Date: Tue, 23 May 95 14:25:58 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) To: hosokawa@mt.cs.keio.ac.jp (HOSOKAWA Tatsumi) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: I need Easyacsess-like tools on FreeBSD Message-ID: <9505232025.AA26115@cs.weber.edu> In-Reply-To: <199505230350.MAA00364@vivian.mt.cs.keio.ac.jp> from "HOSOKAWA Tatsumi" at May 23, 95 12:50:11 pm
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> operation (especially, locking modifier keys). Moreover, a few > handicapped people in our campus uses FreeBSD for their studies. They > and I are so happy if FreeBSD and/or XFree86 supports such > accessibility features. A friend of mine at Utah Power and Light (he's a programmer there) was working on a project to enable RS232 access instead of optical coupling to a pin-reader (a vibrating pin thing to give black/white pin "images" based on an optical pickup held up to the screen). His idea was to couple it into the DDX at the fram level and have the output follow the mouse pointer (giving him one thing at a time to move around and better "resoloution" on the output). I don't think he actually finished this (it was for his personal use; he's blind and he uses a Sun running X -- amazing person, actually). Windows 95 has a keyboard facility where if you hold down a modifier key for one minute, it brings up a dialog asking if you want to go into a mode where the modifier keys are latched on. The problem with making this a generic facility in FreeBSD is that it requires the ability to pop up a dialog, so it would be mode dependent. The X facility is also difficult because it requires modification of the keyboard driver, and this is not common code -- it would have to be done for each X DDX layer, like the frame output. Ideally, you'd want to have control and do this once; I guess technically, with reparenting and well behaved X apps (no focus grabbing), you could put it in the window manager. One problem is that the initial login isn't graphic, so it's almost a duplicate effort by definition (which brinds up standardization and control and indicator issues for locking modifiers with insufficient LED's). Actually, this is an area where some real wins could be had for FreeBSD over other OS's with relatively small effort for a big payout. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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