2008/6/3 Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > You are confusing two completely different things. It is one thing to claim > "adding accessibility support to the product will increase its cost, and not > increase its market share enough, to make the product non-commercially > viable". This claim, essentially, says "it's not a choice between accessible > and an inaccessible software, it's a choice between inaccessible software > and no software at all". Under those circumstances, I can understand the > trade off. Neither you, I, nor anyone else have the right to tell someone to > do what THEY do our way. > > However, at least in my eyes, that was not the discussion on the openmoko > community list. Christen definitely thought that was what I asked (and who > knows, maybe it was and I wasn't aware of it), but at least to me what I > asked that accessibility (or, in this case, RTL support) be *considered* > when technologies are evaluated. > > There is a major problem between someone making an deaf inaccessible MP3 > player and someone making a deaf inaccessible shoot them up. In the former > case, the cost of trying to make it accessible is a major part of the > development cost. In the later, merely keeping in mind that deaf people > would also be playing this is all it really takes. > > Part of the problem, and this is not the first time I see this happening, is > that free software developers think that because things are free, it means > they do not need to be accountable. There is some measure of truth to that > line of thinking when things are completely transparent. If the decision to > dump GTK and go ETK were held on an open mailing list where everyone had a > chance to voice their opinions then I would certainly understand why someone > coming in late in the game and saying "you have to change your already > arrived at decision" would be disregarded. This was not the case here, > however. > > What happened here is that the decision was taken as it is with proprietary > software companies - one day we wake up and we find the decision has already > been taken, and the only one around to explain it is the same person who > wrote ETK, and is as open to criticism about it as a mother is to criticism > about her child. In my eyes, the less transparent you are about your > decision making process, the more accountable you are about the end result. > THIS is my main criticism about this process. It is entirely possible that > moving to ETK was the right move, unfortunate BiDi state and all. Without > knowing the reasoning, I have no way to tell. > > Shachar >
I think that you are seeing the situation exactly how it is, because after reading the thread I deduced the same conclusion. When I must make a decision between two competing products, I usually evaluate the disadvantages of each, as opposed to the advantages. The advantages will add 'little features' that one may or may not need. Yet, it is the disadvantages that will cause major headaches and possibly derail a project. I assume that the developer in question had not considered the disadvantages of his toolkit, and worse, is either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the existance of disadvantages. That is not what I expect of a FOSS community project, and it really turns me off to that device. That is a shame, as I was very excited about the device until I knew about this situation. It would be the same for me had the device been built in a way that CJK would not be supported and RTL would be supported. Even if my demanded (note that I do not say preferred, even though as you see I am relatively fluent in English) language were available I would stay away from a device who's inherent design excludes a large population by some arbitrary decision. Maybe the ETK/GTK/Qt decision is not arbitrary, but from here it certainly seems so. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
