Re: What did you do with Emacs!!!!!

[Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk>]

>>>>> "Lee" == Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

>>>>> "Phillip" == Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:

  Phillip> It depends how he is using Emacs. An emacspeak interface
  Phillip> would work well within both. However there is still an
  Phillip> advantage to using a windowing version of emacs, as simply
  Phillip> moving between the emacs window and other windows will be
  Phillip> easier, as it will have the correct title, that is "emacs"
  Phillip> instead of "xterm", or "command prompt" or whatever.

  Lee> Wouldn't the command prompt (and many other programs) be
  Lee> enhanced by being run from within an Emacs window?  At least,
  Lee> Emacsspeak would handle these without further configurations!
  Lee> :)

Maybe. People like to interact with the computers in different
ways. Emacspeak's "do everything within emacs" is good for some, poor
for others. 


  Phillip> Most of the speech interfaces out there do actually reflect
  Phillip> the visual interface. Many of the windows ones for
  Phillip> instance, when they are reading text will only read what is
  Phillip> actually on screen. Hence the blind user still needs
  Phillip> functionality to minimize and maximize windows, rather than
  Phillip> just move between them, even though you might have though
  Phillip> this was a purely visual cue.

  Lee> I hope there won't be 3-D animated colourful icons on their
  Lee> desktops.  (And a dancing paperclip would certainly be
  Lee> confusing for these people.)


How do you know what is confusing for "these people"? Actually this is
one of emacspeaks's major difficulties. T.V.Raman, who is the main
author is blind, and emacspeak reflects this. Most of the users of
screen reading technology are not blind, but partially sighted. While
much of the input comes audibly, those with some sight often use if
profitably, for determining, for example, which window they have
selected. While the full glory of the dancing paperclip might not be
useful, that it is obvious, and reasonably clearly differentiable from
the rest of the screen, might make the paperclip useful. 

Its easy for the fully sighted person to make assumptions about what
is, and what is not good for the visually impaired. These assumptions
are often wrong. 


Cheers

Phil