Re: Meeting Minutes Published - November 11, 2010

[Peter Korn <peter korn oracle com>]

Cesar,

 El 17/12/2010 12:21, Piñeiro escribió:

...

So, turn cross-platform Orca means turns two modules, and create a new
one. This is a really big amount of work to do. And we enter in a
vicious circle. You proposed that turn in order to get funds. But we
would require a really big amount of funds to get that.

Thanks for your explanation which helped me to understand better how Orca works.

Agreed. Given this scenario it seems clear that the effort is greater than the return.

However, IMHO, I think that this approach could be taken into account for some new
AT projects, especially those less dependant on specific api's (for instance, I'm thinking
of AAC software). Beyond probably increasing funding opportunities (according to previous
comments in this thread), a larger user base could be reached. Is just my opinion.

This is already being done.  Dasher is already cross-platform.  The plug-ins to Open Office to generate DAISY books or print to braille are cross-platform (well, the braille part will be on other platforms soon).  Etc. 

Having been involved in an attempt at making a cross-platform screen reader (we wanted to make the new outSPOKEN both for Windows and Mac - and I had an experimental port to SunOS going back in the day), I'm of the opinion that the overhead cost in abstracting the different approaches & hooks & such for the different platforms is likely not worth the cost - vs. just developing separate efforts which share ideas.


Peter

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