Well, a speculative date and some detail is more than we had previously, and to be blunt, it's more than complaints would have gotten us. Thanks for passing this along and keeping the dialogue alive. If nothing else, I believe that it is on the radar of their engineers ahead of time, a good sign. I'm politely skeptical that those third party in app purchase style activations will be a good thing for accessibility longterm, but perhaps Pace could see their way to providing some recommendations/encouragement to that end as part of the SDK once their own software is usable again?
Cheers for the legwork Slau, it's good to know that we're remembered even if we're not getting what we'd like over night. Scott On 1/31/15, Jim Noseworthy <jim.nosewor...@compuconference.com> wrote: > Hey Slau: > > Thanks much for your work that you've done on this issue: you're an > exceptional person. > > Again, thanks all over the place. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptaccess@googlegroups.com] On Behalf > Of Slau Halatyn > Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 8:25 PM > To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com > Subject: a response from Pace regarding the status of iLok accessibility > > As most of you know, I've kept a dialog going with Pace regarding iLok > License Manager accessibility. Some folks at Avid have been involved in > these discussions. At times, it's been frustrating to be patient and I've > mentioned the importance of maintaining good relations with developers. I > personally don't agree with recent calls for complaint against Pace. I > believe it serves to antagonize. I won't debate this point so don't bother > trying to engage me toward that end. regardless, as per my recent request > for an official statement from Allen cronce, president of Pace, I've > received the following communication which he encouraged me to share with > the list. I've already given him a quick thank you for acknowledgement and > will give a proper response first thing on Monday. > > Hi Slau, > > Thanks for your email. Sorry for my delayed response. I was tied up at the > NAMM show and follow up meetings in southern California earlier this week. > > I agree that it's taking a long time for PACE to provide accessibility > support. I also agree that we have not been communicative regarding our > progress. > > What I don't agree with is the assertion that accessibility support is > simple and easy. If it was, we would have rolled it out and been done with > it ages ago. > > The fact of the matter is that there have been tremendous prerequisites in > our way before we can complete accessibility support in the iLok License > Manager and the Activation Experience. I don't want to bore you with the > software development details. Suffice it to say that we've worked through > about half of the prerequisites in the past quarter, which included a > complete modernization and overhaul of our development tools and build > processes. > > Next up is migrating to Qt 5 (required for modern accessibility support), > which in and of itself is no simple matter. The current estimate for > migrating to Qt 5 and adding accessibility support is on the order of four > man months. > > Additionally, moving to this modern version of Qt will mean that new > versions of the ILM and Experience will not be compatible with 10.6 Snow > Leopard. Currently, about 15% of the user base are still using Snow Leopard. > It's not possible to support two completely different code bases, so we will > have to come up with a strategy to provide legacy OS support for some period > while moving forward with Lion and above for all new versions. This adds to > the complexity of rolling out accessibility. > > We currently have internal commitments to delivering our new 2.5 release > this year in time for NAB. There are a number of new features in that > release that are business critical to PACE and our customers. Unfortunately > the engineers who are committed to the 2.5 release are the same people who > are needed to implement accessibility. Since we have limited resources, we > cannot include accessibility in the 2.5 release. > > So the current thinking is that we'll shoot for providing full accessibility > support in our 3.0 release. The hope is that we will deliver this in the New > York AES timeframe. I realize that that date is probably a disappointment > for you. But honestly I don't see how else we can fit this in. It's just too > big and too disruptive to try to force earlier. > > That having been said, I've been speaking with some of our engineers about > exploring whether or not some accessibility support could be delivered via > the older Qt 4 library that we're currently using. It appears that this > older Qt does have some embryonic accessibility support. We just don't know > how bad it is. > > So while we're marching towards the grand vision of moving to Qt 5 and ideal > accessibility, we've started a skunkworks project to see if we can provide > some level of accessibility earlier in the older Qt version. Even if this > attempt is a bust, it will help familiarize the team with what is needed for > the remaining accessibility effort. If there's any good news on this front, > I'll let you know. > > In the meantime, we're gunning for AES in October. Prior to the release, we > would of course be able to provide beta test versions, if that's > interesting. > > One last thought to leave with you. One of the big priority features we were > working on last year was a set of APIs that allows our customers to take > over the activation experience to create things like an in-app store and one > button install. Avid is using these APIs in their upcoming versions of Pro > Tools. That is not something that I could talk about before because it was > unannounced. > > Assuming that Avid will be providing accessibility for these new in-app > purchase features, then newer versions of Pro Tools should allow visually > impaired people to activate and deactivate directly within the application. > > I realize that this is not a complete solution. There will always be > situations where you need to manage your licenses outside of Pro Tools. But > at least for the short term, this might provide some relief. > > Note that I'm fine with you sharing the above information with your group. > > Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns. > > Best, > > Allen Cronce > President > PACE Anti-Piracy > al...@paceap.com > http://www.paceap.com > Vox: 408.377.9774, ext. 641 > Fax: 408.377.9775 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to ptaccess+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to ptaccess+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. 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