Hi, 

I'm interested in the use POV-Ray by people who have limited hand 
dexterity because of some physical condition or disability that limits 
their ability to use a mouse or any other type of pointing device. I 
think POV-Ray would allow a segment of kids with disabilities to 
experience and become involved in the real world of design and building. 
Does anyone know of anybody using POV-Ray for this purpose? 

Also are there libraries of macros for describing things like nuts and 
bolts, pulley and gear systems, etc? And are there tutorials/articles on 
the best ways to approach describing mechanical systems? Preferably not 
in paper format due to accessibility issues. Then are there any tools 
like pre-processors or cross platform IDEs that make the scripting 
development easier?  

Rick

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Rick Berger <rbe### [at] rogerscom> wrote:
> I'm interested in the use POV-Ray by people who have limited hand 
> dexterity because of some physical condition or disability that limits 
> their ability to use a mouse or any other type of pointing device. I 
> think POV-Ray would allow a segment of kids with disabilities to 
> experience and become involved in the real world of design and building. 
> Does anyone know of anybody using POV-Ray for this purpose? 

  I don't know if POV-Ray is being used for that purpose, but if I'm not
mistaken one of the early POV-Ray developers had physical disabilities,
but that didn't stop him from making a wonderful job at participating in
the development of POV-Ray and contributing significant important features.
Disabilities are certainly not an obstacle to programming or, in this case,
computer graphics.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Rick Berger" <rbe### [at] rogerscom> wrote in message 
news:48e1200e$1@news.povray.org...
> I'm interested in the use POV-Ray by people who have limited hand
> dexterity because of some physical condition or disability that limits
> their ability to use a mouse or any other type of pointing device.

POV-Ray provides a text-based language that enables you to effectively 
'describe' a scene in a text file. IMO the pointing device is far less 
significant than the keyboard for POV-Ray, but you would need to consider 
whether the dexterity issues you mentioned would be equally problematic for 
using a keyboard.  POV-Ray typically involves a lot of typing.

I have a little experience of designing systems to meet accessibility 
requirements, but most of the solutions I've come across that could help 
with keyboard entry would not be particularly effective for supporting the 
sort of keyboard entry required for entering or editing the POV-Ray Scene 
Description Language (SDL). For example, speech recognition tools are most 
effective where the context reduces the potential for ambiguity, such as in 
composing literature or responding to one of a predefined set of options, 
which is not particularly the case with POV-Ray SDL.

Do you see keyboard entry as being an issue or do you have some device or 
technology in mind to circumvent such issues?

Regards,
Chris B.

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That gives me an interesting idea: Has anyone tried pairing Povray with 
a speech-to-text system?



-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

Amnesia's where you forget something, right?

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"William Tracy" <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote in message 
news:48e170f5$1@news.povray.org...
> That gives me an interesting idea: Has anyone tried pairing Povray with a 
> speech-to-text system?

I've spent many hours experimenting with various speech-to-text systems and, 
after hours of training it to recognize your voice and hours training 
yourself to speak in a consistent and clear fashion, it can be made to 
achieve a reasonable level of accuracy where the context enables it to 
rapidly disambiguate alternative interpretations of a word or phrase. Such 
situations include the composition of literary texts where the system can 
use common conjunctions of words to correct potential ambiguities and IVR 
(Interactive Voice Recognition/Response) telephony applications were you can 
present the user with a short menu of verbally distinct options to select 
from.

I'm not aware of any available speech-to-text products that would work at 
all well out-of-the-box for composing POV-Ray SDL. Certain technologies, 
like VoiceXML (designed primarily for IVR) enable you to define voice 
recognition scripts, but it would be a mammoth task to  implement such 
scripts for anything but a very small subset of POV-Ray directives.

Regards,
Chris B.

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Warp wrote:
>   I don't know if POV-Ray is being used for that purpose, but if I'm not
> mistaken one of the early POV-Ray developers had physical disabilities,
> but that didn't stop him from making a wonderful job at participating in
> the development of POV-Ray and contributing significant important
> features. Disabilities are certainly not an obstacle to programming or, in
> this case, computer graphics.

Even blindness is not an obstacle for programming, from what I've heard
(it surely is for computer graphics, of course)

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On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:10:02 +0100, Chris B wrote:

> "Rick Berger" <rbe### [at] rogerscom> wrote in message
> news:48e1200e$1@news.povray.org...
>> I'm interested in the use POV-Ray by people who have limited hand
>> dexterity because of some physical condition or disability that limits
>> their ability to use a mouse or any other type of pointing device.
> 
> POV-Ray provides a text-based language that enables you to effectively
> 'describe' a scene in a text file. IMO the pointing device is far less
> significant than the keyboard for POV-Ray, but you would need to
> consider whether the dexterity issues you mentioned would be equally
> problematic for using a keyboard.  POV-Ray typically involves a lot of
> typing.
> 
> I have a little experience of designing systems to meet accessibility
> requirements, but most of the solutions I've come across that could help
> with keyboard entry would not be particularly effective for supporting
> the sort of keyboard entry required for entering or editing the POV-Ray
> Scene Description Language (SDL). For example, speech recognition tools
> are most effective where the context reduces the potential for
> ambiguity, such as in composing literature or responding to one of a
> predefined set of options, which is not particularly the case with
> POV-Ray SDL.
> 
> Do you see keyboard entry as being an issue or do you have some device
> or technology in mind to circumvent such issues?
> 
> Regards,
> Chris B.

Generally I think applications using text entry are a lot easier to 
exploit. You've got many more options availability to you potentially. In 
my case right now I using a JavaScript typing accelerator that I've 
hacked together. It stable and works pretty good though it needs 
reworking so it could be integrated into things like google docs and has 
some more bells and whistles. 

I think I would have to differ on your opinion not being able to provide 
support for keyboarding for POV-Ray SDL, using a good typing accelerator 
or input anticipatory system should make someone pretty proficient. I 
know in my days of coding, some 30 years ago, my same accelerator concept 
increase my coding speed by at least a factor of 10. I can't see why it 
shouldn't be the same with POV-Ray SDL.

The other thing is the experience, POV-Ray can give you some very 
tangible things with relative moderate effort. This is why I think there 
is a potential group of users with disabilities that could find POV-Ray 
rewarding. 

My motivation to look at POV-Ray was/is to be able draw things I want to 
get built, initially it was for a mobility device around the house, 
though other things like showing my wheelchair technician the modifaction 
I want to make van's host more effective and seeing changes I want to 
consider to make condo more accessible. Two things coming out of working 
on the host are now a friend can do the work because it's clear to see 
what has to be done and not enveloped in this air of specialization, and 
the other is I have a better handle on it. 

Again, are there libraries of macros for describing things like nuts and 
bolts, pulley and gear systems, etc? Are there articles on best practices 
for describing mechanical systems?

Rick

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> Generally I think applications using text entry are a lot easier to
> exploit. You've got many more options availability to you potentially. In
> my case right now I using a JavaScript typing accelerator that I've
> hacked together. It stable and works pretty good though it needs
> reworking so it could be integrated into things like google docs and has
> some more bells and whistles.
>
> I think I would have to differ on your opinion not being able to provide
> support for keyboarding for POV-Ray SDL, using a good typing accelerator
> or input anticipatory system should make someone pretty proficient. I
> know in my days of coding, some 30 years ago, my same accelerator concept
> increase my coding speed by at least a factor of 10. I can't see why it
> shouldn't be the same with POV-Ray SDL.

There certainly are predictive text systems that support increased speed for 
text entry. I suspect that there are more available for the entry of 
vocabulary, but I have also seen (and used) intelligent code editors that 
reduce keying by proposing predicted keywords and by automatically including 
syntactical elements, such as required opening and closing brackets and 
parameter lists.  The only thing that I've personally seen with POV-Ray to 
date that reduces typing is with the Windows POV-Ray editor where the 
'insert' menu allows you to insert sample POV-Ray directives with full 
parameter lists etc. (This can be navigated using the keyboard as an 
alternative to using pointing devices). Maybe someone else has seen 
something else that could be used with POV-Ray to reduce keying.

I believe it would be possible to implement an editor with a predictive text 
system for the basic clause structures in the POV-Ray language, but to 
provide something that can do anything beyond rudimentary forms would 
probably require a significant investment of time. I suspect that it would 
need a greater investment in time than a language like C or Java, because of 
the complex way that objects and language control elements can be 
interwoven.

> The other thing is the experience, POV-Ray can give you some very
> tangible things with relative moderate effort. This is why I think there
> is a potential group of users with disabilities that could find POV-Ray
> rewarding.

Yes. I'm totally with what Warp said on this. I think there are significant 
numbers of disabled people who can gain a lot and who can and do contribute 
a lot to this community. It's because you were specific about "people who 
have limited hand dexterity because of some physical condition or disability 
that limits their ability to use a mouse or any other type of pointing 
device" that I observed that an ability to use a keyboard is probably more 
significant for POV-Ray than abilities to use a pointing device.

> Again, are there libraries of macros for describing things like nuts and
> bolts, pulley and gear systems, etc? Are there articles on best practices
> for describing mechanical systems?

There are various libraries of objects and macros. The one I've been most 
involved with is at http://lib.povray.org/searchcollection/index2.php though 
it doesn't yet have anything for describing nuts and bolts or pulley and 
gear systems. There are a lot of older public collections and private 
download sites that you can find on Google or potentially in the links 
collection at http://www.povray.org/resources/links/ (though I don't think 
those links have been updated in quite a while). There are tutorials on 
various types of mechanical system around. Some are POV-Ray specific, but 
certain generic tutorials could be equally applicable. Once again Google 
should help you find ones of specific interest to you and the links 
collection contains a section on 3D Tutorials (both POV-Ray specific and 
others) so you may find something there.

The search for "povray gears cogs" came up with a POV-Ray gears animation 
macro and tutorials at 
http://www.f-lohmueller.de/pov_tut/animate/anim14e.htm, a link to POV-Ray 
Object World at http://objects.povworld.org/links10.html that links to a 
Gear Include File a chains macro and some Motion Dynamics include files.

Regards,
Chris B.

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