Screen reader detection broken [Was: Re: Windows Emacs and screen readers]

[Nikhil Nair]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Emilio Lopes wrote:

> [...]
> Here is the documentation of the relevant user option:
>
>    w32-use-visible-system-caret's value is nil
>
>    Flag to make the system caret visible.
>    When this is non-nil, Emacs will indicate the position of point by
>    using the system caret instead of drawing its own cursor.  Some screen
>    reader software does not track the system cursor properly when it is
>    invisible, and gets confused by Emacs drawing its own cursor, so this
>    variable is initialized to t when Emacs detects that screen reader
>    software is running as it starts up.
>
>    When this variable is set, other variables affecting the appearance of
>    the cursor have no effect.
>
>    Defined in `C source code'.

Hi,

I've now had a chance to play with Windows emacs, and, with this feature
enabled, it works very nicely with JAWS (a popular screen reader).
However, if it's supposed to be autodetecting screen readers, this isn't
working at all: I had to add (setq w32-use-visible-system-caret t) to my
.emacs.

Although I don't really use it any more, I have a version of Window-Eyes
(another popular screen reader) from a couple of years ago (as opposed to
my version of JAWS, which is up to date).  Emacs wasn't able to autodetect
this, either.

I hope it might be possible to fix this before it's released...

Cheers,

Nikhil.