[Blindmath] First attempt at an SWT/SVG based drawing program

[Richard Baldwin]

For those who may be interested, I have posted my first attempt at putting
an SWT GUI front end on my SVG graphics library and have posted the
resulting program in a file named SVGDraw01.jar at the following URL:

 http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/SWT-SVG/SVGDraw01.jar

I would appreciate it if some of you would download the program, try it, and
provide feedback in several different areas. You will need the Java virtual
machine installed on your computer to run the program. On Windows, you can
run the program either by double-clicking on the jar file, or by opening a
command prompt in the folder containing the jar file and entering the
following command at the command prompt:

java -jar SVGDraw01.jar

When the program starts running, you should find yourself in an SWT Combo
object with an item labeled "User Instructions" highlighted. Pressing the
Enter key at this point will take you to the beginning of a page containing
user instructions. A screen reader should tell you to press shift-tab to
return to the combo box or to press the tab key to continue.

Pressing the tab key will cause the screen reader to begin reading the
instructions. At the end of the instructions, the screen reader should tell
you to "Press tab to return to the combo box." (Of course, you can press tab
at any time. You don't need to wait until the screen reader finishes reading
the instructions.)

You can navigate up and down the list in the combo box using the arrow keys
and act on an item by pressing the Enter key when that item is selected. The
combo box currently contains the following items:

User instructions (which is what you should do first)
Start a new drawing (which is what you should do next)
Draw a line
Draw a rectangle
Draw a circle
Draw an ellipse
Draw a polyline
Draw a polygon
Write drawing file (which is what you should do next to last)
Stop program (which is what you should do last)

When you press the Enter key on the item labeled "Start a new drawing," an
empty SVG page of a specified size with optional title and description
attributes will be created in memory.

When you press the Enter key on the item labeled "Write drawing file", that
SVG page will be written to an output SVG file with a name of your choosing
and an extension of .svg.

Between starting a new drawing and writing the drawing file, you can add
elements for any number of any of the six shapes (which are the SVG basic
shapes) in any order to the SVG page.

When you press the Enter key on a shape item, you will land on a form that
allows you to enter the most commonly used attributes for that shape. Fill
in the blanks, check the check boxes (if any), and finally push the button
labeled "Push to draw ---" to add the shape element to the SVG page. You can
navigate up and down the the form with the tab key and shift-tab.

I would appreciate receiving feedback in at least the following areas.
Feedback in other areas not listed below will be appreciated also.

1. Will the program be accessible to a blind student? What could be done to
improve accessibility?

2. Will the navigation structure of the program be functionally useful to a
blind student? What could be done to improve the navigational functionality
and make the program easier to use?

3. Will the "fill-in-the-blanks" concept for creating technical diagrams and
drawings, such as vector diagrams and free-body diagrams, be useful to a
blind student? If so, which of the many additional capabilities of SVG, such
as arcs, paths, etc., would be appropriate as an upgrade to the program.
(I'm already planning on adding the ability to create text elements. I just
haven't resolved all the questions regarding fonts yet.)

4. To what extent is the output SVG file compatible with graphics embossers
that can work with SVG files as input? What could be done to improve that
compatibility?

Thank you,

Dick Baldwin

-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/