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For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

blind.guru

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Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#71

Post by DavidWoof »

bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

> He shouldn't blame a community of volunteers for not fixing his personal problems for free.

It seems to me that you're just repeating the author's point, but with a different tone. Issues of "blame" aside (what does that even mean?), his point is that open source software tends not to meet the needs of the accessibility community. One possible cause of this is that the devs who support open source software tend not to be disabled and tend not to have experience or even access to things like screen readers.

I honestly don't know enough about the issue to know how true this might be, but just dismissing it as a rant, even if the word "rant" is correct in this case, doesn't address the underlying issues.

BTW, a quick google search suggests that JAWS is far and away the most popular screen reader for windows. If it's not a priority, then accessibility for windows isn't a priority either, which is exactly the author's point.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#72

Post by MBCook »

yoz-y wrote: post #68
MBCook wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple seems to do it because it's in their ethos. Jobs and Cooks have both said it matters to them. They aren't big in enterprise (or even education) so I don't think that argument fits. I think they just care. That may be a bit of my bias but I can't come up with a good business case for them. MS may or may not care, but accessibility is often a requirement for government contracts (or buisnesses who want government…

Yes that is what I meant. Apple and MS are for-profit, but they have massive profits from something else and a huge safety net. This is opposed to a company that either makes accessible software specifically, or makes software that would benefit from being accessible (let's say an IDE such as IntelliJ). Apple (from what I have heard MS too) really does amazing work in accessibility but this would not be possible had…

My point with MS is that they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts (for argument) and just spending their profits... they are REQUIRED to do it to be able to get many of their biggest contracts. They are doing it so they CAN sell.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#73

Post by bluGill »

jnbiche wrote: post #63
bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

> He shouldn't blame a community of volunteers for not fixing his personal problems for free. Please allow me to highlight this statement. I encountered it so frequently when I created and maintained several popular open source projects. I honestly think a lot of people assume that if you're working on a project, you must be getting paid for it. Then again, many of them were totally unfazed when I pointed out that I…

I do get paid for the project I maintain, but ONLY when I am doing something that benefits my employer. I became maintainer because my employer needed a feature that wasn't there so they paid me to write it. That makes me someone who cares enough to be maintainer (the previous maintainer didn't want to be maintainer anymore). If you submit a good patch I will accept it. Submit several good patches and I'll make you co-maintainer (so far that hasn't happened). If you ask an easy support question I'll answer. If you want a new feature or have a hard support question - my employee doesn't pay me for that and I have kids to play with on my own time.

Red Hat, Ubuntu and the like employee some people who will sometimes implement a new feature for you - but those companies want you to buy a support contact for features. There are a number of foundations that pay people to work on free software (FreeBSD, KDE, Mozilla, many more) and so they will be more responsive to requests - but foundations are always lacking in money so they cannot do every feature they want.

There are a few "college students" (possibly retired) who work on things for fun. If they take an interest in your request they will do it. However they also have other things do to as well.

I believe the majority of people working on open source projects are like me: they work on things someone pays them for but do not have the time to do anything for someone else.

Note, industry coding is like this as well. They have money, but never enough to do all ideas. (and even if they did man-month issues mean they often can't do it anyway)

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#74

Post by hungerstrike »

jnbiche wrote: post #63
bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

> He shouldn't blame a community of volunteers for not fixing his personal problems for free. Please allow me to highlight this statement. I encountered it so frequently when I created and maintained several popular open source projects. I honestly think a lot of people assume that if you're working on a project, you must be getting paid for it. Then again, many of them were totally unfazed when I pointed out that I…

I don't think comparing your hobby projects to Qt is apt here.

First, the Qt company sells a commercial license for $79/month so that you can use the software without GPL restrictions. The author didn't mention if they were using that or the open source version. Either way, Qt is at least partly a commercial venture.

Second, there is a huge difference in the size of the respective projects if your projects only had you as the maintainer. It's not that easy to contribute to large projects. Also IMO, it behooves the larger projects to try and make their users happy especially if they want to remain alive.

Finally, upon reading the article you can see that the author is not expecting free help in any way. He is simply saying that if you want Accessibility then don't use Qt unless you can implement it yourself.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#75

Post by stillhere »

bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

JAWS is what a large number of blind and low vision people use. Just because you're not familiar with it doesn't mean it is "some proprietary" thing that should be ignored.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#76

Post by sctb »

nippples wrote: post #11

> be me > read powerful article on Qt being shit on accessibility > "Sorry for claiming Free Software would be a good thing for the world." > I shall no longer let Free Software oppress the world > uninstall Firefox, Chromium > launch Internet Explorer > browse literally anywhere > All data is now held by ransomware, must pay my savings to bigd1ckd4ddy0 > The world is now a better place

Not here, please.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#78

Post by mb720 »

MBCook wrote: post #39
mb720 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I provide code for free I want to be treated with respect. There's evidence that this is not always the case when working on the Linux Kernel. Of course, when somebody introduces bugs, that's a problem and should be talked about. But you can do that respectfully without sugarcoating the affair.

This author wants to be treated with respect. They want to be to able to use free software too. But the projects are basically telling them 'too bad'. And when projects break stuff that's critical to his/her use the response is... oh well. If anyone ever fixes it we'll take the patch. That's not how you treat people, especially if you want them in your community. This isn't someone complaining that the 'close' button…

The comment you refer to was about how programmers getting yelled at on the mailing list of the Linux kernel and how that's not OK.

The comment you refer to wasn't at all about Qt and the article about accessibility.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#79

Post by toyg »

enqk wrote: post #61

When I worked with QT as a UI framework, I did regularly get a sense that the QT contributors were understaffed, and that they have barely enough time to deal with the huge scope that the framework is attacking. The conclusion was that, if you desire to use QT, you should get yourself prepared to dive in and fix things yourself. This sort of defeats the point of using a cross platform framework, since you may have to…

Did you have a commercial support contract for Qt at the time? What I've heard is that they do fix things, if you are a paid-up customer.

> you have to be ready to pay a contractor to do the necessary QT adaptations/fixes.

Admittedly a few years ago, the problem was that there were very few such specialists around.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#80

Post by alsadi »

But you paid jaws, and got qt for free as a favor and you are blaiming qt. You are a customer of jaws ask them to contribute to qt.

Regarding marketing qt or gnome as accessible it means in a specific setup with a specific set of working readers in the opensource/freesoftware eco-system

Not accessible to all possible setups. Specially proprietary readers?

You have paid nvidia for your gpu card, don't ask me volunteer to fix their properietary driver compatability with your opensource game.

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