[RWP] version 4.20 Up and Running User guide; in Text

[Jim Snowbarger]

Speaking of time consuming.  Here I go on a wistful ramble about unlikely 
possibilities.
I realize it's a psychological problem, but I have always felt exceedingly 
weary of reading documentation written by sighted people,  for sighted 
people.  They're always talking in groovy terms about what a snap it is to 
do something that I find impossible, enhancing my feeling of belonging. 
Giving me instructions that don't relate to my paradigm, and it annoys me 
substantially, to the point that it even impedes my learning process.   Get 
use to it, I always tell myself.  But, I never do.  I can't avoid the 
feeling that I'm just nibbling on the crumbs from someone else's banquit 
table.
And, it inspires me to create my own banquet.
One of the things I always thought would be cool, for example, if help 
documentation was written  in such a way that the help reader would check to 
see if you are using a screen reader, and flip a little switch that gave you 
the  appropriate language for your particular form of access.
Of course, that would mean  the help writers would have just that much more 
help to write, and help would be even more useless than it is.  Still, it's 
an attractive idea.

But, I wonder how far one would get if we chose to create an edition of this 
manual, with all the usual explanations, but all the clicky stuff scrubbed 
out, and replaced by stuff that made sense to us.
It's a monstrously huge project, and probably won't get done, especially in 
view of tiny amounts of energy, and stuff like that..  But,
I wonder if we divided this manual into sections, and assigned sections to 
willing editors on list, if we could successfully go off and find out if 
there are blind alternatives to what's described there, edit the section 
accordingly, and check it back into the composite project, if we could come 
up with such a thing.
Even better if it could be done in a way that the Reaper authors would 
adopt, such that it would  survive future manual additions.  If help systems 
had that ability to create alternate views like that, the sighted guys 
wouldn't even know our stuff was in there.  but, I don't think that ability 
exists.

Anyway, just a muse.  Thanks for reading.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "indigo" <33indigo at charter.net>
To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2012 10:11 AM
Subject: [RWP] version 4.20 Up and Running User guide; in Text


> True, the standard users guide is not always so useful, but I have found 
> answers in it sometimes.
> Here it is in text, all 400 pages:
>
> http://www.sendspace.com/file/ka7ieq
>
> _______________________________________________
> RWP mailing list
> RWP at reaaccess.com
> http://reaaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/rwp_reaaccess.com
>