moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum) (04/16/91)
Index Number: 14969 I have a couple of questions for the group about an idea I have. I think it would be possible to build, from the ground up, an accessible graphical user interface. In order to try out my idea, I need to get some specs for a Braille-'n'-Speak, though, so I can model it on a computer and then start by modifying that model. What I have in mind is just a generalization of Braille-'n'-Speak's idea of a "page". It seems to me that the fundamental conceptual advantage of a GUI has nothing whatsoever to do with "look and feel", but rather has to do with partitioning an output device. Think of setting up a Braille-'n'-Speak as an output device where if you run more than one program or are editing more than one document then the different parts of the output wind up on different pages. Then, instead of refering to the pages by number, refer to them by name. To make it so you don't have to do as much typing, you wouldn't have to type in the name, but rather scroll through a list of names and choose one. The difficult part would be making the size of a page more flexible. It seems to me that rewriting the Braille-'n'-Speak's software (or ROMs, or whatever) to do this would be relatively easy, and lessons learned from this could be used to build (from the ground up) a GUI which would follow the pattern of the Braille-'n'-Speak model. I would probably want to start from an existing basis, so for example I may wind up trying this out as a window manager in X Windows. I need some more specific information about Braille-'n'-Speak first, though. Does anybody have any ideas, information, or criticisms? Regards, Tom Leathrum moth@dartmouth.edu