Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Windows LO with JAWS

Hi :)
As i understand it ...

i think the Apache Open Office licensing is somewhat more proprietary so we
can't legally copy their code.  They can copy our's.

This led to IBM giving Apache a copy of all their accesibility code from
their Lotus Symphony Suite.

Back when Sun owned OpenOffice, back then called OO.o, there were numerous
downstream projects such as IBM's Lotus Symphony, Go-OO (as used in many
versions of Linux), NeoOffice (Mac) and others.  Each added extra code or
re-wrote parts and each had it's own niche market.  When Sun got taken over
by Oracle many of Sun's Open Source projects forked.

Since then most of the old projects downstream of OO.o have merged into
LibreOffice along with nearly all the personnel and community that had been
working on OO.o.  IBM were the exception.  They didn't want to make their
code Free for everyone to copy so they gave it to the Apache Foundation
(Plc?).

However, along with many other office suites and office programs, we
both/all use the same formats as each other.  The "Open Document Format",
known as ODF, unites us in ways that different versions of MS Office have
never been consistent with each other.  Oddly quite a few people work in
both projects so in some ways we are still 1 community but with 2 official
organisations and 2 competing products! :)

Of course we can still all use the older MS Formats (.doc and .xls etc) to
share documents with other people but it's usually best to keep an
'original' in ODF rather than rely on MS's unreliable formats.

The ODF for text-based documents (ie done on word-processors such as
Writer) is .odt - the ODF for spreadsheets is .ods

I may have missed a wrinkle or two but that is all as i understand it.


So hopefully Apache Open Office or IBM's Lotus Symphony should be fine for
Windows.  AOO is the most up-to-date of those and is still free and is
still actively being developed and has a nice community.  Too many "and"s!

Btw this is the first time I've heard of a difference between LibreOffice
on Windows and LibreOffice on Linux.  It's another reason I'm glad of
having moved mostly away from Windows.  I still have dual boots on some
machines but I aalmost entirely use Linux now :)

Good luck and regards from
a Tom :)



On 4 May 2018 23:43, "V Stuart Foote" <VStuart.Foote@utsa.edu> wrote:

Blindjourno wrote

> Since you all can take code from OO, can't you take basically, all of
> their accessibility information and use it in LO? I mean, I stopped
> using JAWS years ago, but I heard from other people that JAWS works with
> OO? Would that be a lot of work? Taking all of the accessibility
> information from OO because OO is very accessible, just not updated or
> even nearly as stable.

Apache OpenOffice (AOO) uses the same IAccessible2 API, but unlike
LibreOffice they left the MSAA/IAccessible API in place, so there is
marginal Assistive Technology tool support in AOO with JAWS. And, nothing
that LibreOffice would care to implement--thank you.

Before its demise WindowsEyes had support for select IA2 based
applications--but never LibreOffice or AOO.

VFO/Freedom Scientific's refusal to support accessible events instrumented
with IA2 API has never made much sense to me personally, but their
insistence on Windows applications adopting Microsoft UI Automation (UIA)
brands them as a second rate player in the Free and Open Source Software
arena. It is not their business model--too bad if you are dependent on them.

LibreOffice as an OpenSource and cross platform development project is not
obliged to provide proprietary UIA bindings--an extension to "bridge" IA2 to
UIA could be developed--but we'll leave that to Freedom Scientific to
implement if they choose. We'll concentrate on making the native IA2/ATK &
AT-SPI/NSAccessibility bridges function cross platform against LibreOffices
internal accessibility modules.

For any JAWS user on Windows--LibreOffice is accessible at no cost, simply
install NVDA. Alternatively, ORCA on a Linux will do well, but if you need
more hand holding for a small fee the Hypra project's U.A.S. "Universally
Accessible operating System"  is a first rate Linux Debian distribution.

Enjoy...




--
Sent from: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Accessibility-f2006038.html

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: accessibility+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems?
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/accessibility/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
deleted

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: accessibility+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/accessibility/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted