Hello Applevis,
I am looking for latest up to date accessibility info for, if possible, the most accessible text editor for coding on mac aside xcode which is a glorified and overkilled ide for simple python executed via terminal (at least in my opinion).
I've heard about TextMate and decided to give it a try. At the beginning it seemed very promissing and I really liked how it was so close to what I am used on windows with notepad++, very lightweight and accessible.
However indentations are so buggy with voiceover that I can hardly see myself even trying using in a professional environment. Why? With either vo reading at the right of the cursor or what the cursor passes, there is one huge bug that makes it very hard to code or re read code, especially in python where indentations are used to seperate blocks of code (whatever the real name for this shit is, you understand).
First, and this is not a bug but a feature, on keyboard, each indentation level whatever the size we give to it is treated as one character. Which mean if my level is 4 spaces, and I am in a loop in a condition in a function, three spaces will be announced by voiceover wich each of them being 4 spaces. I don't mind at all this way of treating indents. However the bug is that when there is a blank line with only the indents, when doing right arrow from the begining of the line voiceover will announce the last portion of the previous line instead of just space as if this was written on the current line I am editing, and similarely when doing left arrow from the end of the line, after the indent vo reads the ending of the line below. For coding, and especially in python, this nothing but a disaster and incredibly invalidating as a blind user to do something as simple as write or read code, made worst by python's own syntax. I don't know how to explain this bug better but don't hesitate to ask still for clarifications, but I urgently need any piece of advice you may have to help me either solve this bug in textmate which is still a great editor but for this really annoying bug, or suggest me another software to read and write code that is not textedit.
Please note that this has nothing to do with any indentation reporting setting in voiceover utility. If I am very unlucky this is another bug introduced with sonoma or ventura. Textmate seems frozen in term of update as the latest version was released in 2022 or so, although I don't think it's an abandonware, yet.
I am looking for an lightweight text editor if possible, not an ide. And as I mention I'd tend to think that xcode is overkilled for what I currently do, python, js and html. On windows at least I never needed any ide for python, and I tend to do everything via terminal whenever possible and avoid ide altogether. If pycharm is more accessible I might give it a try if you can convince me. But I need a general purpose text editor not tied to any language or environment.
Thanks a lot!
By TheBllindGuy07, 12 May, 2024
Forum
App Development and Programming
Comments
VS Code (or perhaps Emacs)
Most blind coders these days seem to be using VS Code.
If you want to invest a lot of time in learning an editor you can use for a long time and that is platform-agnostic, you might look into Emacspeak. Getting started is an upward climb, though.
Yeah but
VSCode is not bad at all. But Sonoma completly screwed monaco editor on mac with voiceover, both on safari and chrome, which is the editor used invscode among other websites/softwares as far as I know. Just try vscode.dev and write a simple comment, when navigating by arrow keys vo will I announce the full word instead of the letters, I've already posted a thread on this. Like if the electron wrapper for mac works with vo then why not but the navigation itself with duplicate element duplicated twice because of how voiceover handles web in chromium views didn't seem promissing when I ried it on ventura when I was still new to mac and hopeful. At least the terminal within vscode was not very useful.
As for emax, how good is it really? I've heard many blind linux nird apparently using emax within macos terminal without any vm of something like that, needless to say I am curious. Is it good for dev?
Thanks though for an incredibly quick answer :)
I've used VS Code
I've used VS code to write lots of python programs for my Information Technology degree. It is accessible.
Thank you all
I will then retry vscode on mac. Hopefully it can actually make my expensive purchase actually worth it!
I am also welcome to hear any information on how to install emax/emaxspeak on mac and be functional there as a blind user, feel free.
Emacspeak
There's a new speech server for Mac now included in Emacspeak (available via its repository on GitHub). I haven't tried it yet; I run Emacspeak on Linux, not MacOS. I could install it on MacOS, of course.
Thanks for all your suggestions
I'll stick to VSCode for now.
I had a very hard time finding this and then finding this again so I'll post a link here for emaxspeak. I haven't performed any of the steps described yet but it seems to be the most up to date guide on emax/emaxspeak on mac. You are welcome to add more details to it as needed.
https://gist.github.com/devinprater/a794a448ccc46e72fca63c932105c043
Thanks again!
VS Code
I've never quite managed to get on with VS Code. I like how every time they post the release notes, accessibility seems to be top of the pile so it's obviously important to them. But even so I've always felt it a bit rough around the edges. I've always blamed it on Electron or whatever it is called, which I think means it's effectively using Chrome as the UI isn't it? And anything web on the Mac tends to lead to frustration.
I know you have said you would prefer a code editor over a full-blown IDE, but I just can't find anything that works better than PyCharm. For big projects, being able to quickly mark folders as being Source or Test Source and have it added to python path is so handy. Having different run configurations is great. For large projects I can just select which set of unit tests to run, for example, and it speaks out the number of passes and failures. Then I can jump to the results, find the missing one, hop over to see why it failed and repeat. It fits my workflow very well, even if the Mac does its best to annoy me at every turn, which I presume you will get no matter how you are editing text on it.
PyCharm is definitely not perfect - some things like the terminal are not accessible at all, and I've never quite figured out things like data entry or navigating karma tests properly. But on the whole it is a nice experience. And they do seem to respond on the forums and seem genuinely like they want to improve things.
If you are just knocking up a quick isolated Python script I can see how it might be overkill, but for a complex project I've not found anything that can come close.
It's a shame that they never bothered to make their new editor, Fleet, accessible. That felt like it might give VS Code a run for its money. They have promised screen reader support but you can't even get past the terms and conditions screen so it's a total non-starter. I keep meaning to try to kick off some more about it but I've never quite found the energy.
Thanks @mr grieves
I've heard of pycharm. The last time I tried it on windows 3-4 years ago it wasn't very accessible or I didn't understand how to use it. And as I have probably already said, maybe it's my windows background where terminal is not a pain to use but a real tool as it should be but I generally tend to avoid ides in favor of lightweight text editors like notepad++ on windows and use terminal to compile. Again I am not a professional dev yet and I never had the need of something more.
I will definitely take your suggestion and try pycharm if I ever feel the need of an ide though, for the moment as much as I dislike the idea vscode seems the way to go on the mac for coding. At least voiceover doesn't become eratic with indentation like it does with textmate.
What issues do you find in Visual Studio Code?
In terms of accessibility and availability of useful features, I haven't found a better editor for coding in macOS than Visual Studio Code.
For those not satisfied with VS Code on Mac, what do you actually find problematic while using it?
Thanks to its handy features for quick cursor navigation and text manipulation, VS Code even replaced TextEdit as my default TXT editor.
Re Problems with VS Code
I don't know if any of my issues are still there - the only big one that comes to mind is selecting text which was terrible but is now better. I had a few other little things - like it keeps doing some weird instrumental flourish if you have audible indentation turned on in VoiceOver. I can't really remember the other issues - most aren't that bad but it's just always had a slightly scruffy feel to it.
I think I find that it takes a long time to get proficient with a new way of working. I've been using Jetbrains IDEs for about 10 years, and before that I was using Visual Studio with Resharper. So I know where everything is and it just works for me.
With Visual Studio Code, I am sure I can be productive but it's always taken more effort than I am prepared to invest to get anywhere. For example it seems quite fiddly to set up the python path properly. If I have a project with lots of serverless functions, each with their own unit tests and whatnot, then it just seems quite difficult to get the tests up and running in a sensible way. I don't want to run them all at once.
I never quite managed to get the Javascript unit test runner to work, although I've not tried for years.
But I know lots of PyCharm shortcuts - I can hop around quite comfortably. I mostly understand how the cursor is going to work, although I still end up fighting with the indentation and punctuation.
Every time I've tried to switch to vs code I've just got hung up on something I can't quite do and then I get fed up and go back to trying to be productive.
I think because VS Code is a code editor rather than full IDE, it just expects you to put in a bit more effort to get things up and running. Since I started using VO for the Mac, I have stopped getting any enjoyment out of using the computer, so I just don't really feel inclined to fight with something new which is unlikely to be better than what I am already using.
But if VS Code is working for you then there's probably no particular reason why you should switch. I would need some convincing that it is going to be that good for managing a project with lots of little bits to it however. Or maybe I am just too used to the creature comforts of a full-blown IDE.