Warning/question for developers, is Microsoft's Monaco editor no longer working at all since Sonoma?

By TheBllindGuy07, 26 March, 2024

Forum
App Development and Programming

Hey guys,
My first time posting a topic on applevis, so tell me how I can improve.....
Hope you're all okay!
... I am a new learner of the swift language. I have basic knoweledge of programming and coding paradigm although it's been a while since I last actually wrote a working code. I know python, php and a bit of c# among others.
I bought my macbook pro m2 14 inch in July 2023 because I no longer trust windows laptops for decent battery, period. So I thought, oh cool macos is bsd at its heart so I'll have a terminal with no layer of emulation or anythign like that! (not that wsl2 is bad far from that) Well, terminal on mac? A disappointment and apple should be ashamed, yadayada... we all know that. At least for my need, it can actually do the job. VO doesn't handle... this thing starting with an "n" that's used in things liek raspi-config and dpkg-reconfigure for pseudo gui like app in terminal, so tdsr is the go to for that. Otherwise I got used to VO honestly. It sucks, but it can help me get my job done.
As I blind learner I often feel uncomfortable with video courses, which aren't bad at all but just requires us extra processing that's not worth it especially if we pay something on udemy. Youtube is not bad at all by the way.
So I was used to brows this wonderful website educative.io which uses monaco editor and virtually all their selection is text-based courses. Gold for us blind folks in my humble opinion. The site isn't perfect but aside some unlabeled button it's good, and as the rule suggests it's easier to brows on windows than mac with vo although I got used to it after awhile.
So! in October, after carefully reviewing that this site worked well with voiceover on mac, I bought a subscription that I still think is one of my best investment. With the github student discount 30% it's nice to have all their content until 2025.
So I started learning swift there, with xcode as I still don't understand how to only use the terminal at least for consol apps.
Everything was working fine Monaco editor was as good on mac as windows with voiceover and nvda, everything was as it should be!
Until this update. When I upgraded to macos sonoma 14.3 stable, Monaco, since then, has just been totally broken on mac.
It has a special accessibility section on github where basically microsoft explain that they tested it with screen readers so it behave as it should with cursor character browsing and some other perks, etc. On windows, and previously on mac, when I would move by left or right arrow, or option left or right arrow, it would read the character and word, and similarely with up and down arrow for lines.
Now, on safari, with left and right arrow and with the option combination VO keep speaking the full word under the cursor which is useless and unless I hit copy code and open textedit. With up and down arrow, its behaviour is so strange that I can't even explain it, just it doesn't work at all. The only minor workaround is to use vo shift left and right arrow while in the edit zone to read by character and actually ber able to type but even then it's not always reliable and it's a pain in the ass to do so with 3 fingers as I fortunately use capslock as vo key.
On chrome, on paper it seems working, left and right arrow makes vo speaking the character and word with option.
I haven't tried this on edge yet but as it uses the chromium browser I would expect a similar behaviour.
To try this just go to vscode.dev, create a new document and navigate within on your browser of choice. Now, I am not sure to blame only vo, there might be an api or webkit change with any combination with vo internal nver disclosed web renderer changes but it just sucks a lot. Now If I want to learn swift and try on the go I'd have to use utm or vmware, read on windows and switch again to mac and in xcode. It is just wrong!
I'm writing here to ask whether I'm the only concerned by this?
Like I could have a dual boot of ventura aside or something but I need the numeth code capability for math sonoma has brought to vo so going back and forth seem tidious.
Like, to who can I report this? pple? Microsoft? Then ask this particulare site to update to the latest version of monaco editor?
...
I don't know anything about how monaco is written so maybe it's just a matter of api changes for devs or something, but apple has a desktop screen reader and they don't (apparently) seem to take the responsability of having a screen reader.
?
Like I don't want to complain again and again here, I talked to apple accessibility about my concerns about how alarming accessibility is becoming on macos and they seemed open to a longer real dialog so I am positive in this at least. I am new to mac, so I have this "young blood" in terms of how to voice our concerns to apple. I still love voiceover on ios and actually started using pages on mac which seem great for the moment but for some little details I will write to apple asap. I really want to love macos and I do, but it is becoming harder and harder to love voiceover on mac.
Please let me know your thoughts! Please, guys, be respectful. Apple, especially now, have just a lot of pressure on them by the eu and their own country. I heard incredible story from a former blind employee at apple and how they went a very long way to give him accomodations that no other company would have ever done. We just need to communicate effectively with them. At least, as a newby to mac, that's what I think.
Thanks!

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Comments

By TheBllindGuy07 on Friday, May 24, 2024 - 18:14

Thanks to the 0 people who replied! haha
As of the latest macos version 14.5 stable, the editor still sucks on safari at vscode.dev and all the other sites who might be using it.
On chrome though it seems fine except that for more than 5-6 lines of code voiceover will randomly start speaking from elsewhere within the text. Just copy code to textedit or another editor and you should be fine as much as I hate this workaround. VSCode though (the electron package app) works pretty well as an installed app.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Saturday, December 21, 2024 - 07:14

I was younger then... thinking it was a VO issue. It could be but it seems like this editor has random problems from time to time according to the various threads over the years... The issue it's still there and this editor acts very weirdly on both safari and chrome to the point that 99% of the time I do a copy-paste into textedit just to not miss anything :) Its behaviour changed from Sonoma to Sequoia.