[chuck-users] Multiline Braille display

[tempjayren at gmail.com]

i do think i found a multiline braille display, though the pricetag is
annoying, i'll look for that again and post about it here.


On 8/25/2011 12:29 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
> I think forcing indentation on someone (ala Python) is just wrong. This
> is unfortunate, since python seems like a very powerful language. You
> can get the screen reader to read out indentation (3 spaces, 5 spaces,
> etc), and I'm sure there are many blind folks out there who enjoy coding
> in Python, but I really wish indentation was not part of the language
> definition -- seems kind of like a step backward in language design
> (Fortran anyone)!
> 
> I'm a screen reader user, and find indentation totally unnecessary. The
> way I deal with c-style languages is to mark my end braces with a comment:
> 
> while (true) {
> // ...
> } // while
> 
> I also tend to stay away from deeply nested code if I can.
> 
> function f(x) {
> if (! x) return false;
> // more stuff
> } // f
> 
> This last bit is obviously very contrived, but if you dispatch all tests
> for undesired conditions first and return, then you don't need deeply
> nested conditional blocks. Obviously, nested loops are quite another
> thing and if you need them, you need them.
> 
> As for the multiline display -- I've been wanting one of those for as
> long as I've been programming.
> I have not tried it, but there is some sort of tactile mouse out there
> that will pop up braille as you move around, but this really doesn't
> help much. To get a real kinesthetic sense of layout, its very helpful
> to have two hands involved. Your brain is adapted for the use of both
> hands and can map this much more easily into sort sort of internal
> spacial image. I could not imagine trying to read a map with one finger.
> It would be very slow and tedious, and would defeat one of the purposes
> of having braille in the first place. Braille, like printed text or
> graphics, allows you to examine a static image. One of the inherent
> problems with speech, and this one-finger braille concept, is that the
> image is not static; it is essentially moving in time and requires you
> to build up a static image in your mind.  Think of how difficult it
> would be to lood at a page of code through a straw, where all you can
> see is one symbol at a time. This is what its like listening to code, or
> anything really. Reading proes is sort of different in that your brain
> is adapted to this from birth from listening to spoken language, but
> code and other highly symbolic communication like mathmatics is very
> difficult to read via speech, or one-finger braille.
> 
> Hopefully, I'll see a full-page braille display before everything goes
> 3D! Ah, one step forward, two steps back -- or maybe its two steps
> forward, and one step back! Depends when you ask...
> 
> -- Rich
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Robert Poor
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 11:03 PM
> To: ChucK Users Mailing List
> Cc: ChucK Users Mailing List
> Subject: [chuck-users] Multiline Braille display
> 
> I always thought the way to make a  multiline Braille display was with
> a fingertip sized "mouse" that would actuate mechanical pins as you
> roll over a virtual page. You'd want the pins to have a much higher
> resolution than standard Braille so you could simulate smooth motion.
> 
> Does anyone make anything like that yet?
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Aug 24, 2011, at 5:01 PM, tempjayren at gmail.com wrote:
> 
>> my thoughts on indentation as regards screen readers, bad idea. unless
>> you are using a multiline braille display, then it could work.
>> unfortunately, i don't know of such a beast, though a single line
>> braille display is expensive in itself, a multiline one would be  worse,
>> and probably best used by someone that had no ears as well as eyes,  and
>> that would make chuck coding rather silly to my way of thinking.
>>
>>
>> On 8/24/2011 10:18 AM, Kassen wrote:
>>> chuck doesn't seem to care about how .ck files look, or am i
>>>> wrong there?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Not at all, no, whatever works for you is fine. Actually part of  the
>>> whole
>>> point of ChucK is that it should be there for you, not for the 
>>> computer.
>>> That said; I would take future usage of the file into account and 
>>> try to
>>> make things clear for people who may read it in the future (maybe 
>>> you in
>>> half a year <smile>). I could imagine that some forms of  indentation
>>> would
>>> be especially good for working with screen-readers, I wonder  whether
>>> any
>>> research has been done there.
>>>
>>> Yours,
>>> Kas.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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