[Blindmath] Working of the device.

[Kiran]

Dear Michael,

I thank you for giving a thought on the way this device shall work up in the
context of a small example that i had written and you came up with such
illustrious explanation, i shall try to attend to your queries.

The reason i came up with such an idea for the device is connected to what i
understood during my studies about the needs of the vi person, like a
sighted person if we were to use the shapes in the word, power point or
Visio, i had found very little hence i came up with such a device, as i said
that this is a subset of the tactile display that automatically detects the
shape in any of the standard application of the Word, Excel, Power point,
Visio and shall enable the same to be displayed in a tactile way just like
the Braille display pins are controlled in their upward motion.

The associated control panel has numerical buttons from 0 - 9 so like any
other drawing tool that uses input from the user during drawing such as
stroke width or the co ordinate from where to begin the drawing similarly
the software also collects some information from the user, scaling is
necessary for many purposes, when we intend to represent a rectangular room
of 20 ft by 14 .5 ft we actually draw a rectangle proportional to the other
things that are to be put on the page and use two sided arrow to denote the
dimensions and not draw each drawing to the scale, similarly when we say
that we are drawing the rectangle by giving it four input points, my
intention here is to make the user feel the shape each time he is drawing
something.

Correctly said that the grid is of even plungers that when pressed denote
their locations, so how shall one press the plungers when an odd size of
rectangle is to be drawn? Say for eg 23 by 11.5. what i would like to
clarify is that when you select the rectangle the software shall ask you for
the units and the size to be drawn so that it can also insert the dimensions
(not compulsory) so for all even number dimensions we can have the pressed
plungers to work without  a confusion when in case of 23 if i have a scale
of 5 cm as the inter plunger distance i shall be pressing the fifth
plunger(r1 c5) on the first row and again the firth plunger in the third row
for 11.5(r3 c5). Scalling is mental mathematics, its assumption only not to
the actual scaling purpose(distance in between two plungers is assumption
purpose only).

I hope that this discussion shall continue and lead to my knowledge, there
are a few questions that you have asked as a summary, i shall write a
detailed mail on those in a separate mail, also i think that i am about to
have a video on the working of this device very soon that shall help us
comprehend the usage and ease of use aspects in a better way.

Looking forward to all this in the near future,

Kind regards,

Kiran 

-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Michael
Whapples
Sent: 20 January 2013 20:34
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Working of the device.

I am a little puzzled from reading these messages, particularly a statement
in a previous message about this: "Also the user here need not be required
to be too knowledgeable about Cartesian co ordinate system or geometry."

The below message I am replying to describes precisely inputting the shape
by using cartesian co-ordinates.

To describe this further, I will use the below example of inserting a 30cm
wide by 10cm high rectangle in the top left hand corner of the page
(NOTE: probably not a good thing to draw when using A4 paper as it will not
fit).

The below example for the device said I would need to find button 1, then
move to the right three units to get button 3, move down one unit to button
6 and move left three units to get button 4. As these are laid out in a grid
I am effectively selecting cartesian co-ordinates and as these units of each
button are not necessarily the same as the unit I am working in (cm) I need
to remember to apply a scale of 10cm = 1 button. 
How would one draw with such a device a rectangle 23cm by 11cm?

Now to compare with drawing with SVG (possibly SVGDraw or other software), I
would say, start at co-ordinate (0cm,0cm), move to co-ordinate (30cm,0cm),
move to (30cm,10cm) and move to co-ordinate
(0cm,10cm) and close the path. So in this case I did not need to convert
from cm to any other unit, so the drawing 23cm by 11cm problem can be done
easy ( (0cm,0cm) -- (23cm,0cm) -- (23cm,11cm) -- (0cm,11cm) -- cycle ). Also
it is worth noting that some software (I am thinking of PGF/TikZ as that is
something I know) do have shortcuts for rectangles, you need only specify
the top left co-ordinate and bottom right co-ordinate, the other two can be
calculated automatically by the computer.

I don't know whether SVGDraw can do this, but other software (again PGF/TikZ
is one I know is capable) would allow you to then move and rotate a drawn
shape, this can make calculating the co-ordinates much easier (eg. if we
wanted to rotate the 30cm by 10cm rectangle by 30 degrees, we could do the
original drawing with it horizontal and easy co-ordinates and then rotate it
by 30 degrees). How would one go about drawing such a shape with the device?
Do you need to draw the shape as it will appear or can one do such movements
after entering the shape?

I will agree that sometimes cartesian co-ordinates are not easy to work with
for drawing certain shapes, an equilateral triangle is not easy but much
easier when using polar co-ordinates and again some software such as
PGF/TikZ do allow using polar co-ordinates to draw a shape. While I think
SVGDraw does not support using polar co-ordinates it could easily be added i
would imagine. However a physical device which has buttons laid out in a
grid shape will not be able to be adapted to use polar co-ordinates and I
imagine due to so few buttons (20x16) will not be able to draw an
equilateral triangle accurately.

Finally, I do believe that if one wishes to draw accurately then a
understanding of co-ordinate systems and geometry is very valuable. 
Without an understanding of these concepts one is simpling guessing what
they are drawing.

Sorry if this sounds very negative, but I do have concerns whether this will
achieve what it is meant to and sometimes only by viewing something
critically can it overcome its problems. Here are a few questions to
consider:
* Should one be trying to make it that one need not understand co-ordinate
systems or geometry? Will this really be of advantage to the person in the
long term?
* Does this really lower the effort in understanding co-ordinate systems, to
me it only seems to provide a physical representation of a co-ordinate
system and only one co-ordinate system at that.
* Is 20x16 input points sufficient? It may pose issues for rectangles and
certainly will for other shapes like equilateral triangles, pentigons, etc
(fairly basic shapes) where edges will not be horizontal or vertical.
* Possibly is it really going to be worth the development cost? What I mean
by that is one could draw on tactile graph paper (which is something which
already exists) and use that to obtain the co-ordinates they need to input
into the computer should they find calculating the co-ordinates in there
mind too difficult and this would hopefully over time make the person
understand the co-ordinates. Tactile graph paper also is more flexible as
one can draw to a fraction of a unit. Sometimes the low tech solution can be
best, something even acknowledged on my computing post graduate course.

Michael Whapples
On 20/01/2013 06:26, Kiran wrote:
> Dear Amanda,
>
> I shall explain how the device works. The device has 20 columns and 16 
> rows of tactile plungers those act as input points. For description
purpose I shall scale it to a regular 4 / 4 matrix of keys that we used to
have on mobile device. So the keys would be numbered like 1 2 3 in the first
row Followed by 4 5 6, in second row followed by 7 8 9 in third row.
>
> Now say if we want to draw a rectangle 30 by 10 cm in the word file. Here
is what we need to do.
>
> 1. Select the shape rectangle from the control panel, the user can feel
the shape himself as there is a 3d shape on the panel.
>
> 2. To draw a rectangle we need 4 input points. So I press the number 1
key. I scale the distance from one key to other as say 10 cm. now I can go
to the key no 3 as they are in the same row and I can feel them in a
straight line. So I go to the key no 3 and press it.
>
> 3. Then I follow down from key no 3 to key no 6, since 3 and 6 key are in
the same colum, and press 6, that means now I have pressed three keys they
are 1,3,6.
>
> 4. Again I slide my finger on to the row of key 6 and come until key no 4.
Since key no 1 and 4 are in the same colum, and I press it.
>
> That means I have pressed 1,3,6,4.  Keys, kindly note that 1 & 3 are in
same row similarly 6,4 are in the same row.
>
> So I am myself drawing the shape, then the associated software shall input
the diagram of a rectangle in any of the application you chose.
>
> The device has 320 plungers that are lined up in 20 columns and 16 keys so
the user has a wide array of plungers that help him in drawing all the
possible shapes and the software shall assist him in all stages.
>
>
>
> Kiran S Deshpande
>   
>
>
>   
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