Hi Shaun, To be honest I don't see what Jaws having a scripting language has anything to do with this discussion of screen readers and games. Sure, its true that Jaws was one of the first screen readers to support a scripting language which made it very powerful, and helped push it to the forefront of screen reader technology, but that in of itself has little to do with this discussion here.
Equally true NVDA is written in Python which in of itself is basically an all purpose scripting language, but has very little to do with the discussion at hand. NVDA basically just wraps the various accessibility libraries and functionality of Windows and is a very small and robust little screen reader. However, contrary to your message below it does not use any screen or keyboard hooks. Based on what I've seen NVDA merely monitors the Windows messages and events and then processes that information into spoken or braille feedback for the blind user. In short, it is all event driven and does not use any keyboard intercepts or off-screen displays like Jaws uses which was there long before Windows had its own accessibility APIs. NVDA is a new screen reader using newer up to date techniques for handling Windows access so has none of the bad hacks and workarounds found in older screen readers like Jaws that had no other access to the information until now. Since NVDA uses a stock event driven keyboard interface it naturally does not interfere with something like DirectX. NVDA doesn't try to intercept and take control over the keyboard the way Jaws does. I think a lot of the things Jaws does is now deprecated and to be honest I think the screen reader needs a good rewrite to get with the times. Once done Jaws would be more compatible with games using DirectX as well as not be so sluggish in certain apps and games where its keyboard hooks slows down input drastically. Cheers! On 7/25/14, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote: > well tom going slightly off topic but not much. > Though jaws is quite bloated now it was the first reader to have > scripting of any sort and the fact still is that if something works > with jaws its probably true that it works with everything else. > Nvda is closely linked with the os using os compatible stuff builtin > libraries but its writen in python a scripting language. > Everything starts somewhere. > I can not comment on windoweyes but like jaws and dolphin they had a > dos reader. > Though I can not speak for dolphin versions over 12.0, I can say that > dolphin stuff was the first lot of stuff that I used spaciffic synths > made by dolphin for the reader in question first a gemini and then orpheus. > THe interface has been alwas easy to handle and its never been > bloated though with everyone going ocr that may have changed ofcause. > As for hooks, with the acception of jaws I think nvda uses keyboard > and screen hooks but they are not really intifeering with anything as such. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
