Re: Linux accessibility for artic

["T. V. Raman" <raman@Adobe.COM>]

Ken--

I'll answer your questions in order:

a) Dos boxes running screenreaders with dectalks may slow down if the speech
rate is set to be slow and the dos device driver continuously handshakes with
the dectalk for indexing.

emacspeak and linux perform fine with the dectalk express --I have the speech
going at 450 words a minute and it is chattering along as I work.

2) Windows NT:

I've been meaning to try this --haven't had time to write a driver for NT
--would have to be either Java or Visual Basic --since tclx does not run on NT
--select is a pretty unix-specific call --and this is what the unix driver
uses to sync with the dectalk.

This said, emacspeak should work happily on NT given the driver, but its
usefulness on that platform is questionable.

The reason why emacspeak is a complete solution on UNIX is
that  in UNIX-land X windows is meerely a graphical interface to the
underlying tools; you can write your own interface --and that is what
emacspeak does.

On NT, though emacspeak might make emacs talk, that would still not give you
access to the underlying machine or allow you to do system maintainance tasks
since all those things are inherently tied to the Windows GUI.

Finally, on the question of writing a driver;
I think the only serious attempt was by someone in Australia and he did make
considerable progress --I have now lost contact.

You might say "the proof is in the pudding" pointing at the absence of drivers
for other boxes; all I have to say is that if I had the time and motivation to
write drivers for these other boxes it would take less than a day for each
device.

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

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