[chuck-users] Controling Chuck - building accessible GUI

[Scott Wheeler]

Rich Caloggero wrote:
> Hey, just saw your blog and your XUL project, but didn't see any contact for 
> you. So, glad you responded; thanx ...
>
> Anyhow, text only interfaces are inherently more accessible, but not always 
> optimal for the job.  What I am ultimately wanting is something like PD, or 
> at the very least a good synth like dimensionPro which I can actually 
> control in real time.  I want to play with sound, not play with code! 
> <smile>
>
> Last time I tried PureData, it was completely inaccessible to my screen 
> reader.  To make something accessible takes some planning (use the right 
> toolkit and use standard widgets/components which have accessibility hooks 
> already in them), and test with real users! For instance, if your going to 
> use Java, then you either need to use Swing and its standard components, or 
> write your own code to properly use the Java Accessibility API on your own 
> AWT widgets (a fair amount of extra work so I've been told).  Since most 
> sighted software designers insist on creating their own widgets, accessible 
> software tends to be hard to find, especially in music land.
>   

You might give jMax [1] a whirl.  It's in the Pd family and the UI is 
implemented in Swing.

That said, doing sound design with jMax, Pd and friends is still 
programming for all practical purposes.  I ended up in the ChucK world 
precisely because I find the interfaces of those programs to be 
inelegant for programming (and I'm particularly fond of ChucK's timing 
model).  Most of the experiments that I've seen (including one that I 
started) in binding ChucK to interfaces are mostly concerned with 
providing a UI for interacting with ChucK programs, not supplanting 
ChucK's logical building blocks.  Were one to have that goal, I think 
starting with the STK [2] (which ChucK also uses for a lot of the heavy 
lifting) would probably be easier.

-Scott

[1] http://freesoftware.ircam.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=14
[2] http://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/stk/