I do like apps where you can type commands, I use ecasound, fluidsynth and LS. But in some cases a useful ncurses-based interface could be nice and easier (I say midi-sequencers: Just click a checkbox...) But one of the most powerful reasons to think about this idea is: To make it easier for programmers. I am one person on the recieving end. I'm not a very good programmer and I'm definitely not good at reading other people's code. So I ask someone to think about a textbased UI. But for them - I thought - the easiest way to do it, is some way, they know from their GUIs. Libcui only for blinds? No! This library should definitely fullfill the needs to be useable from blinds and perhaps people with other disabilities, but that doesn't mean it's unspeakably ugly and unsueable for others. I just want to make sure, that a lot of conditions are fullfilled (moving hardcursor, not depending on colour-attributes, be line-oriented). I'll definitely consider a look into the libcdk, to see what they've done. - BTW: someone said to have a look into SuSE's yast2. They did it, but as any blind person could probably say: The text-UI is not very nice to use with a braille-display. A bit more care and the UI could look the same, but be much more useable. Kindest regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net - the Linux TextBased Studio guide

Julien Claassen <julien(a)c-lab.de> writes: You must have read my postings in a weird way, I am not protesting against anything. I was simply trying to express my concern regarding ATK and AT-SPI usability and the fact that people seem to assume that it will be enough to use a ATK aware toolkit to make linux audio programs usable for the blind on Linux. I think this is not true yet, and I wanted to avoid people dropping their console ideas in favour of at-spi. I think your library idea is great, you should probably try to avoid making it blind specific since that would allow you to have a greater user base, but its of course your decision since you write it. The pain of choice... Oh well, I'll continue on my lonely path then. -- CYa, Mario

On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 08:29 +0300, Aaron wrote: breathe deeply. think of snakes. say "python".

Alfons Adriaensen <fons.adriaensen(a)alcatel.be> writes: Exactly;). All apps should really use this style. I'm much more comfortable giving direct commands to programs, even when 3d modelling, editing sound files or pictures, whatever I can think of, really. Very sad. -- Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a http://www. s t n m irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact [sip|iax]: e e jid:b0ef@ n n

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 16:13:15 +0200 Alfons Adriaensen <fons.adriaensen(a)alcatel.be> wrote: The model shouldn't know about which buttons etc exist in the GUI and how to display things, so the event should be more like ('user wants to perform action #123') and the response should be more like ('the model state changed to RED') IMO. About the original question, maybe it would be a good idea to integrate with or at least support the ATK library that's part of GTK/GNOME? It allows you to "announce" your widgets and accept input in a generic way from input devices... /Magnus

On Friday 16 September 2005 05:55, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: Something that might be worth examining here is the source for SuSE's YaST2 tool. The tool comes in two flavors: an X11 one (Qt-based) and a text-mode one (ncurses-based). The screen layouts and look-and-feel of the two are identical (within the limits of the respective paradigms, of course), and my understanding is that both are built upon and use the same core engine ('model' in MVC nomenclature). Cheers! |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Director of Broadcast Software Development | | | Salem Radio Labs | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a | | rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best. | | --P.J. O'Rourke | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Alberto Botti <ath9(a)libero.it> writes: Ouch :-) This thing never really worked, I tried it back then when it was released. Many widgets dont map, most stnadard GTK programs dont run, and if they did, the UI was basicaslly unusable. Cursed GTK is just a little bit more than a hoax. -- CYa, Mario

On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 10:46:26AM +0200, Mario Lang wrote: Right. I just fail to understand why people come up with things like ATK and suggest that 'any GUI based app' will instantly be accessible - you don't need to be a genius to see this will never work. There is at least one Linux audio app that gets this right ATM and that is Linuxsampler - complete separation of app and interface. You can controll all of it by typing commands in a terminal running netcat. Aeolus is going the same way: in the next official release the X interface will be a plugin, and a text only version of the UI will be provided. If ever I find the time to do an AMS II, that will be written from the start with a text interface. It's a bit more effort, but worth it. -- FA

On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 04:39:34PM +0200, Mario Lang wrote: It's been noted on this list before, but just to put the word in again ... Many seeing users, such as myself, also prefer text interfaces. In my case mainly for scritability reasons but also because I rarely find gui metaphors useful to my personal ways of thinking and working. -- Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia 2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900 CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact network(a)rfa.org.

On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 04:28:52PM +0100, Martin Habets wrote: Not a very good one, IMHO. At the level of the X protocol, things are 'flattened' to their basic operations, and the intention behind them is completely lost. You can't expect a text based interface to interpret all the graphic commands that go into e.g. drawing a slider, and extract what was really meant by all this, let alone find out that its new postion is now meant to be '-10 dB'. -- FA