[ros-dev] Google summer code

[Mgr. Janusz Chmiel]

Dear core developers of Reactos,

    I would like to inform YOu about my findings related to screen readers support while using Wine emulator, because as i understood, Wine and Reactos are sharing crucial information to make those tools as much Windows compatible as it is possible.

    1. NVDA is not able to run in The Wine, which can be downloaded from PCLINUXOSS repositories, NVDA is only plaing a welcome gong and then i Am receiving series of error messages, one related to winmm.dll and also other related to MSAA support. oleacc.dll very probably.

    When i tried one Czech very little screen reader based on using API hooks and API calls, program is written by using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 professional edition and crucial helper dlls are written in Microsoft visual C++ but not Express 2005 edition, older release of this programming language has been used.

What are mi findings?

Algorithms used for generating synthesizet speech are working ammazingly in Wine. but other algorithms for fetching names of buttons, objects and for getting textual information are not working.

But i Am afraid, that implementing reliable MSAA support is so much complex for core developers of Wine or Reactos, that it will never been possible to reach this goal.

Many of us are very intelligent and professional developers, who are even able to use Assembler while compiling and developing Reactos core components, but i think, that without access to Windows MSAA source code developing reliable MSAA support will be only big dream, which would never been come true.

    Reactos is in general very stable and reliable operating system and i believe, that in future, also many device drivers will work with Reactos.

If also MSAA support would be added in future, this would be very positive for many handicapped users, because MSAA is being used not only by screen readers, but also while using other assistive technology, which are based on MSAA calls.

BUt i think, that Microsoft will not want to reveal The MSAA source code, the modified source code of oleacc.dll, user32.dll and others. Accessing source code is fortunately possible, but i read about this, that some fee must be paied to Microsoft to get access to their source code repository, and i think, that there will be very restricted conditions.

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