Re: dosemu and accessibility

Julius Schwartzenberg
2021-03-31T20:12:02Z

Alright, I will continue with top posting then. I think arch would help
a lot as it has more packages, also through AUR. I would recommend
starting from scratch and installing the fdpp, comcom32 and dosemu2
packages. fdpp and comcom32 provide a DOS environment inside dosemu2, so
you do not have to provide a copy of dos. You can still do so if that is
preferable however.

Op 31-03-2021 om 14:13 schreef Jude DaShiell:
> Yes, easier to get to with top posting.  Slackware hasn't yet got
> dosemu2 but archlinux has it in git and since hard drives are
> interchangeable here I can run archlinux.
>
>
>
> On Wed, 31 Mar 2021, Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
>
>> Are mail replies at the top easier for you to process?
>>
>> It would be better to move to DOSEMU2 as nobody can really help with
>> the older version anymore. Do you have the ability to sign up for a
>> GitHub account? To receive the mails on dosemu2 one has to log on to
>> GitHub and press "watch" and then "all activity" at the top of of this
>> page:
>> https://github.com/dosemu2/dosemu2
>>
>> Let it know if that turns out to be difficult. Using dumb or terminal
>> mode would indeed seem the easiest way to have dosemu accessible as
>> those modes are entirely text based. Are you aware of graphical
>> software for dos that has accessibility features?
>>
>> Op 30-03-2021 om 21:59 schreef Jude DaShiell:
>>>  Hi, I have cloned stuff from github before and built it on my
>>> system. This
>>>  distribution is slint.  When packages are new, slackbuilds.org may
>>> have a
>>>  SlackBuild script made for the package so others can install it on
>>> slint
>>>  and on slackware.  Slint is slackware international version and is at
>>>  https://slint.fr/.  All of this work was done in dosemu 1.4.0.8.
>>>  I learned sdl exposes no accessibility information at all so it's
>>>  unuseable for any screen readers.  I thought that was the case and
>>> got it
>>>  confirmed by a sighted person doing accessibility work on orca.  I'm
>>>  running dosemu with espeakup and will try it later with provox and tdsr
>>>  two other console screen readers.
>>>  Better yet to move on up to dosemu2 as well.  Thanks for the heads
>>> up on
>>>  this and if dosemu2 has its own email list I'd like to subscribe to
>>> that
>>>  one.
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Tue, 30 Mar 2021, Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Hi Jude,
>>>>
>>>>  Op 29-03-2021 om 10:43 schreef Jude DaShiell:
>>>>>   I put a .dosemurc and .mtoolsrc file together since a long-standing
>>>>>  friend
>>>>>   has some dos applications he'd like to run and both of us are blind.
>>>>  I saw some of your previous messages and I think it is important to
>>>>  highlight that as you are blind, you are using different equipment
>>>> than
>>>>  what previous respondents probably assumed you were using.
>>>>
>>>>  This mailing list is barely used anymore by the rest of the DOSEMU
>>>> user
>>>>  community and so are all the 1.x versions of DOSEMU. There is now a
>>>>  GitHub project started by Stas, the DOSEMU 2 project, with
>>>> versioning to
>>>>  be 2.x based and interaction went over to the infrastructure that
>>>> GitHub
>>>>  is providing. The accessibility consequences of this were most likely
>>>>  never taken into consideration.
>>>>
>>>>  Unfortunately it is not something that can be changed overnight, but I
>>>>  think it would be appropriate to strive to fix this, especially if you
>>>>  would be interested in being more involved and/or there might be even
>>>>  more DOSEMU users in a similar situation.
>>>>
>>>>  My proposal would be to set up some simple webpages that are
>>>> friendly to
>>>>  screen readers and braille devices as part of the new DOSEMU 2 project
>>>>  with instructions to install newer packages particularly for
>>>>  distributions that handle screen readers and braille screens well
>>>> or at
>>>>  least the distributions popular among users of such devices. Maybe
>>>> your
>>>>  .dosemurc and .mtoolsrc could be provided as well.
>>>>
>>>>  There could possibly be an instruction to sign up your e-mail
>>>> address as
>>>>  a so-called watcher to the DOSEMU 2 project or maybe we could link
>>>> this
>>>>  mailing list so it watches the DOSEMU 2 project. The amount of
>>>> traffic is
>>>>  quite significant, on some days only a few messages, but sometimes
>>>> there
>>>>  might be over 20 mails a day. Note that you can respond to those
>>>> messages
>>>>  by e-mail and the replies will by part of the conversation as usual.
>>>>  Searching online I found a community on GitHub called Blind Computing.
>>>>  Maybe we could ask them for advice.
>>>>
>>>>  How easy would it be for you to upgrade to a newer DOSEMU if
>>>> packages are
>>>>  not provided by your distribution? Which distribution are you using?
>>>>  What do you think of my proposals regarding the mails?
>>>>
>>>>  Here is the GitHub project for DOSEMU 2, I do not know if you can
>>>> access
>>>>  it comfortably:
>>>>  https://github.com/dosemu2
>>>>
>>>>  Here is the page on the Blind Computing website about contributing to
>>>>  their GitHub project:
>>>>  https://blindcomputing.org/contributing/
>>>>
>>>>  Best regards,
>>>>  Julius
>>>>
>>