Hi Klaus and Michael,
I've tried to make some graphical QT v6.x cross platform so-called
accessible applications. It is really hard to get it right. If you use
one QT widget, everything is read perfectly in MacOS and if you use
another QT widget, or a custom one, it is just not working. Or if you
have a text editor you need to make sure you can tab out of it.
Then a friend of mine said he started to use mac-ports and asked if I
can port my applications from AppStore to there, because it is so much
easier for him to use --- sigh, why could he not just re-install his Mac
M1 with FreeBSD. pkg has just about everything he needs! Only that he
needs to learn a few things the FreeBSD way.
FreeBSD could beep all sound cards from 0 to 9 during single user mode
for example, to indicate something is wrong. Some kind of espeak daemon
could also be started from single user-mode.
FreeBSD could technically support USB audio from the USB loader. We do
have a USB stack which can be built as a single-threaded blob into the
loader, but probably using the bell character via the BIOS is simpler.
Many times when I see people use FreeBSD it is through Windows or MacOS.
There is nothing wrong about that. I personally however prefer Windows
through FreeBSD. Now if you would listen to me for a bit you will get
why FreeBSD may be your only bet. Both Apple and Microsoft are totally
tied up companies. I claim they can't do anything about computer
programs that violates copyright law. You will be completely banned from
their stores. But who would need to break "the law" to do something
which most other people can do by not breaking the law?
I've personally had a dream about being able to play the piano, but my
brain simply won't do it. So I made a computer program to fill the gaps.
The problem is that many so-called TAB sites are full of "stupid"
copyright protections, obfuscating all the simple plain-text everyone
else can see with their plain eyes, I just need it for my program, with
tons JavaScript parsing, to make the text non-machine readable:
Go here first and look at the CPU-usage and HTML source:
https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
Then go here and compare:
https://nortabs.net
And nobody wants to use a program that can only play a 100 Norwegian
songs, when UG has 1.4 million multi-national songs available, in
exactly right format I need. You will find people tried to talk to UG,
but with no success.
Is it legal to download movies using the Pirate bay if you are blind?
Say you want all sub-titles on a braille device and need
machine-readable subtitles?
What if you have some kind of other disability and really need
machine-readable formats to do your job?
It's like being allowed to remove the copyright protection from that
PDF, because you are not blind or deaf, but something else, which in the
future will be mitigated by a machine.
The only option for Apple, Google and Microsoft products, is so-called
jail-breaking and cracks, which often gets your device infected by viruses.
Apple says that all browsers on iOS must use the WebKit layout engine.
That is so clever and I see another reason why. They don't want anyone
to have access to machine readable formats, because then someone could
remove all the ADs or someone could clone all the TABs on UG or blah
blah blah.
What prevents you from feeding audio of an e-book back into Google
translate and selling the resulting text?
What prevents you from OCR-ing ultimate-guitar?
It's getting late here now and I think I've shared enough thoughts for
today. Hope you find something meaningful in what I've written.
--HPS
