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* Re: UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX  site
@  michael malver
   ` brian
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: michael malver @  UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Blind Access to Linux List

hi
        pardon my ignorance.  I am glad to see that we can use x-windows,
but will this program also support standard unix shells such as bash, or
tcsh?  Also, are there plans to support other synthesizers?  I use a
keynnote gold internal.  I am pretty sure humanware would give the
documentation out to a programmer willing to attempt the task.
        also, I have heard work of trying to make a talking shell for the
blind.  This bothers me.  I like bas, other may like tcsh, ksh, or whatever.
Why can't a screen reader be written that is independent of the shell?
Sorry if this is off-topic.
Michael

At 11:10 AM 10/8/96 +0200, you wrote:
>aloha, y'all!
>
>the new Linux port of the UltraSonix screen reader for the X Window System
>is now available at the BLINUX FTP ARCHIVE:
>
>	ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
>
>filename: UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z  (2.4 MB)
>
>you will also find the UltraSonix.FAQ in the BLINUX FTP ARCHIVE...
>gregory.
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>		ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <199610110725.BAA01013@zygote.ivory.com>]
* Re: UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site
@  BLINUX Documentation Project
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: BLINUX Documentation Project @  UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: root, brian; +Cc: Blind Access to Linux List, linux-access, uab-l

aloha, brian!

you are correct in stating that there is no linux port of the ultrasonix
source code at the present time, hence the filename:

	UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z  (2.4 MB)

and, as you noted, 
>The file
>listed above is the original public release of the UltraSonix sources
>which were written for a SPARCstation + Solaris.
>  There is a Linux port under way, but it has
>only just begun.

now, a question...

since you're working on the port, would you be willing to keep the members
of blinux-list, as well as linux-access and uab-l, apprised of the port's
progress?  i've linked your web pages concerning the port to the blinux
web site (http://leb.net/blinux) and would like, when you are ready for
such a step, to add a link to the "Betas in Search of Testers" page...
and, with your permission, i'd like to mirror the port update page
in ASCII form at the BLINUX FTP Archive,

	ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux

as for the rest of you hackers, once you download the public 
non-commercial release of the UltraSonix source code 
(ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux/UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z) please keep the
rest of us apprised of you work/progress and let us know when you need
our input--after all, that's the primary purpose of these lists... 

thanks for the clarification brian--i apologize for any misunterstanding
and confusion i may have caused with my original post...

gregory.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	   Gregory J. Rosmatia, oedipus@leb.net or blinux@leb.net
			http://leb.net/blinux
			ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
			ftp://leb.net/incoming/blinux
  electronic archivist and webmaster for The BLINUX Documentation Project
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* UltraSonix-FAQ
@  zocki
   ` UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site BLINUX Documentation and Development Project
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: zocki @  UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: blinux-list

Dear blinux subscriber,

there is a new port of the UltraSonix screen reader 
for the X Window System to Linux (see message in blinux-list
from 25.09.96).

To give you some first impressions about UltraSonix, 
here comes the UltraSonix FAQ which is part of the 
UltraSonix package. The UltraSonix package (2.4 MB) 
is ready for download by FTP at: 

multimedia.cc.gatech.edu/pub/UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z 

and at the blinux ftp server (uploading this minute :)
leb.net/incoming/blinux/UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z
will go later to: 
leb.net/pub/blinux/UltraSonix.source-7.0.tar.Z


Enjoy!
Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------

U L T R A S O N I X

F R E Q U E N T L Y   A S K E D   Q U E S T I O N S

FAQ Version 1.0, last updated September 3, 1996

Maintainer:  Keith Edwards
	     Xerox PARC
	     kedwards@parc.xerox.com


1.0 INTRODUCTION
    1.1  What is UltraSonix?
    1.2  Why do I sometimes see the software called Mercator or Sonic X? 
    1.3  Licensing
    1.4  Porting
2.0 PROJECT HISTORY
    2.1  Early Days
    2.2  Heading Towards RAP
    2.3  The Current Architecture
    2.4  Current Status
3.0 REQUIREMENTS
    3.1  Development Requirements
    3.2  Runtime Requirements
    3.3  Hardware Requirements
4.0 USAGE
5.0 PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES
    5.1  What documentation is available?
    5.2  Is there a Web page on UltraSonix?
    5.3  What papers have been published on the system?

===========================================================================

1.0 Introduction

1.1 What is UltraSonix?

UltraSonix is a prototype screenreader for the X Window System and
UNIX.  It provides speech and non-speech auditory representations of
the applications on a user's X desktop, and can also generate Braille
output of text areas.  It can synthesize the input that applications
"expect" (mouse clicks and key presses) from alternative input
sources.

The software works best with X11R6.1 applications built using the Xt
toolkit and Motif.

The software was developed at Georgia Tech over a period of several
years.  Since then, the original developers have moved on to other
projects.  This release of the system is free for non-commercial use.
See 1.3, Licensing, and 1.4, Porting, for more information.

The work at Georgia Tech is no longer on-going, and the developers
unfortunately have very limited resources for supporting the
software. 

The current version of the software is known to work only on Sun
SPARCstations running Solaris 2.5 and the Common Desktop Environment
(CDE). 


1.2 Why do I sometimes see the software called Mercator or Sonic X?

The original project at Georgia Tech was called Mercator, after
Gerhardus Mercator, a 16th century cartographer who devised a
projection of the Earth's surface in which lattitude and longtitude
projections are parallel, easing navigation.

It turned out that the name Mercator was trademarked, so we went with
Sonic X as a potential new name.  That name (or one close to it) was
also taken, so we finally wound up with UltraSonix.

The current distribution still has a number of references to Mercator
and Sonic X in it.


1.3  Licensing

The UltraSonix software has a registered copyright on it by the
Georgia Tech Research Corporation.  The use of the program is
restricted to educational and non-commercial use only.  Any inquiries
regarding licensing should be directed to:

      Georgia Tech Research Corporation
      Technology Licensing
      Centennial Research Building - Rm. 275
      400 Tenth Street, N.W.
      Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0415


1.4  Porting

An effort is underway by a number of people to port the software to
the Linux operating system on Intel hardware.  Mark Novak of the Trace
Center in Wisconsin is coordinating this effort.  Mark can be
contacted at menovak@facstaff.wisc.edu.



===========================================================================

2.0 Project History

2.1 Early Days

The Mercator project was started at Georgia Tech in 1991, and was
initially a collaboration between the Tech Center for Rehabilitation
Technology and the Multimedia Computing Group.  The CRT had expertise
in access software and a need for providing some form of access to X,
and the MCG had a lot of experience hacking the internals of the X
Window System. 

At this time, the project was funded by the NASA Marshall Space Flight
Center and an interdisciplinary research grant from Georgia Tech.  

When we started, we wanted to take a pragmatic approach toward
engineering so that we could produce something that someone might
actually be able to use, but also keep a reseach-oriented focus and
try to gain some new insight into novel interaction techniques for
auditory environments.

One result of the research focus that fell by the wayside was an
investigation of techniques for synthetically spatializing audio to
produce "3D sound" from a digital source.  While not incorporated into
Mercator, our group did produce some rather nifty 3D sound software.
David Burgess (now at Interval Research Corporation) was chiefly
responsible for this work. 

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/multimedia/spatsound/spatsound.html has
more details if you're interested.

Version 1.0 of the software was completed in 1992.  Version 1.0 was
architecturally very different than UltraSonix today because it
started from a presumption that turned out to be not true:   that we
would not be able to alter the basic design of the X Window System to
support screenreaders.

Version 1.0 used an "external" approach to providing access.  This
means that it required no modifications of any kind to applications,
toolkits, or window servers to operate.  The system basically situated
itself between the X server and client applications.  To applications,
Mercator appeared to be a generic X server, and to the "real" server
Mercator appeared to be a client application.  

A big problem with this approach is that the X protocol provides very
low-level information only.  So the creation of an on-screen button
would result in an sequence of X protocol traffic specifying lines to
be drawn at absolute pixel coordinates.  

To work around the low-level nature of the protocol traffic, version
1.0 of the system augmented the information derived from the protocol
traffic with Xt-specific information available via the
higher-level Editres protocol.  Editres was originally designed as a
tool for interactive customization, however, and it became clear that
it wasn't suitable for our needs.

Mercator 1.0 is described in Technical Report GIT-GVU-92-05, available
from Georgia Tech or from the Mercator web site.  Despite the
architectural differences between 1.0 and later versions, the
hierarchical navigation scheme and auditory icons used by 1.0 have
pretty much carried through to the latest version.


2.2 Heading towards RAP.

After version 1.0, we backed away from our requirement that we not
modify X, and started to look at what minimal set of changes could be
made to support screenreaders and similar applications.  This resulted
in an Editres-like protocol designed to gather information at the
level of Xt widgets:  buttons, scrollbars, and the like.  This
protocol was called (creatively enough), XtProto, and served as a
testbed for us to see what types of services we could provide to
screenreaders if we could communicate information about widget state.

The work on XtProto resulted in Mercator version 2.0.  This work and
XtProto itself were described at the X Technical Conference.

Version 2.0 worked well enough that we believed it was the way to go
for future screenreader work under X.  We also had a set of
modifications to the Xt and Xlib libraries that could be used to
provide information about GUI state to screenreader programs.  This
version also had the added side-effect that it let us show a
proof-of-concept to folks at the X Consortium, and get the ball
rolling on incorporating functionality like XtProto into future
versions of X.

Versions 3.0 and 4.0 refined the internals of the system and cleaned
up the protocol to the point that we felt comfortable with its
stability and utility.  Both of these versions added user interface
functionality, but were based on a protocol derived from the XtProto
used back in version 2.0.  

These later versions were supported by the NASA Marshall Space Flight
Center, Sun Microsystems, and the National Security Agency.


2.3  The current architecture

At about this time, we took over the task of proposing a protocol and
set of Xt and Xlib extensions for screenreaders to the X Consortium.
Broadly, these modifications fall into a number of categories:

- Changes to Xlib.  We needed a way to get low-level protocol
  information from Xlib reliably; our old pseudo-server approach
  introduced too many race conditions to work well, so X11R6 shipped
  with a new client-side Xlib extension, called XESetBeforeFlush that
  can catch this protocol information before it goes out over the
  wire.

- Changes to Xt.  We needed to hook into Xt to trap information about
  widget state changes.  Kaleb Keithley implemented a set of hooks in
  the R6 libXt that provides can capture widget state information.  A
  number of people on the x-agent mailing list also contributed to
  this design.

- A rendezvous protocol.  Will Walker at Digital Equipment Corporation
  proposed a protocol for initially connecting screenreaders (called
  "external agents") to running applications.  This protocol shipped
  in X11R6.1, and is called the ICE X Rendezvous Mechanism.  Look for
  a description of it in the Interclient Communication Conventions
  Manual (ICCCM).  A number of other people also had input into the
  design of this protocol.

- A remote access protocol.  Will Walker came up with the nifty
  acronym RAP, for Remote Access Protocol.  RAP is basically a
  descendent of XtProto, cleaned up to use the hooks into Xlib and Xt,
  and Will's rendezvous mechanisms.  Unfortunately, RAP has not yet
  been adopted by the Consortium as a standard.

Version 5.0 of the system was a complete overhaul, incorporating RAP
and a number of other changes including the ability to dynamically
load new I/O modules without recompiling.  This version is described
in the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Techology, (see
Publications, below). 

Version 6.0 added much better text-handling ability, lots of bug
fixes, and support for the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).  At this
time, our main sponsors were Sun Microsystems and the National
Security Agency.  We shipped code to them in December of 1995, and the
project officially ended at that time.  None of the core people from
the project are at Georgia Tech any longer.

Version 7.0 is the "external" release.  It is exactly the same as the
version 6.0 code we shipped to the NSA, but includes some legal
disclaimers that the Georgia Tech Office of Techology Licensing
wanted.  A few people have version 6.0 source code that they got by
signing individual-use licenses before version 7.0 hit the streets.

We should probably rename version 7.0 to 1.0 or something, since
noone will ever use any earlier versions anyway.

Past project members include:

Elizabeth Mynatt
Keith Edwards
Tom Rodriguez
Ian Smith
Kathryn Stockton
Sue Liebeskind
Will Luo
Stacy Ann Johnson
Kevin Chen
John Selbie
David Burgess
Phillip Seaver

Thanks to others who have played a great role in getting this software off
the ground:

John Goldthwaite
Will Walker
Gerry Higgins
Craig Moore
Gary Day
Earl Johnson
Sue Hartman
Mayer Max
Sheila Stanley
Jim Hoover


2.4  Current Status

The current external release of the software is version 7.0.  

Work is ongoing under the auspices of the Trace Center to port
UltraSonix to Linux (see 1.4, Porting, above).


===========================================================================

3.0 REQUIREMENTS

3.1  Development Requirements

The project at Georgia Tech was only concerned with bringing the
system up on Sun hardware running Solaris.  The system as released
from Georgia Tech is known to run on Sun SPARCstations running Solaris
2.5 and the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).  The requirements below
reflect this platform; ports to other platforms may have other
requirements.

To build UltraSonix, you will need the following:

- An ANSI-compliant C compiler (we used Sun SPARCcompilers C 3.0.1).
- A reasonably-good C++ compiler, with support for templates and
  exception handling (we used Sun SPARCcompilers C++ 3.0.1).
- Fairly POSIX-standard include files.
- The Rogue Wave Tools.h++ class libraries, version 7.0 or later.
- The Tcl scripting language.
- X11R6 or later.

See the Design Guide for more information.


3.2  Runtime Requirements

UltraSonix requires a reasonably quick machine to run well.  We
developed on SPARCstation 10-class hardware, but ran on everything
down to a SPARCstation 2 with 32MB RAM.

To run the system, you will need

- Hardware supported by the system (see 3.3, Hardware Requirements,
  below).
- The Sun audio device (/dev/audio).
- Either modified X11R5 or X11R6 for client applications.
- Client dynamically linked against X11R5 or X11R6.


3.3  Hardware Requirements

The following hardware is currently supported:

- Dectalk DTC01 speech synthesizer
- Dectalk Express speech synthesizer
- Entropic TruTalk software-only speech synthesizer
- Alva 3/20 Braille terminal
- Alva 3/80 Braille terminal
- Genovations keypad


===========================================================================

4.0 USAGE

... I'll be adding stuff here as the questions come in.   :-)


===========================================================================

5.0 PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES

5.1  What documentation is available?

A Users Guide and Design Document are included in the source
distribution.


5.2  Is there a web page on UltraSonix?

The original project web page is at:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/multimedia/mercator/mercator.html

Be forwarned that it is significantly out-of-date.

A page on the RAP and ICE Rendezvous efforts is at:
http://www.x.org/x-agent/


5.3  What papers have been published on the system?

A subset of the papers are on the web page.  These include:

Technical Report GIT-GVU-92-05: Mynatt, E. D., and Edwards, W. K. "The
Mercator Environment: A Nonvisual Interface to the X Window System,"
February, 1992.

Technical Report GIT-GVU-92-28: Mynatt, E. D., and Edwards, W. K. "New
Metaphors for Nonvisual Interfaces," 1992. 
Mynatt, E.D. and Weber, G., "Nonvisual Presentation of Graphical User
Interfaces: Contrasting Two Approaches," in the Proceedings of the
1994 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'94),
Boston, MA, April 24-28, 1994. 

Mynatt, E.D. "Auditory Presentation of Graphical User Interfaces, " in
Kramer, G. (ed) Auditory Display: Sonification, Audification and
Auditory Interfaces, Santa Fe. Addison-Wesley: Reading MA.,
1994. 

Mynatt, E and Edwards, W. K., "Mapping GUIs to Auditory Interfaces,"
in the Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology (UIST), 1992. 

Edwards, W. K. and Rodriguez, T., Runtime Translation of X Interfaces
to Support Visually- Impaired Users," in the Proceedings of the 7th
Annual X Technical Conference, Boston, MA, January 8-20, 1993. Click
HERE for ASCII version. 

Edwards, W. K. Mynatt E., and Rodriguez, T., "The Mercator Project: A
Nonvisual Interface to the X Window System," in The X Resource,
Seastopol, CA. Issue #7, 1993. 

Mynatt, E. and Edwards, W. K., "New Metaphors for Nonvisual
Interfaces," book chapter to appear in Extraordinary Human-Computer
Interaction, Edwards, A. (ed.), Addison Wesley, due 1994.

Edwards, W. K., Mynatt, E. D., and Stockton, K. "Providing Access to
Graphical User Interfaces--Not Graphical Screens," in Proceedings of
ACM Conference on Assistive and Enabling Technologies (ASSETS), Marina
Del Rey, CA, November, 1994. 

Edwards, W. K., Mynatt, E. D. "An Architecture for Transforming
Graphical Interfaces," in Proceedings of ACM Conference on User
Interface Software and Technology (UIST), Marina Del Rey, CA,
November, 1994.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
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Thread overview: 9+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
 UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site michael malver
 ` brian
     [not found]   ` <bYaXy0r1JI2D089yn@ccs.covici.com>
     ` John Covici
       ` Nicolas Pitre
 ` AARON HOWELL
 ` UltraSonix scope and screen-reader issues (was: Re: UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site) Nikhil Nair
     [not found] <199610110725.BAA01013@zygote.ivory.com>
     [not found] ` <MRjXy0r1JQNW089yn@ccs.covici.com>
   ` UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site John Covici
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
 BLINUX Documentation Project
 UltraSonix-FAQ zocki
 ` UltraSonix screen-reader for X-windows available at BLINUX site BLINUX Documentation and Development Project

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