Oh, neat! (I said to myself): Within Sigil (an ePub checking\/editing tool), you can add a plugin to run Ace (an accessibility checking tool)!<\/p>\r\n
\u2026What\u2019s that? (I said to myself.) The plugin doesn\u2019t work on Mac? OK, fine, I\u2019ll try it in Windows under Parallels.<\/p>\r\n
[Insert lengthy process of getting Parallels to run on my new computer here. It worked fine on my old computer, but you know how these things go.]<\/p>\r\n
OK, Parallels is running. I\u2019ll install Sigil in Windows.<\/p>\r\n
Sigh, Windows says that not many people download the Sigil app, so (Windows says) it\u2019s probably malware. I have to click in several places to confirm that I really do want to download and run it.<\/p>\r\n
OK, Sigil is running. Now to get the plugin.<\/p>\r\n
I go to the Sigil plugins directory and follow the link to the site where I can download the Ace plugin.<\/p>\r\n
\u2026Which says that before I can run the plugin, I need to install the core Ace code, because the Sigil plugin is just a way to connect the core Ace code with Sigil. OK, that\u2019s kinda inconvenient, but I guess it makes sense. I\u2019ll go download Ace.<\/p>\r\n
Hmm, the Ace site tells me that in order to install Ace, I need to first install Node.js.<\/p>\r\n
I follow the link to Node.js. It wants me to make decisions about whether I want to install it using Docker. Sigh.<\/p>\r\n
\u2026Oh, wait, there\u2019s also a download button for a Windows installer. That looks promising. I click that.<\/p>\r\n
Now I\u2019m running the Windows installer. It launches a command-line window and runs some code that apparently launches a command-line PowerShell window and runs some more code. Many many lines of installation-related messages are scrolling by. For several minutes. Some of them are error messages.<\/p>\r\n
The PowerShell window reaches a line about Authenticode verification, and then it stops responding.<\/p>\r\n
OK, I guess that didn\u2019t work. Fortunately, the Node.js install page also provides the option of just downloading a Node.js zip file instead of downloading a Windows installer. So I download the zip file, but it\u2019s not clear to me what to do with it after I\u2019ve downloaded it.<\/p>\r\n
Then Windows Security pops up a dialog box telling me that it has found a threat. I click to find out more. It briefly shows a \u201cVirus and threat protection\u201d window saying that there\u2019s a virus. Then that message goes away and it tells me that there are no threats.<\/p>\r\n
And I could go on, but at this point I don\u2019t see the point.<\/p>\r\n
See, the reason I wanted to install the Ace plugin inside of Sigil is that it seemed like it would be more convenient\/easier than running the separate graphical-interface Ace App. In particular, I wanted to be able to tell relatively nontechnical people who are creating and testing ePub files that they could just use Sigil and install this plugin and they wouldn\u2019t have to bother with a separate app for accessibility checking.<\/p>\r\n
But given that installing this plugin requires installing Node.js and (if you manage to do that) running an nvm command on the command line, I feel like this is not the relatively-nontechnical solution I was hoping for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
I suppose it\u2019s nice to see that Unix-like software isn\u2019t the only kind of software that\u2019s prone to this kind of difficulty.<\/p>\r\n
See also my 2014 post about that: \u201cHow to install Unix-like software: A text adventure<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n