Tomas Kalibera has related that he has some scars from fighting with some unexpected interactions between UTF-8 and the GraphApp library that is used for RGui and I think he said that screen readers were involved. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a leftover issue. (This is obviously a kind of issue that non-blind users don't "see" :-) ).
Would it work for you to use the terminal application (the "DOS box", or whatever it is called these days) until the issue gets fixed? In general, I would expect your go-to guy for blindness-related issues to be Jonathon Godfrey (cc'ed). Perhaps he can offer some advice. -pd > On 22 Sep 2022, at 15:48 , Andrew Hart via R-devel <r-devel@r-project.org> > wrote: > > Hi. I'm having an issue with R 4.2.1 on Windows but I'm not sure if this is > the right place to ask about it. If it's not, I'm hoping someone can point me > in the right direction. > > I'm blind and have been using R for about 11 years now. The base build > available on CRAN is quite accessible and works pretty well with > screen-reading software such as JAWS for Windows and NVDA. R-studio is not > accessible which appears to have something to do with the version of QT it > uses, but that's not relevant as I don't use it. > > Recently I installed R 4.2.1 (I tend to upgrade two or three times a year and > this time I was jumping from R 4.1.2 to 4.2.1). > However, I've encountered a serious problem which makes the latest version > more or less unusable for doing any kind of serious work. > The issue is that the screen-reading software is unable to locate the R > cursor and behaves as though the cursor is near the top left of the R > application window. Practically, this means I can't tell what characters I'm > passing over when cursoring left and right, nor can I hear what character is > being deleted when the backspace is pressed. Most importantly, I can't tell > where the insertion point is. This is a major regression in the ability to > work with and edit the command line in the R console. There are ways of > actually viewing the command line but the way I work is frequently calling up > a previous command and making a change so as to not have to type the whole > command again. > > I Went and installed R 4.1.3 and R 4.2.0 in an attempt to find out exactly > when things went awry and the issue first appeared in R 4.2.0. > Looking through the release notes, the only things mentioned that seem likely > to be relevant are the following: > > • R uses a new 64-bit Tcl/Tk bundle. The previous 32-bit/64-bit bundle had a > different layout and can no longer be used. > > and > > • R uses UTF-8 as the native encoding on recent Windows systems (at least > Windows 10 version 1903, Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 1903). As a > part > of this change, R uses UCRT as the C runtime. UCRT should be installed > manually on systems older than Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 before > installing > R. > > I can't really see how changing to utf-8 as the native encoding would produce > the behaviour I'm seeing, so I am guessing that the change in TCL/TK might be > the culprit. > > I'm hoping that someone will be able to help shed some light on what's going > on here. > > Thanks a lot, > Andrew. > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -- Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Office: A 4.23 Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
