From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (qmail 8824 invoked by uid 0); 15 Oct 1996 01:53:42 -0000 MBOX-Line: From nico@CAM.ORG Tue Oct 15 03:52:59 1996 Received: (qmail 8407 invoked by uid 504); 15 Oct 1996 01:08:38 -0000 Received: (qmail 8399 invoked from smtpd); 15 Oct 1996 01:08:35 -0000 Received: from Hydro.CAM.ORG (198.168.100.7) by goldfish.cube.net with SMTP; 15 Oct 1996 01:08:33 -0000 Received: from Ocean.CAM.ORG (nico@Ocean.CAM.ORG [198.168.100.5]) by Hydro.CAM.ORG (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA20914; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 21:08:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (nico@localhost) by Ocean.CAM.ORG (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA15632; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 21:07:59 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: Ocean.CAM.ORG: nico owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 21:07:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicolas Pitre To: John Covici cc: brian@henge.com, malv0002@gold.tc.umn.edu, blinux-list@goldfish.cube.net Subject: Re: UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site In-Reply-To: <325dab57.ccs@ccs.covici.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII List-Id: On Thu, 10 Oct 1996, John Covici wrote: > But can you do the simple thing, i.e. set up a computer with Linux and > run something from the console which will speak everything? > > Would have been nice to have something in the kernel for some of the > basic sdreen reader functionality. I really think that screen reading functionalities must not be in the kernel source. The kernel already offers the contents to all virtual console screens (text and attributes) through /dev/vcsa* and it is also possible to simulate key strokes with those devices. So any screen reading software may actually be designed as a daemon. The BRLTTY package works that way and I actually hacked it to make it read the screen with my voice synthesizer. The only thing I don't know is how to intercept keystrokes from the console keyboard... But it is done in dosemu (the kernel may let a raw keyboard access). So the actual kernel offers every tools needed for a vocal screen reading daemon. It just need somebody to write it. nico@cam.org Nicolas Pitre ing. stag.