Re: Naming, hacking, and policies

[sirgazil <sirgazil@zoho.com>]

El 29/03/19 a las 11:42 a. m., Ludovic Courtès escribió:

[...]


> Packages usually have a “system name” (that’s the terminology used on
> Savannah) and a “pretty name”, like ‘guix’ and ‘GNU Guix’.  I believe
> the intent of those guidelines was to suggest keeping the system name,
> not the fancy name.  Perhaps this is what should be clarified?
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

A comment on the accessibility of names:

Last time I tried browsing packages in a GTK+ application on Debian 
using a screen reader, I didn't like the experience. The screen reader 
read in Spanish (my system language) all the names of the packages, most 
of them in "system name" format and made of English words. No good. 
Also, if I recall correctly, the screen reader didn't read initialisms 
correctly.

I bet there are things to improve in screen readers, accessibility of 
GUI toolkits, and package definitions. At that time, for example, Orca 
could not read multilingual HTML documents that used explicitly the LANG 
attribute in elements. I don't know if GTK+ offers something similar to 
the HTML LANG attribute for GUI components. Package definitions I've 
seen don't indicate in which language a package name is written so that 
a screen reader could switch its voice if necessary, nor they provide a 
way to know if a package name is an initialism, so that the screen 
reader can read it as such.

I don't know exactly what should be done in Guix, though, but I think 
having a "system name" and a "pretty name" that is translatable could 
help a little bit.

I hope libre screen readers get so smart they will figure all these 
things by themselves :)


My 2¢


-- 
Luis Felipe López Acevedo
http://sirgazil.bitbucket.io/