[Rwp] [RWP] OSARA, an open-source ReaAccess replacement in development
Jim Snowbarger
snowman at snowmanradio.com
Wed Feb 4 17:06:07 EST 2015
Scott,
The following commentary was inspired by some of your remarks. But, are not aimed at you in particular.
Things like CT and HSC own their very existence to JAWS. They are built upon it.
Without it, they don't exist. So, a bit of alegance might be forgiven.
I have heard of several efforts to port HSC over to some script language that NVDA could use. I promised to help support that effort, but have not heard anything about it for a very long time. It was a volunteer effort, and guess what. Hmmm. Well, sometimes, volunteerism works. Sometimes not.
I suppose folks might feel a little differently if they thought profits from the sale of JAWS licenses were plowed back into supporting development. But, as many suspect, investers are probably reaping the rewards, and buying yachts and condos on the backs of what is essentially charity. Where do you think the money for rehab programs comes from?
I don't know any hard facts there, but have the impression that is the case.
I don't know how CT is licensed, but I expect it is some derivative of the jaws serial number.
By default, HSC sets are free.
Those that are licensed, are done so by leveraging on the jaws serial number. So, if you encode an HSC set for the demo version of jaws, then the HSC set is a demo as well, free for unlimited use as you describe.
So far, I have not thought of a way to seperate those in a way that doesn't leave an hsc set open to wide spread misuse.
I wonder, should the price of a tool be calculated based on how often you expect to use it?
In that case, my table saw should have cost me about 39 cents. But, not so.
Licensing software is a very problematic mess, and creates all the serial number, machine license hell we have now. How about those that limit you to one or two computers. If you gought it, shouldn't you be able to use it wherever you like? It doesn't cost the developer a penny to let me use it on a third machine. Or, that a musician should expect to receive a royalty payment every single time you enjoy his song.
Now all that, in my opinion, is heavy handed.
On the other hand, if there is no profit in it, and people can rip you off at every whip stitch, not to mention how free they feel to complain about your design choices, then the motivation for writing stuff will have to be pure amusement, or ephemeral curiosity, and we'll be left with only the sporatic output of the hobbyist, whose dynamic priorities are different than ours.
If I need the tool personally, maybe I'll write it, and maybe I'll let you use it, depending on my apetite for headaches that day. But, if not, then not, and that's that.
As a software developer, my output is my life. My skill is a gift from God, put there to help me survive. The revenue that comes from it is what puts food on my table, and feeds my family. So yes, people making free use of my stuff are stealing from me, unless I specifically provided it for free use.
FS gets a bad wrap because the cost is high, which is especially painful in developing countries, or for folks who are not employed for whatever reason. And, you can speculate all day about the true meaning of those reasons. That wouldn't be quite so bad if we saw a commensurate level of high quality. But, we reasonably doubt that corolation. It should corolate, but doesn't seem to do so.
But, one piece of faulty logic that I often hear people state is that the cost of JAWS, plus the cost of some accessibility adaptation stacks up to more than the cost of my favorite application, and that isn't fair.
That is similar to my table saw analogy. JAWS is capable of providing a tremendous degree of access to a very wide array of potential applications, not just your favorite app. The fact that I might only use my table saw to wack the occasional toothpick in half doesn't detract from the things that could be done with it if I chose to apply it more broadly.
It's a pretty expensive toothpick wacker. But, that isn't all it is.
-----Original Message-----
From: RWP [mailto:rwp-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Scott Chesworth via RWP
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 1:45 PM
To: Reapers Without Peepers
Subject: Re: [Rwp] [RWP] OSARA, an open-source ReaAccess replacement in development
Jim, I'm almost 100% in agreement with you, and try to live by similar rules. There are however, things that get my goat. For example, why the hell does CakeTalking not work with a JAWS demo. It smacks of the cash cows exchanging kickbacks, but even if that isn't happening, it's one more barrier in the way of the guy just getting started, and it's a barrier that isn't there for the sighted guy getting started. I understand the hundreds of hours of development time need to be recouped somehow, but tying it to the authorization of another investment surely isn't the way forward. It's a shame, because there are some paid HSC sets out there that I'd love to purchase, but again, they're tied to a product that I just can't justify the cost of nowadays. If there was a way that I could support the indie developer and I could do my thing using that HSC set, be in and out of that task within 40 minutes, I'd probably spend more money on HSC sets than anything else. Sure, FS will lose out on sales, but in my case it's a sale they never had anyway, and never will until some actual innovation happens.
On 2/4/15, Jim Snowbarger via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> Digging deep to help pay your own way is good for the soul.
>
> Remember the controversy I sparked when I commented on one person's
> remark that he didn't feel that he should have to pay for his blindness?
> Who then, I wondered, should. Everybody else?
> What we have is a market that is too small to adequately support it's
> own costs. There aren't enough of us to pay the freight.
> You can say that this or that price isn't fair, especially when you
> compare it to some item in a market that is far and away large enough.
> But, it's not an apples to apples comparison. Providing accessibility
> solutions is hugely expensive and difficult.
> And, when you are talking the practical realities of managing a
> company, paying your employees, your taxes, your rent, and all the
> rest of it, you've got to raise revenue.
> Many of us have contributed hugely out of our own free time, and our
> skill, to try to help lift the burden. And, still some poor blinks
> complain at having to pay anything at all.
> But, I ignore them.
> When you look at what Jamie and partners have accomplished with NVDA,
> and look at how much revenue they have raised from the blind
> community, I bet you would have to conclude that it is HUGE charity.
> If it weren't fror the grants, they'd be screwed. And, the
> availability of grants depends on certain conditions out of our control.
> Charity comes and goes like the wind. For the sake of our own
> stability, it is best to depend on it as little as possible.
>
> But, at the end of the day, I guess I consider it a moral and ethical
> question.
> Even if I am dirt poor, and have nothing, there is spiritual richness
> and reward in digging up whatever I can spare, plus a little more until it
> hurts, and investing it in the thing I need to have happen. I'm pretty
> sure that's my mission in life, to the best of my ability, to help pay
> my own way.
> And, to be honest, I am more willing to help people who are doing
> likewise, than I am somebody who thinks the world owes them a living.
> I'm not suggesting that anyone here is like that. But, god knows
> there are plenty of them around. It's a mental condition bread by the welfare state.
> And, it is counter productive.
> End of speech.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: RWP [mailto:rwp-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Scott
> Chesworth via RWP
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 12:53 PM
> To: Reapers Without Peepers
> Subject: Re: [Rwp] [RWP] OSARA, an open-source ReaAccess replacement
> in development
>
> To be fair Chris, we've already had a few public mentions of donations
> here from people that I'm fairly sure are serious enough to put their
> hands in their pockets, plus in March I'm applying for a grant that'd
> tide Jamie over for a while once the fun wears off. Granted, that's
> not much, but it's a more encouraging response than ReaAccess got
> financially. In any case, when it comes to CT, I find it ridiculous
> that the accessibility package plus screen reader costs way more than
> the DAW itself. That's before considering that Sonar itself could be
> seen as overpriced unless you're actually gonna use the synths and
> plugs it comes bundled with. I doubt you'll disagree that CT's business model sucks the big one for blind people.
>
> On 2/4/15, Chris Belle via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
>> I hate this ghetto mentallity toard
>> doing something skilled and
>> doing a professional job.
>>
>>
>> Cheap has a lot of meanings, but it often means of low quality, or
>> takin what you can get.
>> I run a business here,
>> and I expect to have to pay for the cost of doing business, diferent
>> for folks just doing a hobby, I know, but this sort of we want it all
>> for nothing and poor blindy mentallity is why nothing ever gets done
>> for reaper.
>>
>> I know us blind
>> aren't rich folks, but most blindies I know will pay for what they
>> want, they'll buy a 800 dollar iphone, but bitch about paying 10
>> bucks for a piece of software, now just think if everyone gave 20
>> bucks for reaper development for someone like Jamie to develop
>> reaper, how far we'd get?
>>
>> You don't think Jamie worked for nothing when I was working with him
>> for sonar development back a few years ago?
>>
>> Quiet a few benefited and piggy backed off that I imagine.
>>
>> So if you're not willing to put a few bucks in to what you do, then
>> you have no business doing it, you're not serious about it.
>>
>> That's just how I feel about the whole thing, when you pay for
>> something, you respect it.
>>
>>
>> On 2/4/2015 6:13 AM, Hrvoje Katić via RWP wrote:
>>> Yep, but CakeTalking costs too much as well as Sonar. Reaper is far
>>> more cheap and accessibility solution is freeware.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> LP,
>>> Hrvoje
>>>
>>> Private email: hrvoje.katic at yandex.com
>>> <mailto:hrvoje.katic at yandex.com>
>>>
>>> Web site: Click here <http://hrvix.wordpress.com/>
>>>
>>> Facebook: Click here <http://www.facebook.com/hrvix>
>>>
>>> Twitter: Click here <http://www.twitter.com/hrvix>
>>>
>>> Skype Id: hrvojekatic
>>>
>>> Mobile: 095/585-7034
>>>
>>> 4.2.2015. u 13:04, Jayson Smith via RWP je napisao/la:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I, too, would be in favor of single-key commands for the most
>>>> common actions. Cake Talking for Sonar, which is for me the gold
>>>> standard of DAW accessibility, uses single-key commands for the
>>>> most common actions. Mute, solo, arm, etc. And it has a standard
>>>> view where you use up/down to move between tracks, and left/right
>>>> to move between parameters on a track such as name, mute, solo, arm, volume, pan, etc.
>>>>
>>>> Jayson
>>>>
>>>> On 2/4/2015 3:37 AM, Hrvoje Katić via RWP wrote:
>>>>> Well, personally I don't like default Reaper keymap. Some
>>>>> important actions are not assigned to any keystroke by default
>>>>> (move by beats and bars is a good example), and you have to hold
>>>>> control and alt while navigating tracks with up and down arrow,
>>>>> and also
>>>>> control+alt+arrow keys have a conflict with some graphics drivers
>>>>> where these keystrokes are assigned to rotate screen.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> LP,
>>>>> Hrvoje
>>>>>
>>>>> Private email: hrvoje.katic at yandex.com
>>>>> <mailto:hrvoje.katic at yandex.com>
>>>>>
>>>>> Web site: Click here <http://hrvix.wordpress.com/>
>>>>>
>>>>> Facebook: Click here <http://www.facebook.com/hrvix>
>>>>>
>>>>> Twitter: Click here <http://www.twitter.com/hrvix>
>>>>>
>>>>> Skype Id: hrvojekatic
>>>>>
>>>>> Mobile: 095/585-7034
>>>>>
>>>>> 4.2.2015. u 0:44, Zack Benton via RWP je napisao/la:
>>>>>> Agreed, I admit that the re access keymap is a bit harder to learn.
>>>>>> On 2/3/2015 18:16, James Teh via RWP wrote:
>>>>>>> Anyway, I didn't mean to start a debate on what is "best";
>>>>>>> everyone has their preferences. My point is that if even I (as
>>>>>>> the primary author) am using something different to the
>>>>>>> ReaAccess key map, I'd be very reluctant to include a ReaAccess
>>>>>>> based key map as the default. At the very least, that key map is
>>>>>>> harder to learn initially. This is why I haven't included a key
>>>>>>> map at all at this point. Perhaps we could include a ReaAccess
>>>>>>> key map as an option, but I'm reluctant to make it a "default".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jamie
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 4/02/2015 7:19 AM, Scott Chesworth via RWP wrote:
>>>>>>>> I have alien length fingers, so this might not work for
>>>>>>>> everyone, but I've found non-separated F keys a lot easier
>>>>>>>> since I started treating them as an extra row rather than
>>>>>>>> counting along them. The experience is a little different from
>>>>>>>> laptop to laptop, but with a wee bit of practice to get the
>>>>>>>> muscle memory locked in I can comfortably hit mute, solo, arm,
>>>>>>>> phase etc without leaving the touch typing position or
>>>>>>>> counting. This is coming from someone who fought pretty hard
>>>>>>>> against those keys being used for those functions in the first
>>>>>>>> place, so I guess you could say I'm converted now.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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