Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2022 23:54:49 +0200 From: Hans Petter Selasky <hps@selasky.org> To: =?UTF-8?Q?Klaus_K=c3=bcchemann?= <maciphone2@googlemail.com>, Michael Gmelin <grembo@freebsd.org>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Accessibility in the FreeBSD installer and console Message-ID: <e883b885-ac83-3ebb-e79b-afd83fee64e0@selasky.org> In-Reply-To: <4B9142D0-626B-43B0-A8EF-A71CB655E080@googlemail.com> References: <080B179E-359E-4796-BFC8-0AAC65089100@googlemail.com> <788EF362-E06B-4BA9-BDDB-E550D35E21CB@freebsd.org> <4B9142D0-626B-43B0-A8EF-A71CB655E080@googlemail.com>
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Hi Klaus and Michael, I've tried to make some graphical QT v6.x cross platform so-called accessible applications. It is really hard to get it right. If you use one QT widget, everything is read perfectly in MacOS and if you use another QT widget, or a custom one, it is just not working. Or if you have a text editor you need to make sure you can tab out of it. Then a friend of mine said he started to use mac-ports and asked if I can port my applications from AppStore to there, because it is so much easier for him to use --- sigh, why could he not just re-install his Mac M1 with FreeBSD. pkg has just about everything he needs! Only that he needs to learn a few things the FreeBSD way. FreeBSD could beep all sound cards from 0 to 9 during single user mode for example, to indicate something is wrong. Some kind of espeak daemon could also be started from single user-mode. FreeBSD could technically support USB audio from the USB loader. We do have a USB stack which can be built as a single-threaded blob into the loader, but probably using the bell character via the BIOS is simpler. Many times when I see people use FreeBSD it is through Windows or MacOS. There is nothing wrong about that. I personally however prefer Windows through FreeBSD. Now if you would listen to me for a bit you will get why FreeBSD may be your only bet. Both Apple and Microsoft are totally tied up companies. I claim they can't do anything about computer programs that violates copyright law. You will be completely banned from their stores. But who would need to break "the law" to do something which most other people can do by not breaking the law? I've personally had a dream about being able to play the piano, but my brain simply won't do it. So I made a computer program to fill the gaps. The problem is that many so-called TAB sites are full of "stupid" copyright protections, obfuscating all the simple plain-text everyone else can see with their plain eyes, I just need it for my program, with tons JavaScript parsing, to make the text non-machine readable: Go here first and look at the CPU-usage and HTML source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ Then go here and compare: https://nortabs.net And nobody wants to use a program that can only play a 100 Norwegian songs, when UG has 1.4 million multi-national songs available, in exactly right format I need. You will find people tried to talk to UG, but with no success. Is it legal to download movies using the Pirate bay if you are blind? Say you want all sub-titles on a braille device and need machine-readable subtitles? What if you have some kind of other disability and really need machine-readable formats to do your job? It's like being allowed to remove the copyright protection from that PDF, because you are not blind or deaf, but something else, which in the future will be mitigated by a machine. The only option for Apple, Google and Microsoft products, is so-called jail-breaking and cracks, which often gets your device infected by viruses. Apple says that all browsers on iOS must use the WebKit layout engine. That is so clever and I see another reason why. They don't want anyone to have access to machine readable formats, because then someone could remove all the ADs or someone could clone all the TABs on UG or blah blah blah. What prevents you from feeding audio of an e-book back into Google translate and selling the resulting text? What prevents you from OCR-ing ultimate-guitar? It's getting late here now and I think I've shared enough thoughts for today. Hope you find something meaningful in what I've written. --HPS
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