communication tools

[Trevor Saunders]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 01, 2010 at 11:31:43AM +0200, Hynek Hanke wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I can easily see why a developer might prefer IRC over
> an embedded web application as the quickest way to solve
> his problem of talking to another developer. However,
> let me explain other considerations as well.

fair enough, I'd be happy to hear a good reason.

irc is pretty good when your a user getting help too.

> The reason why we have started to develop a new
> free software communication tool was that we needed
> to enable people who visit our websites to easily communicate
> with others. That was first a requirement in the Digital Language
> School project for the blind and visually impaired.
> 
> Easy means not having to install any external tool,
> set up channel names etc., just follow a link on the
> website which will take them to the chatroom.

actually you can do this with irc, there is a java client I don't know
the details, but could dig them up.  At any rate the experience is user
clicks link and enters irc channel.  Since the app is written in java
I'd expect it may be accessible, or could be fixed.

> While there are numerous proprietary solutions available
> for embedded web communication tools, we didn't found
> any which would be Free Software and at the same time
> well accessible for the visually handicaped or easily adaptable
> to become accessible.
> 
> The new website is going to contain both the development
> and user section. As we said before, the user section will
> offer user-oriented information on Free Accessibility. Something,
> which is now severely missing.  For the user section, it is
> of course much better if visitors are able to directly enter
> communication with other users by clicking a simple link,
> as opposed to be asked to install and learn some special
> application (such as an IRC client).

I'll point you at the irc channel link thing for freenode I mentioned
before, also I think about every im client can speak irc including
pidgin and empathy.  Finally remember that irc channels are a common way
for users to communicate in the open source world so there is nothing
special or new, and this won't be new for most users.

Trev

> We decided for Flash and Red5 for technical reasons, but
> are looking for HTML5 when it is ready. The only other
> possibility now seemed to be Java. The Flash component
> exports a JavaScript API and can be controlled by
> ordinary HTML buttons on the webpage, thus making
> it accessible even on platforms where Flash itself is not.
> 
> So this is the bigger picture and since users are,
> at the end of the day, whom we do our work for,
> it would greatly help us to use our products ourselves
> to make sure they are nice and comfortable for them.
> 
> Of course I'm not imposing this solution, just explaining
> why there is value in it and why we would welcome
> cooperation of anyone who is interested.
> 
> Best regards,
> Hynek Hanke
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speechd mailing list
> Speechd at lists.freebsoft.org
> http://lists.freebsoft.org/mailman/listinfo/speechd
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: 
<http://lists.freebsoft.org/pipermail/speechd/attachments/20100901/7d49a6c5/attachment.pgp>