From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim Cross Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Request for partecipating in the project Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 01:38:41 +1100 Message-ID: References: <87imm86mwq.fsf@mbork.pl> <87woanlfcf.fsf@blind.guru> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="00000000000086bc0a059a5ffcd6" Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="95781"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" Cc: "emacs-devel@gnu.org" To: Mario Lang Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 23 15:39:05 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1ijOrQ-000Omq-Pc for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 15:39:04 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57564 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ijOrP-0006Hh-1M for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:39:03 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:60795) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ijOrH-0006Hb-QV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:38:57 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ijOrG-0007vE-2i for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:38:55 -0500 Original-Received: from mail-oi1-x231.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4864:20::231]:44426) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ijOrF-0007u5-SD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:38:54 -0500 Original-Received: by mail-oi1-x231.google.com with SMTP id d62so6628401oia.11 for ; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 06:38:53 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc; bh=zgFDlv03dh2OwtgaxvLHAUhmMAPiwfYAoRqw+3qAAA8=; b=pSG5m6cL1HD/fDVlAbafiI5bT0eimGlNx/cxHaGtVmEPkMrVOUiioFZ2MzpB/a79XF 4JJUE+jWuYzwyLRtydOlemM1roJ62VQc/Dkkr8PlYw4dpq0z6GwwG6axVp1FgUdmEoN5 vkgLbuLxsEzDG/+bEJxNw1OJ+cYG4ZKw8zDul4696VBaGm1M7BSTWdVpZXv59eFgyDCZ lPRoSc0jVV3F6DB/8rCvQkRaU2FObsl77XorbD3LdYxXgnR5mDc+svS1tAvI7EZqh/8T ACq1/8wa+qk6zKtgqYZQIxib6R7TKHYj1lHbb13wn7674QPN07dnMP/8XRLpowX/h23M cjsw== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc; bh=zgFDlv03dh2OwtgaxvLHAUhmMAPiwfYAoRqw+3qAAA8=; b=Nh/CKp2U9uP6RRh9BkefOQc6YGtU44ExMU831Bmh2u2ycrMZR9B5r7vpoNUGQ6r7DN cxHdcBvs6S5yGxMQOWriktIQOmHY3tXmJ/fIkhheanAljIvFZxMDXEVPXu3IlYL/Lco+ pbheQ3eIUcd3X5jVZVPflNIZteRjWV7NZjkC3WOMDB5GCROAZBUNdWljU6kifyJ01dej 5vPYzV8o235/7ZkudItJO8snJzHKTPLF10lGMHc8nwsVJa6ZZtrRLfi9DYu0d7ESn3vg QssDl3D5n/RfDtDx1MPktAVf4/SWszS6Ag06+ViqYYPR0Idk+5qiNzg4lVhmEaSaN6Vm Oe6g== X-Gm-Message-State: APjAAAWmCNdZyEI/BK+16Lw5/SUgYG6kBM2WYrUd7UkvfDTTnldp5GvH 94frZ40BVVAcL53iMsNBYkW4jVfeN0l8EDZBXc0= X-Google-Smtp-Source: APXvYqzWOw9NRniXGY0MoxLU/zrwGMq7rJry3EsuKKOSYzf6ILwcL4n9Ho5q4lfxgPKo659kQIkC9Q6U/4+f41cQRrM= X-Received: by 2002:aca:c715:: with SMTP id x21mr5668356oif.146.1577111932811; Mon, 23 Dec 2019 06:38:52 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <87woanlfcf.fsf@blind.guru> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 2607:f8b0:4864:20::231 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:243584 Archived-At: --00000000000086bc0a059a5ffcd6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable epub is an HTML based format. Essentially it is an archive file of HTML and metadata. So the issue isn't so much whether it is better than HTML but more about some of the tools available. Most ebook reader applications are designed to optimize reading of books - they usually make moving back/forward in 'pages' easier, have consistent access to table of contents, allow easy setting of font types, sizes and color etc. For example, I find epub works far better with VoiceOver (the text-to-speech application in macOS, ipdaOS and IOS) on macOS, ipadOS and IOS than does either Safari (for HTML) or PDF (with any of the available PDF viewers like Preview or Adobe etc) for reading books. Likewise, the Kindle app on macOS, ipadOS or IOS works really well with voiceOver. The web based Kindle app is not accessible at all. As Raman points out, texinfo under Emacs and .info files are very accessible thanks to packages like his Emacspeak or others like speechd.el. However, other formats generated from Texinfo sources are less so. For PDF the issue is that TeX/Latex PDF generation tools are very poor at creating accessible PDF documents (this has been acknowledge within the TeX/Latex community and there has been some work to improve the situation, but the changes required are non-trivial and progress is slow). It has been some time since I looked at HTML documents generated from texinfo, but when I last checked, the accessibility was not great (accessibility to documents is not a binary proposition - some documents are sort of accessible, but lack appropriate tags/labels to make navigation of the documents 'make sense', so you might be able to get parts of the document read out, but being able to effectively navigate the document and find what you want is difficult or the data is presented 'out of sequence' compared to how a sighted person would see it). For me, the advantage of having Emacs documentation in one of these other ebook formats is that it could make it possible to access this documentation outside of Emacs. I find this quite useful. For example, when working on a project, I might open reference books on my ipad or iphone while working in Emacs on macOS or GNU Linux. I find it is sometimes more convenient to check things on the ipad rather than switching buffers/frames under Emacs. I can also use apps that will read epub (or other formats) continuously, which is handy when doing boring tasks like hanging out the washing - Today, I was listening to 'Elements of Clojure' while hanging out the washing. the point of my earlier post was that the generation of documents in other formats, like an ebook, from texinfo sources is unlikely to be that accessible without a fair bit of effort. I have had good success with Calibre for other document types, but it did take a fair bit of tweaking and experimentation. Having the Emacs documentation in ebook formats would likely be useful to many people, but getting a decent conversion may be challenging and getting an accessible version even more so. I do think it is important to be able to generate the output from existing texinfo files i.e. don't want to have 2 versions of the documents as we will never keep them 'in sync'. On Mon, 23 Dec 2019 at 17:34, Mario Lang wrote: > Tim Cross writes: > > > One of the advantages of some ebook formats, such as epub, is that they > can > > be more accessible for the blind and vision impaired than PDF or even > HTML. > > Please name an example where epub clearly is bettern then HTML. > I (a blind user) have never seen one until now. > > -- > CYa, > =E2=A1=8D=E2=A0=81=E2=A0=97=E2=A0=8A=E2=A0=95 > --=20 regards, Tim -- Tim Cross --00000000000086bc0a059a5ffcd6 Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
epub is an HTML based format. Essentially it is an ar= chive file of HTML and metadata. So the issue isn't so much whether it = is better than HTML but more about some of the tools available.=C2=A0 Most = ebook reader applications are designed to optimize reading of books - they = usually make moving back/forward in 'pages' easier, have consistent= access to table of contents, allow easy setting of font types, sizes and c= olor etc. For example, I find epub works far better with VoiceOver (the tex= t-to-speech application in macOS, ipdaOS and IOS) on macOS, ipadOS and IOS = than does either Safari (for HTML) or PDF (with any of the available PDF vi= ewers like Preview or Adobe etc) for reading books. Likewise, the Kindle ap= p on macOS, ipadOS or IOS works really well with voiceOver. The web based K= indle app is not accessible at all.

As Raman = points out, texinfo under Emacs and .info files are very accessible thanks = to packages like his Emacspeak or others like speechd.el.=C2=A0 However, ot= her formats generated from Texinfo sources are less so. For PDF the issue i= s that TeX/Latex PDF generation tools are very poor at creating accessible = PDF documents (this has been acknowledge within the TeX/Latex community and= there has been some work to improve the situation, but the changes require= d are non-trivial and progress is slow).
It has been some ti= me since I looked at HTML documents generated from texinfo, but when I last= checked, the accessibility was not great (accessibility to documents is no= t a binary proposition - some documents are sort of accessible, but lack ap= propriate tags/labels to make navigation of the documents 'make sense&#= 39;, so you might be able to get parts of the document read out, but being = able to effectively navigate the document and find what you want is difficu= lt or the data is presented 'out of sequence' compared to how a sig= hted person would see it).

For me, the advant= age of having Emacs documentation in one of these other ebook formats is th= at it could make it possible to access this documentation outside of Emacs.= I find this quite useful. For example, when working on a project, I might = open reference books on my ipad or iphone while working in Emacs on macOS o= r GNU Linux. I find it is sometimes more convenient to check things on the = ipad rather than switching buffers/frames under Emacs.=C2=A0 I can also use= apps that will read epub (or other formats) continuously, which is handy w= hen doing boring tasks like hanging out the washing -=C2=A0 Today, I was li= stening to 'Elements of Clojure' while hanging out the washing.

the point of my earlier post was that the genera= tion of documents in other formats, like an ebook, from texinfo sources is = unlikely to be that accessible without a fair bit of effort. I have had goo= d success with Calibre for other document types, but it did take a fair bit= of tweaking and experimentation. Having the Emacs documentation in ebook f= ormats would likely be useful to many people, but getting a decent conversi= on may be challenging and getting an accessible version even more so.=C2=A0= I do think it is important to be able to generate the output from existing= texinfo files i.e. don't want to have 2 versions of the documents as w= e will never keep them 'in sync'.

On Mon, 23 Dec 2019 at = 17:34, Mario Lang <mlang@blind.guru> wrote:
Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> One of the advantages of some ebook formats, such as epub, is that the= y can
> be more accessible for the blind and vision impaired than PDF or even = HTML.

Please name an example where epub clearly is bettern then HTML.
I (a blind user) have never seen one until now.

--
CYa,
=C2=A0 =E2=A1=8D=E2=A0=81=E2=A0=97=E2=A0=8A=E2=A0=95


--
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

--00000000000086bc0a059a5ffcd6--