Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (63245)	11/23/2001 5:02:10 PM
From: dybdahl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Yes. Most open-source software is interface independent. For instance, a Linux server easily boots without a graphics adaptor installed, and even the boot messages that appear before the OS has loaded, can be read by blind people (via braille screen) or spoken loud. This is old news and has been part of Linux for many years. It is extremely easy to put a voice recognition or handwriting recognition software on top of all text-mode apps - on ordinary X-Windows apps, however, mouse control is needed. Fortunately, both Gnome and KDE applications solve this. KDE already provides access perfectly without mouse, and I believe Gnome also does it, maybe not perfectly yet, though. KDE therefore provides the possibility to integrate well with both the technologies, you mention, and it also provides access to a lot of functionality through a DCOM/COM alike interface. When it comes to the display of the GUI, many graphical Linux programs require X-Windows to run, but all Gnome applications are able to run on framebuffer devices too, which are common on PDAs, embedded systems etc. Gnome apps also provide the ability to rescale their entire userinterface according to the size of its widgets. This means that a new interface with different widget sizes plugs in perfectly. I'm not sure about KDE's screen interface, but since Qt, which KDE uses for all its GUI, exists on Mac, Windows and PDAs, it seems quite platform and X-Windows independent, too. Currently there seems to limits to which user interfaces that are compatible with Linux, and especially for blind people, Linux seems like a much better choice than Windows.