[Rd] Problem with accessibility in R 4.2.0 and 4.2.1.

[Toby Hocking]

Another option is to use https://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ (version of
emacs editor/ide which can speak letters/words/lines -- has a blind
maintainer) with https://ess.r-project.org/ (interface for editing and
running R code from within emacs)

On Thu, Sep 22, 2022 at 9:42 AM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 22/09/2022 9:48 a.m., Andrew Hart via R-devel wrote:
> > Hi. I'm having an issue with R 4.2.1 on Windows but I'm not sure if this
> > is the right place to ask about it. If it's not, I'm hoping someone can
> > point me in the right direction.
> >
> > I'm blind and have been using R for about 11 years now. The base build
> > available on CRAN is quite accessible and works pretty well with
> > screen-reading software such as JAWS for Windows and NVDA. R-studio is
> > not accessible which appears to have something to do with the version of
> > QT it uses, but that's not relevant as I don't use it.
>
> I believe RStudio is in the process of moving away from QT to Electron.
>   I don't know when the non-QT version will be released (if not
> already), but you might want to investigate that if Rgui doesn't work out.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
> >
> > Recently I installed R 4.2.1 (I tend to upgrade two or three times a
> > year and this time I was jumping from R 4.1.2 to 4.2.1).
> > However, I've encountered a serious problem which makes the latest
> > version more or less unusable for doing any kind of serious work.
> > The issue is that the screen-reading software is unable to locate the R
> > cursor and behaves as though the cursor is near the top left of the R
> > application window. Practically, this means I can't tell what characters
> > I'm passing over when cursoring left and right, nor can I hear what
> > character is being deleted when the backspace is pressed. Most
> > importantly, I can't tell where the insertion point is. This is a major
> > regression in the ability to work with and edit the command line in the
> > R console. There are ways of actually viewing the command line but the
> > way I work is frequently calling up a previous command and making a
> > change so as to not have to type the whole command again.
> >
> > I Went and installed R 4.1.3 and R 4.2.0 in an attempt to find out
> > exactly when things went awry and the issue first appeared in R 4.2.0.
> > Looking through the release notes, the only things mentioned that seem
> > likely to be relevant are the following:
> >
> > • R uses a new 64-bit Tcl/Tk bundle. The previous 32-bit/64-bit bundle
> > had a different layout and can no longer be used.
> >
> > and
> >
> > • R uses UTF-8 as the native encoding on recent Windows systems (at
> > least Windows 10 version 1903, Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server
> > 1903). As a part
> > of this change, R uses UCRT as the C runtime. UCRT should be installed
> > manually on systems older than Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 before
> > installing
> > R.
> >
> > I can't really see how changing to utf-8 as the native encoding would
> > produce the behaviour I'm seeing, so I am guessing that the change in
> > TCL/TK might be the culprit.
> >
> > I'm hoping that someone will be able to help shed some light on what's
> > going on here.
> >
> > Thanks a lot,
> > Andrew.
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
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