Speakup installation on lap top.

Speakup installation on lap top.

[Toby Fisher]

Hi all.

Having got a fairly stable desk top system now, I'm thinking of flattening
my lap top hard drive and putting Linux on it.  I propose to make my own
kernel, since the bareapm.I that comes with Slackware has no speakup
support.  This is no problem, as I can also use one of the root disks.  I
do, however, have a couple of questions.

1.  Has anyone encountered any problems/pitfalls of which I should be
aware, either
speakup-related, or generally, with installation to a lap top?

2.  Quite often, I use my lap top to present some documents with graphics
in them to sighted people.  I know that I can retrieve the text from such
documents with the strings command, but is there anyway I can retain the
formatting and graphics in their place?  Obviously an accessible method
would be preferable, though it is not absolutely essential.

Any thoughts on this subject gratefully appreciated.

Cheers.


-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Tommy:

As to whether there are pitfalls, certainly. But which would depend on 
what make and model unit you have and on how you need to use it. My 
portable is an 18 month old IBM Thinkpad T20. The primary pitfall on this 
machine is the fact that it's 9-pin serial port is turned off, by default. 
The second pitfall relates to its video system which is tricky to 
configure for X--not that we really need X just yet. Beyond that, I have 
several boot options configured in my lilo.conf that I can call up by 
single-letter aliases depending on what is (or is not attached) by way of 
a speech synthesizer at any particular time. I also use several scripts to 
switch network configurations, depending on where I am. Ditto for the 
modem.

As for presentations, I haven't worked that out myself. I do understand, 
however, that latex does good looking slides.

 On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Toby Fisher wrote:

> Hi all.
> 
> Having got a fairly stable desk top system now, I'm thinking of flattening
> my lap top hard drive and putting Linux on it.  I propose to make my own
> kernel, since the bareapm.I that comes with Slackware has no speakup
> support.  This is no problem, as I can also use one of the root disks.  I
> do, however, have a couple of questions.
> 
> 1.  Has anyone encountered any problems/pitfalls of which I should be
> aware, either
> speakup-related, or generally, with installation to a lap top?
> 
> 2.  Quite often, I use my lap top to present some documents with graphics
> in them to sighted people.  I know that I can retrieve the text from such
> documents with the strings command, but is there anyway I can retain the
> formatting and graphics in their place?  Obviously an accessible method
> would be preferable, though it is not absolutely essential.
> 
> Any thoughts on this subject gratefully appreciated.
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> 
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Toby Fisher]

On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Janina Sajka wrote:

> As to whether there are pitfalls, certainly. But which would depend on
> what make and model unit you have and on how you need to use it. My
> portable is an 18 month old IBM Thinkpad T20. The primary pitfall on this
> machine is the fact that it's 9-pin serial port is turned off, by default.
> The second pitfall relates to its video system which is tricky to
> configure for X--not that we really need X just yet. Beyond that, I have
> several boot options configured in my lilo.conf that I can call up by
> single-letter aliases depending on what is (or is not attached) by way of
> a speech synthesizer at any particular time. I also use several scripts to
> switch network configurations, depending on where I am. Ditto for the
> modem.

The system's going to be pretty basic, with the exception that when my
desktop is running Winblows, it'll use the lap top as its server for
access to the net etc, though I thoughtg of just using Samba for this.
The lap top is not a well-known model, made by a company called Pico
Systems.   It has an AMD K6 450 mhz processor, 128 mb of ram and a 6.4 gb
hard drive, so nothing too problematic there.  It has one of those
glide-pad mice, you know, the ones where your finger is the poointer, and
does have an infra-red port which I would like to get going at some stage,
as it will allow me to control my cellphone easily.
Beyond that, however, I'm not going to be doing a great deal with it.

> As for presentations, I haven't worked that out myself. I do understand,
> however, that latex does good looking slides.

Hmmm, I had thought of that myself, though I'd kind of hoped I ouldn't
have to re-do the document, with its embedded graphics, as the person who
did it originally is no longer easily contactable.

Thanks for your help.
-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Janina Sajka]

You should be able to kill the mouse by killing gpm.

As for your choppy sound problem, that certainly shouldn't be happening. 
Also, it probably has nothing to do with speakup. To satisfy yourself 
about that, kill speakup by pressing the Print-Screen key and play some 
sound files. Are you hearing this from sound 
files on your local hard disk?

I'm probably not the one to walk you through fixing this, but this much 
should be established first anyway.



On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Toby Fisher wrote:

> On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
> > As to whether there are pitfalls, certainly. But which would depend on
> > what make and model unit you have and on how you need to use it. My
> > portable is an 18 month old IBM Thinkpad T20. The primary pitfall on this
> > machine is the fact that it's 9-pin serial port is turned off, by default.
> > The second pitfall relates to its video system which is tricky to
> > configure for X--not that we really need X just yet. Beyond that, I have
> > several boot options configured in my lilo.conf that I can call up by
> > single-letter aliases depending on what is (or is not attached) by way of
> > a speech synthesizer at any particular time. I also use several scripts to
> > switch network configurations, depending on where I am. Ditto for the
> > modem.
> 
> The system's going to be pretty basic, with the exception that when my
> desktop is running Winblows, it'll use the lap top as its server for
> access to the net etc, though I thoughtg of just using Samba for this.
> The lap top is not a well-known model, made by a company called Pico
> Systems.   It has an AMD K6 450 mhz processor, 128 mb of ram and a 6.4 gb
> hard drive, so nothing too problematic there.  It has one of those
> glide-pad mice, you know, the ones where your finger is the poointer, and
> does have an infra-red port which I would like to get going at some stage,
> as it will allow me to control my cellphone easily.
> Beyond that, however, I'm not going to be doing a great deal with it.
> 
> > As for presentations, I haven't worked that out myself. I do understand,
> > however, that latex does good looking slides.
> 
> Hmmm, I had thought of that myself, though I'd kind of hoped I ouldn't
> have to re-do the document, with its embedded graphics, as the person who
> did it originally is no longer easily contactable.
> 
> Thanks for your help.
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Toby Fisher]

On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Janina Sajka wrote:

> As for your choppy sound problem, that certainly shouldn't be happening.
> Also, it probably has nothing to do with speakup. To satisfy yourself
> about that, kill speakup by pressing the Print-Screen key and play some
> sound files. Are you hearing this from sound
> files on your local hard disk?

Yes, the thought that occurred to me is that perhaps it is something to do
with either the sound drivers or maybe even the serial device, though
break-up does not occur when using a modem.  Yes, if I ant to listen to
music for long periods I kill Speakup and all is fine.

Cheers.
-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Kirk Wood]

I think the problem is more to do with your sound drivers then speakup.
This is pointed to by the modem also causing interferance. Making your
serial buffers larger may help, but it would also delay the amount of time
until you could silence the synth.

I would start by switching to ALSA drivers if you aren't already.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

Nowlan's Theory:
        He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from
        the next freeway exit.

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Kerry Hoath]

I'd dual boot the laptop between Windows and Linux
if the drive is big enough LInux can run on as little as 300 megs of diskspace.
Access to word documents, powerpoint slides etc is sometimes faster to do under
Windows which is why I have 1 windows box here.

Regards, Kerry.
On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 11:56:15PM +0000, Toby Fisher wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> Having got a fairly stable desk top system now, I'm thinking of flattening
> my lap top hard drive and putting Linux on it.  I propose to make my own
> kernel, since the bareapm.I that comes with Slackware has no speakup
> support.  This is no problem, as I can also use one of the root disks.  I
> do, however, have a couple of questions.
> 
> 1.  Has anyone encountered any problems/pitfalls of which I should be
> aware, either
> speakup-related, or generally, with installation to a lap top?
> 
> 2.  Quite often, I use my lap top to present some documents with graphics
> in them to sighted people.  I know that I can retrieve the text from such
> documents with the strings command, but is there anyway I can retain the
> formatting and graphics in their place?  Obviously an accessible method
> would be preferable, though it is not absolutely essential.
> 
> Any thoughts on this subject gratefully appreciated.
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
> Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
> ICQ: #61744808
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
Kerry Hoath:  kerry@gotss.net kerry@gotss.eu.org or  kerry@gotss.spice.net.au

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Toby Fisher]

On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Kerry Hoath wrote:

> I'd dual boot the laptop between Windows and Linux
> if the drive is big enough LInux can run on as little as 300 megs of diskspace.
> Access to word documents, powerpoint slides etc is sometimes faster to do under
> Windows which is why I have 1 windows box here.

I have considered this.  I'd like to avoid it if possible, as I have huge
quantities of data that I'd like to keep on the lap top, (but if I can't,
I can't).  You said that access to ord docs is faster underindos, so are
you implying that a solution does exist for Linux?

Cheers.
-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
ICQ: #61744808

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Kerry Hoath]

There are no text mode utilities to edit word documents simply to extract
text or convert to html.
There is staroffice and openoffice both X-based applications we can't use.
They are resource hungry and big.
If you were to put Linux on say a 300-meg partition,
you could still access the remaining 6.3gb of drive as windows vfat.
You'd get long filenames but no atime/ctime/mtime support.

Regards, Kerry.
On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 04:59:49AM +0000, Toby Fisher wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> 
> > I'd dual boot the laptop between Windows and Linux
> > if the drive is big enough LInux can run on as little as 300 megs of diskspace.
> > Access to word documents, powerpoint slides etc is sometimes faster to do under
> > Windows which is why I have 1 windows box here.
> 
> I have considered this.  I'd like to avoid it if possible, as I have huge
> quantities of data that I'd like to keep on the lap top, (but if I can't,
> I can't).  You said that access to ord docs is faster underindos, so are
> you implying that a solution does exist for Linux?
> 
> Cheers.
> -- 
> Toby Fisher	Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
> Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
> ICQ: #61744808
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
Kerry Hoath:  kerry@gotss.net kerry@gotss.eu.org or  kerry@gotss.spice.net.au

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Toby -

Welcome to the list.

You can use a program called "antiword" to read MS Word files on
Linux. It works very well.

Chuck


Visit me at http://www.valstar.net/~hallenbeck
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (77% of Full)

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Steve Holmes]

I can only answer the kernel question here.  The slackware 8.0 contains a
boot image called speakup.i which is identical to bareide.  It will come
up with a 2.2.19 kernel and will be a good start.

Re: Speakup installation on lap top.

[Thomas Ward]

Hi, well, in general Linux should do well on a laptop, but some laptops are
a real pain to get going with Linux.

Some problems you may incounter is no serial ports on newer laptops. The USB
port is all many of them have, and the Belkin USB to serial cable is needed.
If you have a serial port your set synth wize.
Second, most modems in laptops will not work with Linux. I've played around
with lots of Linux's, and every laptop I've tried I couldn't get the pos Win
modem going ieven with the Win modem drivers floating around on the net. As
a last result I simply put a modem in the pcmcia slot, and fixed it once and
for all.
Since laptops do not have a number pad invest in a usb or ps2 number pad to
use for Speakup review commands.

----- Original Message -----
From: Toby Fisher <toby_fisher@bigfoot.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 6:56 PM
Subject: Speakup installation on lap top.


> Hi all.
>
> Having got a fairly stable desk top system now, I'm thinking of flattening
> my lap top hard drive and putting Linux on it.  I propose to make my own
> kernel, since the bareapm.I that comes with Slackware has no speakup
> support.  This is no problem, as I can also use one of the root disks.  I
> do, however, have a couple of questions.
>
> 1.  Has anyone encountered any problems/pitfalls of which I should be
> aware, either
> speakup-related, or generally, with installation to a lap top?
>
> 2.  Quite often, I use my lap top to present some documents with graphics
> in them to sighted people.  I know that I can retrieve the text from such
> documents with the strings command, but is there anyway I can retain the
> formatting and graphics in their place?  Obviously an accessible method
> would be preferable, though it is not absolutely essential.
>
> Any thoughts on this subject gratefully appreciated.
>
> Cheers.
>
>
> --
> Toby Fisher Email: toby@g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
> Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272 Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
> ICQ: #61744808
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>