[oats-sig] new member of mailing list

On 25/09/2007, stephen emslie <stephenemslie at gmail.com> wrote:

I really like the idea of the gaze-driven switch.  I also, really, really,
like the idea of a gesture-driven switch (i.e. choose the movement, system
learns, repeat the movement, system switches)...  

I look forward to seeing the first betas Stephen! (-;

Interestingly cameramouse: http://www.cameramouse.org/about.html has just
become free... I've asked if they will become open source.... ! 

Cheers.

Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of stephen emslie
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 6:07 PM
To: OATs Project Special Interest Group
Subject: Re: [oats-sig] new member of mailing list

Perhaps now is a good time for one of those introduction things going
around. My name is Stephen Emslie, and I'm a software developer working with
web technology and living in London. I met up with Simon at the COGAIN (eye
tracking) convention in Leicester recently, and he told me about OATS.

I also got turned on to the idea of a gaze-driven switch there, which (in a
nutshell) would interpret eye movement and emulate a more traditional head
switch. This would be an attempt to make the most of what we can get out of
cheap off-the-shelf hardware and open source software [1].

I've been looking for a way to get started on this stuff, and while I think
I could get a lot of mileage out of emulating existing switch devices, an
accessibility platform like Jambu is a really exiting thing to keep in mind,
and possibly use as a test framework as I'm definitely going to be working
in python.

It sounds like you have looked through this pretty thoroughly, but I wonder
if some of those recent developments might make development with
Python+XUL+SVG a bit less of a headache. SVG support is coming along in
gecko and I've noticed that PyXPCOM now lives in Mozilla trunk and appears
to be active. I like your idea of using both python and javascript
appropriately. Perhaps that is a way to approach the sandboxing issues you
mentioned?

It would be great to see a screenshot of Jambu in action.

Stephen

[1] http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/opengazer/

On 9/25/07, Steve Lee <steve at fullmeasure.co.uk> wrote:
> On 25/09/2007, stephen emslie <stephenemslie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jambu looks really interesting. I've been developing web 
> > applications with python, open source tools and the web standards 
> > stack for a few years so this sounds right up my alley.
>
> Hi, I could have done with your help earlier :-)
>
> > Does Jambu embed python with PyXPCOM? It would be great to see this 
> > technology put into practice so soon after SVG and python have hit 
> > mozilla!
>
> No. After early attempts to leverage the Mozilla Platform with Python 
> and SVG I decided after discussion with Aaron (a11y lead at Mozilla) 
> to abandon Mozilla. I had big problems with Python on XUL, both 
> building and running. Though python access to the platform (pyXPCOM as 
> you say) was easier to set up, I at that time thought I wanted python 
> DOM access and scripting as well but Mark Hammond's work on that at 
> Active State seemed to have frozen (i'm now not so sure I want that, 
> partly due to concerns over sandbox security).
>
> Recent Mozilla developments with the renewed activity on XULRunner as 
> a platform and ActiveState's commitment to open Sourcing parts of 
> Komodo (XUL + python) make it much more attractive. I would still 
> rather use a standard release of XUL rather than a custom build for 
> reasons of support and testing.
>
> I'm using librsvg for SVG rendering and without SVG DOM have to 
> provide simple dynamic rendering and events in my own model. That is a 
> bit of a pain but does afford ultimate flexibility. I haven't ruled 
> XUL out completely as a possible future direction. The inherent 
> portability is very attractive.
>
> Another possibility would be to use both Python and Javascript as 
> appropriate. I like Javascript, but its just that I *really* like 
> python ;-).
>
> On another note I see Mark Finkle just announced his work on a 
> Javascript version of ctypes that gives dynamic access to XPCOM. That 
> should be very useful.
>
> --
> Steve Lee
> --
> Open Source Assistive Technology Software PowerTalk - your 
> presentations can speak for themselves www.fullmeasure.co.uk
>
>

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