RE: ANNOUNCE: Beta of PPM version 4 released

Hi Teddy,

I have discussed the Tcl/Tk accessibility issues with Jeff Hobbes (the
Tcl guy who added the original accessibility support to Tk). He said Tk
currently only supports MSAA 1.0, but the latest screen readers require
the MSAA 2.0 functionality.

I'll help him to look into this issue eventually, but don't know when
we'll find time to do this. It may not happen until after the PPM4 GUI
is released. As a side effect this should also make Tk (and Tkx)
programs more accessible on Tablet PCs because the Tablet Input Panel
piggybacks on MSAA 2.0 to hook in the alternate input methods.

Cheers,
-Jan

PS: I hope you don't mind that I've copied perl-win32-users back into
    this thread, as I don't think it needs to be a private discussion.

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
> Hi,>> As a feedback, I have installed TCL (latest version), Tkx perl module> and I have tried the sample tkxed program.>> Jaws, the most used screen reader, and the Narrator (the Windows> included screen reader) can read just the title bar in this> application.>> I have seen that the menus are read well in the menus sample> application.>> I have tried creating a sample button using the sample code from the> POD documentation but the interface was not accessible. I don't know,> maybe TCL/Tkx needs adding some parameters when creating the window> and the controls in order to make them usable with a keyboard and no> mouse. (like Win32::GUI needs adding -dialogui => 1 for windows, and> -tabstop for form controls)...>> Or maybe the TCL/Tk original library is still not accessible for> screen readers yet... I don't know, but I still hope it is.>> Thank you.>> Teddy>
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, "Jan Dubois" <j...@activestate.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, Octavian Rasnita wrote:> > > Thanks for ppm4, but...> > >> > > Will we still be able to use the command line mode of ppm4 after> > > the GUI will be ready? This is very important, because the Tk> > > library is not accessible at all for screen readers.> >> > Yes, the commandline mode will always be available. You'll only> > invoke the GUI if you don't specify any commandline arguments to ppm> > at all.> >> > So in a sense the GUI replaces the "subshell mode" of ppm, which was> > a bad idea in the first place. Note that ppm still remembers the> > results of e.g. a search command, so you can still use it to install> > a specific package from the search results:> >> >     ppm search Win32 ppm install 17> >> > To install the 17th module from the list. But for command history> > etc. you now use your normal shell instead of the ppm3> > implementation.> >> > Please also note that the ppm GUI will not use PerlTk, but the Tcl> > and Tkx modules, which have access to the very latest Tk> > implementations of themed widgets etc. Tcl/Tk is supposed to work> > with at least the Microsoft screen reader. So please let us know if> > the PPM GUI in Beta 2 is not accessible with screen readers and I'll> > try to figure out what is happening. But I suspect that the> > commandline version will always be easier for screen reader usage.> >> > Cheers,> > -Jan