Support for HandyTech Active Tactile Control

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by leonarddr on 2015-01-05 15:00
Active Tactile Control is a function in the HandyTech ActiveBraille and Modular Evolution which allows the screen reader to follow the readers behavior. Currently, the HandyTech driver implementation in NVDA doesn't support this functionality. There's a beta driver on HandyTech's FTP which supports ATC. This driver seems a bit buggy and the source isn't included in the addon. It would be great if effort could be made to include ATC support in NVDA out of the box.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 1 by jteh on 2015-01-06 05:28
Neither Mick or I have access to Handy Tech displays. Handy Tech themselves maintain this driver and have already done much of the work (hence the beta add-on). I asked a while ago about releasing the source code (since this is actually necessary to comply with NVDA's license) and was informed this was an oversight that would be rectified. Unfortunately, it seems the source still hasn't been released, so I'll need to follow this up again.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 3 by leonarddr on 2015-01-06 08:16
Would be great if at least the source of this addon could be released indeed.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 4 by jteh on 2015-01-12 04:16
I just emailed my contact at Handy Tech about this again.

[nvaccessAuto]

Attachment handyTech.py added by handytech_fgr on 2015-01-20 10:30
Description:
Source code of NVDA Handy Tech Braille driver with ATC support
Update:
File added from Trac
handyTech.py.txt

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 5 by handytech_fgr on 2015-01-20 10:35
I have attached the source code to this ticket.
There is one area I am still working on, which is called the ATC Monitor. This is a window displayed by our Driver which visually renders the current Braille Display text along with the reading Position as provided by ATC. The Problem is that I am currently not Aware of an easy way to backtranslate this text, as the Driver will only see the translated dot Patterns but never the source text from which Translation took place. I am working on an improvised solution but a complete solution would Need to rely on back-Translation being implemented in NVDA, which, to my knowledge, currently does not exist, but please correct me if I am wrong.
Updated Versions of this source code will always be found in this ticket.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 6 by leonarddr on 2015-01-20 10:38
As NVDA supports braille input nowadays, I assume some backtranslation could be made. It only supports 8-dots braille input though.

[LeonarddeR]

@FelixGruetzmacher: Are you still planning to work on this for the native driver?

[Adriani90]

@ehollig could you please upload the attachment from track? Thanks.

[ehollig]

@Adriani90 the attachment is in #4775 (comment) or here: handyTech.py.txt

[LeonarddeR]

Note that this attachment is pretty out of date. The most recent version of the classic driver seems to be this add-on from handy tech: ftp://ftp.handytech.de/public/handy_tech_classic_driver.nvda-addon

[MarcoZehe]

I'd love to see this in the new native driver. CC @FelixGruetzmacher there is an issue for it already. :-)

[codeofdusk]

I also vote for this issue. CC @FelixGruetzmacher.

[codeofdusk]

I'll be getting a HandyTech display again fairly soon, and it looks like there's support in the driver for sending ATC on/off packets (default enabled without user-visible option to disable). Is this accurate? If not, I'll look into why it's still broken as theoretically it should work fine.

[LeonarddeR]

If I recall the reasoning from @bramd correctly, he enabled ATC because it would have the advantage of waking a display that went in standby up just by touching it. There is nothing else implemented.

[bramd]

@LeonarddeR That's correct. To make this work we should interpret ATC data and generate NVDA gestures/events for them.

It has been a long time since I looked into this, but if I remember correctly we have to receive the low level events and deduce the user's activity from that for some models. Newer models seem to have some more processing in hardware. Hopefully, @FelixGruetzmacher can chime in on this.

[LeonarddeR]

@FelixGruetzmacher is there any chance Helptech will take this at some point?
See also #16947. ATC can also utilize this.

[codeofdusk]

If I remember correctly, @FelixGruetzmacher had a prototype and reached out for help a while back, but I don't think there have been any further updates unfortunately.