Re: [Ayatana] Fwd: CHI Day 4 continued

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt <jan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17 April 2010 03:57, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Jim Rorie <jfrorie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Since stereo is pretty much standard, sound could be routed to different
>> channels depending on which side of the screen action occurs on.  Or
>> perhaps which monitor you are on.  It would help in tracking down those
>> pesky windows that run in the background that occasionally the eye
>> misses.
>
> You make some awesome points here.
>
> I remember back when PulseAudio was new there was talk about it
> opening up possibilities for sounds to be mapped to windows, and thus
> positional as a result. I'm not sure where that all went, but nowadays
> lots of desktop sound effects can (or should) be played through
> libcanberra, which has a function to attach sounds to widgets. You can
> probably see where this is going ;)
>
> Indeed, I think there is a lot to gain from that. Sound, for me, in
> the real world, is an indicator to look in a certain direction. If I
> suddenly hear something to my right, I'll glance in that direction
> without exception. One of the flaws with Ubuntu's ethereal
> notifications today is that their usefulness seems to break down as we
> get differently shaped screens. With my little 10" netbook screen, I
> notice notifications really easily, and if an indicator applet changes
> colour it stands out instantly. With the 24" monitor on my desk, those
> little details to the top right corner are much further away. As the
> bubbles get prettier and less jarring, this problem grows. I think we
> could use a set of design principles for quietly drawing the user's
> attention to arbitrary positions on the screen, and sounds alone could
> play a big role there.

I remember using a screen reader (for WIndows) that continuously put
out the mouse position with sound. Left/right was indicated by stereo
and height was indicated by pitch (the higher the sound, the higher
the cursor). This amazed me, you could say pretty much exactly where
the cursor is after a bit of training – notifications could be a great
implementation for this.

I can neither remember the name of the application nor can I try it
out though (no Windows). I think it was JAWS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_(screen_reader)

Orca does not seem to be able to do this. I did not try any other
screen readers, maybe you know which one I am talking about.