Qt Programming Language

JKSH · 21 Nov 2018, 15:42

@Annabelle said in Qt Programming Language:

@JKSH said in Qt Programming Language:

Do you have any family/friends you can trust with this?

No I don't, because all my family and friends have just regular landlines and cell phones without texting options.

Cell phones without the ability to receive texts? I didn't realize these still existed!

If the common route is not available to you, then it's time to get creative and find ways to overcome your obstacles. Can you think of any ideas?

Annabelle · 21 Nov 2018, 16:06

@JKSH said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle said in Qt Programming Language:

@JKSH said in Qt Programming Language:

Do you have any family/friends you can trust with this?

No I don't, because all my family and friends have just regular landlines and cell phones without texting options.

Cell phones without the ability to receive texts? I didn't realize these still existed!

If the common route is not available to you, then it's time to get creative and find ways to overcome your obstacles. Can you think of any ideas?

I wish I could, but I'm not sure which way to turn. Interestingly enough, Microsoft thinks that someone might have used my Microsoft Account to send lots of junk mail. Trouble is, I'm the only one who knows the login details as far as I know. It was just a case of me somehow forgetting my password, and as a result, they didn't believe it was me that tried to sign in to my account. What kind of monkeyshine is that, I wonder? On top of that, they say your account could be temporarily suspended due to prolonged inactivity. To me, that makes just as much sense as a snake with no slither!

JonB · 21 Nov 2018, 17:53

@Annabelle
Given that you seem to have come to an impasse using your Visual Studio, which need unlocking. If all else fails, what about:

Uninstall the VS completely from your PC, as best you can.
Get yourself some brand new, free email address from Microsoft, Gmail or whoever.
Use that to create whatever account MS wants for downloading VS, restarting from scratch.

Since the VS edition is free, I can't imagine MS cares what email address you use.

The only thing I cannot promise is: after you uninstall the current VS "evaluation" it is possible it will leave something around (in the registry) which it will notice and refuse to install a new evaluation. Hope not, but cannot guarantee.

Up to you, but it's one to proceed if you're not getting anywhere from where you are now....

kshegunov · 21 Nov 2018, 17:55

That seems like a rather complicated way to get a compiler. Isn't it much simpler just to install mingw along with Qt through the Qt maintenance tool and just roll with that ...?

JonB · 21 Nov 2018, 18:00

@kshegunov
Would @Annabelle then be using Qt Creator (with MinGW) instead of VS? The thing we have to bear in mind is that changing IDE, or even compiler, could be a big thing for her?

kshegunov · 21 Nov 2018, 18:22

I imagine so, yes. From my point of view Creator is both better and faster, but then again your mileage may vary.
In any case, I myself have grown rather tired of MS's products and more so their licenses, paywalls and whatnot, and currently I build with g++ for linux as well as windows (mingw), whenever I can get away with it, which is in 99% of cases.

JonB · wrote on 21 Nov 2018, 18:22

@kshegunov
Indeed. But @Annabelle's interaction with an IDE will be very different from ours. Speed etc. may not be her issue. Rather, I would imagine how the interface works for blind access will be far more important. And it may be that VS's accessibility support is superior to Qt Creator's, or at least different.

Annabelle · J JonB 21 Nov 2018, 16:06

@JonB said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle
Given that you seem to have come to an impasse using your Visual Studio, which need unlocking. If all else fails, what about:

Uninstall the VS completely from your PC, as best you can.

Get yourself some brand new, free email address from Microsoft, Gmail or whoever.

Use that to create whatever account MS wants for downloading VS, restarting from scratch.

Since the VS edition is free, I can't imagine MS cares what email address you use.

The only thing I cannot promise is: after you uninstall the current VS "evaluation" it is possible it will leave something around (in the registry) which it will notice and refuse to install a new evaluation. Hope not, but cannot guarantee.

Up to you, but it's one to proceed if you're not getting anywhere from where you are now....

I uninstalled the program completely, making sure there were no traces left in the registry. Since Visual Studio doesn't seem to be good for me, what do I do now? Are there any IDE's out there that are fully accessible to screenreaders like JAWS, which can compile programs for all operating systems, won't install any bloatware, and most important of all, won't take forever to install?

Annabelle · 19 Jan 2019, 06:55

I haven't heard anything for 2 months on this post. Has anybody seen and read my most recent post, regarding obtaining something other than Visual Studio? Something that won't expire after 30 days, won't take forever to install or uninstall, and most important of all, will be accessible to screenreaders like JAWS?

JKSH · 19 Jan 2019, 09:38

Hi @Annabelle, if you rule out Visual Studio, then your next best bet is to use the Qt Creator IDE with the MinGW compiler. Here are some simple instructions to install these: https://wiki.qt.io/Quick_Start:_Installing_Qt_on_Windows

I don't have JAWS so I cannot tell how well it integrates with Qt Creator. Install it to find out.

I forgot to reply to your last post, and for that I'm sorry. At the same time, I encourage you to take the initiative to research and experiment, even if nobody instructs you to.

Annabelle · 20 Jan 2019, 00:58

@JKSH said in Qt Programming Language:

Hi @Annabelle, if you rule out Visual Studio, then your next best bet is to use the Qt Creator IDE with the MinGW compiler. Here are some simple instructions to install these: https://wiki.qt.io/Quick_Start:_Installing_Qt_on_Windows

I don't have JAWS so I cannot tell how well it integrates with Qt Creator. Install it to find out.

I forgot to reply to your last post, and for that I'm sorry. At the same time, I encourage you to take the initiative to research and experiment, even if nobody instructs you to.

I have Qt Creator on my machine, and JAWS only seems to recognize a few components, for example, the opening screen with the Project Treeview. I wonder what I might be doing wrong. Also, Qt Creator doesn't have the kind of menu bar that you can access with the Alt Key or the Applications key. At least not that I know of. It seems you would have to have sighted help to click on whatever parameter you want, like a button or a checkbox, to insert it into a project. What's up with that, I wonder? I wish Qt Creator would have a menu you could access with a keyboard shortcut, that lists all the possible parameters you can insert into your project.

kenchan · 20 Jan 2019, 01:23

@Annabelle
I am sure you are more knowledgeable about screen readers and braille displays than I am, however if you are using Windows 10, do the Windows Narrator and the braille drivers not work for you?
Also you can set up your own short cuts for QtCreator and on windows the menu items do have alt key access.
Since Qt has classes for adding Accessibility to applications I am assuming that QtCreator follows best practices in this matter. You can always ask the developers about that directly by asking them on the mailing list here

Annabelle · 20 Jan 2019, 02:06

@kenchan said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle
I am sure you are more knowledgeable about screen readers and brail displays than I am, however if you are using Windows 10, do the Windows Narrator and the braille drivers not work for you?
Also you can set up your own short cuts for QtCreator and on windows the menu items do have alt key access.
Since Qt has classes for adding Accessibility to applications I am assuming that QtCreator follows best practices in this matter. You can always ask the developers about that directly by asking them on the mailing list here

Windows 10? I'm actually using Windows 7. Specifically Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit with JAWS 15.

kenchan · 20 Jan 2019, 15:32

@Annabelle
Ah, well that is a shame. I have not used Windows 7 for years so I don't know if it had Narrator and braille drivers.
The QtCreator menu shortcuts should be the same though.
So the issue with your JAWS thingy is that it can't read the QtCreator menu items and controls or it can't work with your braille device or both?

Annabelle · 21 Jan 2019, 00:42

@kenchan said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle
Ah, well that is a shame. I have not used Windows 7 for years so I don't know if it had Narrator and braille drivers.
The QtCreator menu shortcuts should be the same though.
So the issue with your JAWS thingy is that it can't read the QtCreator menu items and controls or it can't work with your braille device or both?

I don't have my Braille device installed on this machine. As far as the menu items, if they're image-based, then JAWS can't read them. It only reads icons that are text-based. Same goes for Narrator, as well as NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access), yet another screenreader.

JKSH · wrote on 20 Jan 2019, 19:02

@Annabelle said in Qt Programming Language:

I have Qt Creator on my machine, and JAWS only seems to recognize a few components, for example, the opening screen with the Project Treeview. I wonder what I might be doing wrong. Also, Qt Creator doesn't have the kind of menu bar that you can access with the Alt Key or the Applications key. At least not that I know of.

I turned on Windows 10 Narrator and opened Qt Creator. When I pressed the Alt key, the menu was activated and Windows Narrator said, "File. Menu Item. Menu Keyboard and F". After that, I pressed the Tab key. The next menu item was selected and Windows Narrator said, "Edit. Menu Item. Menu Keyboard and E".

Could you try again? Press Alt then Tab. After that, press the Escape key to leave the menu, then try pressing Alt then F.

It seems you would have to have sighted help to click on whatever parameter you want, like a button or a checkbox, to insert it into a project. What's up with that, I wonder? I wish Qt Creator would have a menu you could access with a keyboard shortcut, that lists all the possible parameters you can insert into your project.

It sounds like you had opened the visual editor for creating graphical user interfaces (GUI). This editor is optional; you can create a GUI using text code alone.

kenchan · 21 Jan 2019, 11:03

@Annabelle
I see that the NVDA screen reader cannot read the icon menus that start from the top on the left hand side of the QtCreator main window. I guess this is the problem you have seen with QtCreator? That left most panel is called the Mode Selector and you can close it if is too noisy for your screen reader.
Maybe you could ask the QtCreator developers to make that panel more accessible to screen readers?
On the whole though it looks like most of the menus should work with a screen reader (I tried it with NVDA but did not test every menu though).

Annabelle · 21 Jan 2019, 13:17

@kenchan said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle
I see that the NVDA screen reader cannot read the icon menus that start from the top on the left hand side of the QtCreator main window. I guess this is the problem you have seen with QtCreator? That left most panel is called the Mode Selector and you can close it if is too noisy for your screen reader.
Maybe you could ask the QtCreator developers to make that panel more accessible to screen readers?
On the whole though it looks like most of the menus should work with a screen reader (I tried it with NVDA but did not test every menu though).

Mode Selector? I'm confused! Also, how would I put things like checkboxes and combo boxes into a project with Qt Creator? Is there a screenreader-friendly menu that lets you select the parameters you'd like to incorporate into a new project?

kenchan · 21 Jan 2019, 15:40

@Annabelle
Well, I think you will have that problem with any of the IDE tools available as they all basically do things in the same way. Dragging and dropping GUI elements onto the screen is probably quite a difficult thing to with the assistance of a screen reader. You can however create GUIs without using the graphical interface designer by just programming them directly with code yourself. There is much more coding to be done but many people do it that way.

Annabelle · 21 Jan 2019, 22:38

@kenchan said in Qt Programming Language:

@Annabelle
Well, I think you will have that problem with any of the IDE tools available as they all basically do things in the same way. Dragging and dropping GUI elements onto the screen is probably quite a difficult thing to with the assistance of a screen reader. You can however create GUIs without using the graphical interface designer by just programming them directly with code yourself. There is much more coding to be done but many people do it that way.

When I finish the code, I'm wondering what compiler I could use that would be completely accessible for me. Coding in C++ is what I'm learning through www.learncpp.com, and the IDE part is where I'm stuck in a rut.