Python code-writing for the blind. Was (Re: newbie: stani's pythoneditor if-else)

[Hamilton, William]

> From: madzientist
> 
> Thanks, everybody, for the very very useful and kind responses.
> 
> There is a second reason why I asked the question about automatic de-
> indenting. I am teaching myself Python partly so I can then help my
> technically astute, but blind friend learn programming. For the many
> reasons that Pythonistas like to cite often, I thought Python would be
> a good choice to learn programming, and that perhaps the indentation
> problem would be solved by the use of an intelligent editor.
> 
> But now I am not so sure, though I will try Emacs. Is there anyone
> here with experience in such issues ? Maybe for her sake, I should
> switch to learning Perl ;) ;)
> 
> More seriously, the added issue is that SPE uses spaces, not a single
> tab to indent the lines, and I believe it is extremely tedious to use
> screen-readers to keep track of blank spaces at the beginning of each
> line. I have not tried it myself yet, but I will soon.
> 
> Is Python a bad choice for the blind programmer, as a result of a
> tight linkage between visual aspects of the code and its function ? I
> wish the site blindprogramming.com weren't so lifeless...
> 

Can you set SPE to use a single space rather than the typical four
spaces?  Python should accept it just fine.  You'll still have problems
reading other people's code.  Maybe you can write a quick script that
converts code down to one-space indents.


--
-Bill Hamilton