[Kde-accessibility] Fwd: KDE 3.1 suggestion: gtkeyboard clone

[Bill Haneman]

On Wed, 2002-06-26 at 12:09, amth wrote:
> Hi, this email was first evaluated by Dirk Mueller and he suggested I wou=
ld forward it to this address...
>=20
> Becource I can't pick up this thing myself right now Dirk suggested that =
perhaps someone in the accessibility-team could implement it (to wishlist a=
tleast ;-).
>=20

There is a virtual keyboard project (Gnome Onscreen Keyboard, "GOK")
that is pretty far along in the development cycle, as part of the GNOME
accessibility project.  It will work with any environment that can
support the GNOME 2 libraries.

It presents dynamic keyboards which adapt to both user input and the
currently active application UI.  It also works with applications that
don't explicitly support the GNOME Accessibility APIs, i.e. plain X
applications and KDE apps.  It also supports a variety of input devices
and input methods, ranging from direct pointer selection to various
scanning and predictive algorithms.

For more information, see the GNOME Accessibility Project pages,=20
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap and the GOK pages:

http://www.gok.ca

GOK is available from GNOME cvs
(:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome), as module 'gok'.

-Bill

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: amth [mailto:amth@ziplip.com]
> > Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002, 12:08 AM
> > To: mueller@kde.org
> > Subject: KDE 3.1 suggestion: gtkeyboard clone
> >=20
> > Hi, hopefully I sended this to right address (please don't flame me if =
not)
> > about suggestion of feature for KDE 3.1.
> >=20
> > The one feature that would greatly benefit systems without physical key=
board,
> > like PDA/WDA of mobile phones, would be to include some sort of graphic=
al
> > (virtual) keybord to the system that could be used to input to some
> > console/stdio.
> >=20
> > Nowdays I can't find any great utility for that task other that very ou=
tdated
> > gtkeyboard <http://www.gnu.org/software/gtkeybord/> that does the job p=
retty
> > ugly but everyone needing such feature are stuck with that (notice that=
 it is
> > included on some Linux distributions so other need it too).
> >=20
> > So my suggested form for the KDE:
> >=20
> > 1. Could it be "bonded" on any window for example same way as Mozilla's
> > sidebar? (for example on the bottom centre could be small window resize=
r size
> > handle?
> >=20
> > 2. That pad could have separate "skins" for different programs like:
> >=20
> > 2.1. Normal keyboard(s)
> > 2.2. Media player interface
> > 2.3. Visual braille console (check out brltty <http://dave.mielke.cc/br=
ltty/>
> >=20
> > 3. Totally separate function that is quite closely bonded to those feat=
ures is
> > speech synthesizer that would benefit for example lazy people waiting
> > something to happen on some window or people visually impaired.
> >=20
> > 4. As windows do differ in size maybe rendering the whole thing with SV=
G?
> >=20
> > Good thing about that feature is that it should be easy to implement wi=
thout
> > secrificing source compability and quite many programs could use it for
> > implementing interfaces for the program that does not need to be visibl=
e all
> > the time.
> >=20
> >=20
> > Oh, well... Just a suggestion that could be usefull for people with imp=
aires
> > so I bet KDE would get kudos for doing that. ;-)
> >=20
> > Not to mention that those PDA/phones would benefit also and as we all t=
ry to
> > get Linux everywhere we can... ;-)
> >=20
> >=20
> > Thank you,
> >=20
> > Arto Hyt=F6nen
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