the direction of speakup

the direction of speakup

[William Hubbs]

All,

let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
speakup.

Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:

1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?

My thought is that these can be dropped.

2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.

a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
kernel side to make it work correctly.
This will take time, and someone here will need to
work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
us, but at least consulting with us.

b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
and that frees us from involving the kernel team.

question:

If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?

William

Re: the direction of speakup

[Hart Larry]

Well, unless there were going to be a commercial Linux screen-reader, then 
certainly it makes sense for those of you who are 
programmers/developers--and-those of us who are just users  to all have a hand 
in this.
I sure hope some day Speakup can join a list of windows readers, along with 
Jupiter, which have a pronunciation dictionary.  Also, I think just about all 
previous DOS readers had this as an option.
As far as the suggestions of a live Skype Conference, I would love to sit in, 
but for me Pacific time evenings-and-weekends.  I am nearly setup to run Skype 
in Linux, posibly running xvfb?
I guess a hard part for me was how much flexability I had with a DecTalk in DOS 
running Vocal-Eyes.  So sure jumping in to Linux gave me lots more power as a 
user, but seemingly less when it comes to enjoying the speech I have.
I suppose if it weren't for Bill Acker and the creator of the DecTalk drivers 
for Speakup, I might still be stuck in windows or a Dos prompt.
Thanks for listening-and-eventually addressing these concerns.
Hart

instructions for installing and using Skype from the console?

[Willem van der Walt]

Are there any instructions for getting skype going from the console with 
speakup?
TIA, Willem

Re: the direction of speakup

[Scott D. Henning]

Hi,


I have been inactive here while studying cisco networking. I noted the 
subject line and wanted to "listen" in. You bring up good points. ISA is 
gone today and support seems unneeded. Serial support seems as vital as 
monitor support for sighted users. When I reflect on how to bring useful 
code out for blind users, I imagine having users design the interface; 
detail the needs and then pass it off to a skilled programmer who could 
write it in their sleep. I realize this is counter to what you suggested 
here, but it makes sense to utilize the skills programmers have. They do 
not realize how the code they write affects a blind users understanding 
of what is presented on the screen. If they did, the code would come easily.

I wonder if at times this is not a technical issue, but an ethical one. 
Do kernal writers know about the community of blind users? How hard 
would it really be for one of them to add this function? Intercept the 
text output to the screen and shove it out a port? I have often thought 
that if the design was known, what would it cost to have it written?

this is a good thread. I am worried that speakup will wither if not kept 
at the fore of development. The world does not use text anymore and it 
is an invisible issue to most.

Who would we work with to add speakup to a kernal, if your question to 
place it in user space comes back negative. That is it wont run early 
enough to voice all screen output and it must be in kernal.

Thanks for bringing this up. Now I go back to the networking books...smile.

Scott

-- 
Scott D. Henning
Architectural Audio Design
PO Box 1372
Durango, Colorado 81302

Re: the direction of speakup

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

This kind of approach described below won't work.  Back in the early days
of Window-Eyes and Windows 3.1 support, GW Micro did exactly what you're
describing.  Specifically, they designed the screen reader interface and
hired a development firm to code it.  It was very slow, crashed often and
generally didn't work very well.  I know from experience, still having the
3.5 inch disks for 1.0 and 1.1 before they did the complete rewrite
themselves.  WE 2.0 was a much better product and they learned their
lessons.  No, the Speakup and kernel communities should try to work
together somehow.

William suggested loading the user space daemon in an initramfs.  Well,
that's fine, but what if there is a kernel panic before the initramfs is
loaded?  I've had that situation before.  Also, what if a script in the
initramfs errors out and causes the next process (such as the Speakup
daemon) not to load?  I've had that happen before as well.  I was really
glad that I had Speakup at my Busybox shell so I could fix my boot
problems at the initramfs level.

On 5/1/2013 2:40 PM, Scott D. Henning wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I have been inactive here while studying cisco networking. I noted the 
> subject line and wanted to "listen" in. You bring up good points. ISA
> is gone today and support seems unneeded. Serial support seems as vital
> as monitor support for sighted users. When I reflect on how to bring
> useful code out for blind users, I imagine having users design the
> interface; detail the needs and then pass it off to a skilled
> programmer who could write it in their sleep. I realize this is counter
> to what you suggested here, but it makes sense to utilize the skills
> programmers have. They do not realize how the code they write affects a
> blind users understanding of what is presented on the screen. If they
> did, the code would come easily.
> 
> I wonder if at times this is not a technical issue, but an ethical one.
> Do kernal writers know about the community of blind users? How hard
> would it really be for one of them to add this function? Intercept the
> text output to the screen and shove it out a port? I have often thought
> that if the design was known, what would it cost to have it written?
> 
> this is a good thread. I am worried that speakup will wither if not
> kept at the fore of development. The world does not use text anymore
> and it is an invisible issue to most.
> 
> Who would we work with to add speakup to a kernal, if your question to
> place it in user space comes back negative. That is it wont run early
> enough to voice all screen output and it must be in kernal.
> 
> Thanks for bringing this up. Now I go back to the networking
> books...smile.
> 
> Scott
> 

- -- 
Have a good day,
Tony Baechler
tony@baechler.net
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Re: the direction of speakup

[Jean-Philippe MENGUAL]

Hi,

I hope I'm not out of topic, but I have read since the beginning of the thread
technical considerations about speakup directions, in particular related to
the drivers. As non-dev user, I wonder if it would be possible to improve some
features of speakup. Typically, from my latest tests, I thought that it'd be
an improvement to backup, to save the regions of the screen we define, the
windows defined on a screen to be silent, verbose, etc. Moreover, these kind
of settings could be defined per-application. For example, how can speakup
handle the reading of text browsers, for example, such as links? So far, in
my memory, it only read the status line.

That's the directions I wanted to suggest, without knowing if they are
realistic.

Regards,

JPM

On jeudi 02 mai 2013 à 01:26:36 (-0700), Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> This kind of approach described below won't work.  Back in the early days
> of Window-Eyes and Windows 3.1 support, GW Micro did exactly what you're
> describing.  Specifically, they designed the screen reader interface and
> hired a development firm to code it.  It was very slow, crashed often and
> generally didn't work very well.  I know from experience, still having the
> 3.5 inch disks for 1.0 and 1.1 before they did the complete rewrite
> themselves.  WE 2.0 was a much better product and they learned their
> lessons.  No, the Speakup and kernel communities should try to work
> together somehow.
> 
> William suggested loading the user space daemon in an initramfs.  Well,
> that's fine, but what if there is a kernel panic before the initramfs is
> loaded?  I've had that situation before.  Also, what if a script in the
> initramfs errors out and causes the next process (such as the Speakup
> daemon) not to load?  I've had that happen before as well.  I was really
> glad that I had Speakup at my Busybox shell so I could fix my boot
> problems at the initramfs level.
> 
> On 5/1/2013 2:40 PM, Scott D. Henning wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > I have been inactive here while studying cisco networking. I noted the 
> > subject line and wanted to "listen" in. You bring up good points. ISA
> > is gone today and support seems unneeded. Serial support seems as vital
> > as monitor support for sighted users. When I reflect on how to bring
> > useful code out for blind users, I imagine having users design the
> > interface; detail the needs and then pass it off to a skilled
> > programmer who could write it in their sleep. I realize this is counter
> > to what you suggested here, but it makes sense to utilize the skills
> > programmers have. They do not realize how the code they write affects a
> > blind users understanding of what is presented on the screen. If they
> > did, the code would come easily.
> > 
> > I wonder if at times this is not a technical issue, but an ethical one.
> > Do kernal writers know about the community of blind users? How hard
> > would it really be for one of them to add this function? Intercept the
> > text output to the screen and shove it out a port? I have often thought
> > that if the design was known, what would it cost to have it written?
> > 
> > this is a good thread. I am worried that speakup will wither if not
> > kept at the fore of development. The world does not use text anymore
> > and it is an invisible issue to most.
> > 
> > Who would we work with to add speakup to a kernal, if your question to
> > place it in user space comes back negative. That is it wont run early
> > enough to voice all screen output and it must be in kernal.
> > 
> > Thanks for bringing this up. Now I go back to the networking
> > books...smile.
> > 
> > Scott
> > 
> 
> - -- 
> Have a good day,
> Tony Baechler
> tony@baechler.net
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> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

On Fri, 3 May 2013, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL wrote:

> an improvement to backup, to save the regions of the screen we define, the
> windows defined on a screen to be silent, verbose, etc. Moreover, these kind
> of settings could be defined per-application. For example, how can speakup
> handle the reading of text browsers, for example, such as links? So far, in
> my memory, it only read the status line.

Hi Jean-Philipp: The saving of portions of the screen can be
accomplished with the cut-and-paste key combinations of speakup and
then pasting into another editor.

Speakup currently has facility to mark portions of the screen and have
it shut-up so you don't hear changes in that window. My original plan
was to include program specific settings but I never got that far
before moving on to other things. I'll put that back on the item list
as something to consider.

As for text browsers, lynx, links, w3m and elinks all will out put and
track the cursor for pages that have no javascript or ajax. There is a
browser which a few of us are working on currently 'wb' which supports
js not badly. There is another solution that Brandon McGinty, mostly,
is working on to use firefox under xvfb and feeding the output to a
text console program for display. It workks very well on the pages
I've had the chance to try it on.

Thank you for your input and please let me know if I've missed any of
your questions or ideas.

-- 
Well that's it then, colour me gone!

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
etc.

my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).

William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
> 
> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> speakup.
> 
> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> 
> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> 
> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> 
> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> 
> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
> us, but at least consulting with us.
> 
> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> 
> question:
> 
> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> 
> William
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[acollins]

Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
scrollback buffer.  

I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet. 
Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines with
isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
think it's time to drop isa support yet.

Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)

Gene Collins

>hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>etc.
>
>my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>
>William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>> 
>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>> speakup.
>> 
>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>> 
>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>> 
>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>> 
>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>> 
>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>> 
>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>> 
>> question:
>> 
>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>> 
>> William
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>-- 
>Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>How do
>you spend it?
>
>         John Covici
>         covici@ccs.covici.com
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
usb ones.  But this is to be decided.

acollins@icsmail.net wrote:

> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
> scrollback buffer.  
> 
> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet. 
> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines with
> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
> 
> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
> 
> Gene Collins
> 
> >hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
> >writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
> >kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
> >get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
> >tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
> >interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
> >serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
> >you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
> >etc.
> >
> >my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
> >
> >William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> All,
> >> 
> >> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> >> speakup.
> >> 
> >> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> >> 
> >> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> >> 
> >> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> >> 
> >> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> >> 
> >> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> >> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> >> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> >> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> >> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
> >> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
> >> us, but at least consulting with us.
> >> 
> >> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
> >> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> >> 
> >> question:
> >> 
> >> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> >> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> >> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> >> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> >> 
> >> William
> >> 
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Speakup mailing list
> >> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >-- 
> >Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> >How do
> >you spend it?
> >
> >         John Covici
> >         covici@ccs.covici.com
> >_______________________________________________
> >Speakup mailing list
> >Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Robert Spangler]

I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have 
said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot 
messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware 
speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In 
addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a 
little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from 
the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I 
think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the 
long run.

Thanks,
Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
spangler.robert@gmail.com

On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>
> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>
>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>> scrollback buffer.
>>
>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines with
>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>
>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>
>> Gene Collins
>>
>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>
>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> All,
>>>>
>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>> speakup.
>>>>
>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>
>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>
>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>
>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>
>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>
>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>
>>>> question:
>>>>
>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>
>>>> William
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>>> --
>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>> How do
>>> you spend it?
>>>
>>>          John Covici
>>>          covici@ccs.covici.com
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: the direction of speakup

[John G. Heim]

I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that 
it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers 
for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there 
are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or 
edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority of linux users use 
orca for every day tasks.

The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are 
really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do 
for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in 
kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that is 
equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot 
messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into 
kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same 
because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know -- when a 
server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all that stuff. 
I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press the print 
screen key.

On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
> long run.
>
> Thanks,
> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>
> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>>
>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>
>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>> with
>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>
>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>>
>>> Gene Collins
>>>
>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>
>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> All,
>>>>>
>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>
>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>> someone
>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>> code for
>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>
>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>> want,
>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>
>>>>> question:
>>>>>
>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>
>>>>> William
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>>> How do
>>>> you spend it?
>>>>
>>>>          John Covici
>>>>          covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

John and list,

I don't think it is safe to assume everybody is using, or even can use a 
GUI.

One of the great strengths of Linux has always been that it will run on 
older and less powerful machines. Although that gap is closing with the 
greater sophistication of today's distros. I can still do everything I 
want to do via the command line, thanks to SpeakUp, and on machines too 
old and slow to run even Windows XP satisfactorily.

There are still people using low-end hardware. What of the Raspberry Pi 
for example, or other embedded Linux systems?

The command-line is one thing which still makes it possible for blind 
and visually impaired people to find employment in places where they can 
do all their work from the command-line. As sys admins or server-side 
programmers.

John, can I ask what you mean when you say removing SpeakUp from the 
kernel will benefit us all? That's not a facetious question or a 
challenge. I'm just curious why you say so.

Mike

On 08/05/2013 16:03, John G. Heim wrote:
> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact 
> that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen 
> readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I 
> suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for 
> email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure the vast majority of 
> linux users use orca for every day tasks.
>
> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are 
> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you 
> do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without 
> speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that 
> is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot 
> messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot 
> into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be 
> the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI. I don't know -- 
> when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all 
> that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press 
> the print screen key.
>
> On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
>> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace. As others have
>> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
>> messages anyways. While there are still many folks using hardware
>> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding. In
>> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages. It is a
>> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
>> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
>> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
>> long run.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
>> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>>
>> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, 
>>> then we
>>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>>> usb ones. But this is to be decided.
>>>
>>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello all. If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>>> inittab, like you can brltty. It would also be able to access the 
>>>> video
>>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>>> with
>>>> isa slots with isa synths in them. Besides this, for those who really
>>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine. So I don't
>>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>>
>>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>>> should be a priority. At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not. You don't get any better
>>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>>> space. If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such. The only
>>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech 
>>>> either,
>>>> is kernle panic errors. With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on 
>>>> how
>>>> the kernel panics. There have been a couple of times when this has 
>>>> been
>>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>>> live with the inconvenience. Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>>> Speakup staying in the kernel. But then I'm getting older, and
>>>> ambivalent about a lot of things. (grin)
>>>>
>>>> Gene Collins
>>>>
>>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to 
>>>>> what the
>>>>> kernel devs want? From within that, maybe you could specify the 
>>>>> way to
>>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space 
>>>>> program to
>>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>>> interesting to me. You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each 
>>>>> distribution,
>>>>> etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>>
>>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done 
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it 
>>>>>> needs
>>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>>> work closely with the kernel developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>>> someone
>>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>>> code for
>>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>>> want,
>>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> question:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a 
>>>>>> concern
>>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space 
>>>>>> daemon
>>>>>> into an initramfs solve this? would you be able to start it early
>>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> William
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
>>>>> How do
>>>>> you spend it?
>>>>>
>>>>> John Covici
>>>>> covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett
gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing
and stuff Linux will not do.

John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:

> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact
> that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen
> readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I
> suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for
> email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority
> of linux users use orca for every day tasks.
> 
> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you
> do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without
> speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that
> is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
> messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot
> into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be
> the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know --
> when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all
> that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press
> the print screen key.
> 
> On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
> > I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
> > said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
> > messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
> > speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
> > addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
> > little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
> > the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
> > think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
> > long run.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
> > spangler.robert@gmail.com
> >
> > On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> >> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
> >> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
> >> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
> >>
> >> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
> >>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
> >>> scrollback buffer.
> >>>
> >>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
> >>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
> >>> with
> >>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
> >>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
> >>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
> >>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
> >>>
> >>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
> >>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
> >>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
> >>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
> >>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
> >>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
> >>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
> >>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
> >>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
> >>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
> >>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
> >>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
> >>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
> >>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
> >>>
> >>> Gene Collins
> >>>
> >>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
> >>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
> >>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
> >>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
> >>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
> >>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
> >>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
> >>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
> >>>> etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
> >>>>
> >>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> All,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> >>>>> speakup.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> >>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> >>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> >>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> >>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
> >>>>> someone
> >>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
> >>>>> code for
> >>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
> >>>>> want,
> >>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> question:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> >>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> >>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> >>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> William
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Speakup mailing list
> >>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> >>>> How do
> >>>> you spend it?
> >>>>
> >>>>          John Covici
> >>>>          covici@ccs.covici.com
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Speakup mailing list
> >>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Speakup mailing list
> >>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> 
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

I think I might have addressed John when I should have said Robert.

I'm for keeping SpeakUp in the kernel.

However, without meaning any offense to anybody's hard work; something 
needs doing to get SpeakUp back on trap. Even if that is just a revamp 
of the web pages. Links are broken, the text is out of date.

In the source distro, the install script is broken.

I throw my hat in to the ring as a volunteer to help where I can.

Mike

On 08/05/2013 17:14, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett
> gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing
> and stuff Linux will not do.
>
> John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact
>> that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen
>> readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I
>> suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for
>> email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority
>> of linux users use orca for every day tasks.
>>
>> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
>> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you
>> do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without
>> speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that
>> is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
>> messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot
>> into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be
>> the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know --
>> when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all
>> that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press
>> the print screen key.
>>
>> On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
>>> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
>>> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
>>> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
>>> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
>>> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
>>> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
>>> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
>>> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
>>> long run.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
>>> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>>>
>>> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>>>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
>>>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>>>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>>>>
>>>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>>>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>>>> with
>>>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>>>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>>>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>>>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>>>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>>>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>>>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>>>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>>>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>>>>
>>>>> Gene Collins
>>>>>
>>>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>>>>> etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> All,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>>>> someone
>>>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>>>> code for
>>>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>>>> want,
>>>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> question:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> William
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>>>>> How do
>>>>>> you spend it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>           John Covici
>>>>>>           covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>> -- 
>> ---
>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

OK, then we need to fix serial support as well, so we do the
registration correctly, or find some other way to  do these things -- a
discussion is still needed and this is why I proposed a conference call,
but hardly anyone seems interested.

Mike Ray <mike@raspberryvi.org> wrote:

> 
> I think I might have addressed John when I should have said Robert.
> 
> I'm for keeping SpeakUp in the kernel.
> 
> However, without meaning any offense to anybody's hard work; something
> needs doing to get SpeakUp back on trap. Even if that is just a revamp
> of the web pages. Links are broken, the text is out of date.
> 
> In the source distro, the install script is broken.
> 
> I throw my hat in to the ring as a volunteer to help where I can.
> 
> Mike
> 
> On 08/05/2013 17:14, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett
> > gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing
> > and stuff Linux will not do.
> >
> > John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact
> >> that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen
> >> readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I
> >> suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for
> >> email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority
> >> of linux users use orca for every day tasks.
> >>
> >> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
> >> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you
> >> do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without
> >> speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that
> >> is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
> >> messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot
> >> into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be
> >> the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know --
> >> when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all
> >> that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press
> >> the print screen key.
> >>
> >> On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
> >>> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
> >>> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
> >>> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
> >>> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
> >>> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
> >>> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
> >>> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
> >>> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
> >>> long run.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
> >>> spangler.robert@gmail.com
> >>>
> >>> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> >>>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
> >>>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
> >>>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
> >>>>
> >>>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
> >>>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
> >>>>> scrollback buffer.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
> >>>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
> >>>>> with
> >>>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
> >>>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
> >>>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
> >>>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
> >>>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
> >>>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
> >>>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
> >>>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
> >>>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
> >>>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
> >>>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
> >>>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
> >>>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
> >>>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
> >>>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
> >>>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
> >>>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Gene Collins
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
> >>>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
> >>>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
> >>>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
> >>>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
> >>>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
> >>>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
> >>>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
> >>>>>> etc.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> All,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> >>>>>>> speakup.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> >>>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> >>>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> >>>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> >>>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
> >>>>>>> someone
> >>>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
> >>>>>>> code for
> >>>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
> >>>>>>> want,
> >>>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> question:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> >>>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> >>>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> >>>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> William
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
> >>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> >>>>>> How do
> >>>>>> you spend it?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>           John Covici
> >>>>>>           covici@ccs.covici.com
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Speakup mailing list
> >>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Speakup mailing list
> >>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Speakup mailing list
> >>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>>
> >> -- 
> >> ---
> >> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Speakup mailing list
> >> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> -- 
> Michael A. Ray
> Analyst/Programmer
> Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
> 
> Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
> Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/
> 
> From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Tony Baechler]

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What about an IRC meeting?  It's trivial to get IRC logs for later
discussion for those like me who aren't able to attend.  I think there is
already a logging service for the #speakup channel, so just pick a date
and hold a meeting there.  Sunday is Mother's Day in the US, so perhaps
Saturday or next week.

On 5/8/2013 10:58 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> OK, then we need to fix serial support as well, so we do the 
> registration correctly, or find some other way to  do these things --
> a discussion is still needed and this is why I proposed a conference
> call, but hardly anyone seems interested.
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Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

I personally like voice better, but irc would be second best.  Saturday
evening is OK for either one.

Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:

> What about an IRC meeting?  It's trivial to get IRC logs for later
> discussion for those like me who aren't able to attend.  I think there is
> already a logging service for the #speakup channel, so just pick a date
> and hold a meeting there.  Sunday is Mother's Day in the US, so perhaps
> Saturday or next week.
> 
> On 5/8/2013 10:58 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > OK, then we need to fix serial support as well, so we do the 
> > registration correctly, or find some other way to  do these things --
> > a discussion is still needed and this is why I proposed a conference
> > call, but hardly anyone seems interested.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

On Thu, 9 May 2013, Tony Baechler wrote:

> What about an IRC meeting?  It's trivial to get IRC logs for later
> discussion for those like me who aren't able to attend.  I think there is
> already a logging service for the #speakup channel, so just pick a date
> and hold a meeting there.  Sunday is Mother's Day in the US, so perhaps
> Saturday or next week.

We don't have the full time logger on the speakup channel anymore. We
had two but they seem to have wandered off and got lost. I and a few
others log the channel anyway so a after the fact log can still be
made available, if that is what folks want to do.

-- 
Well that's it then, colour me gone!

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

On Wed, 8 May 2013, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> OK, then we need to fix serial support as well, so we do the
> registration correctly, or find some other way to  do these things -- a
> discussion is still needed and this is why I proposed a conference call,
> but hardly anyone seems interested.

John, I have been letting peoples suggestions come in and collecting
their ideas. Once I have that complete I will post that item list to
the list to see if I missed anything or others have any new
ideas. After that I will set-up a conference call or irc discussion
or mail discussion or all of the above, to discuss and vote, read the
spelling of vote "volunteer," on the items.

-- 
Well that's it then, colour me gone!

Re: the direction of speakup

[John G. Heim]

Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca. But 
I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it was 
pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system too 
but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good 
mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I 
have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use 
thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as Windows/jaws 
but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.

I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to 
doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.



On 05/08/13 11:14, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett
> gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing
> and stuff Linux will not do.
>
> John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact
>> that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen
>> readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I
>> suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for
>> email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority
>> of linux users use orca for every day tasks.
>>
>> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
>> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you
>> do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without
>> speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that
>> is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
>> messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot
>> into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be
>> the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know --
>> when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all
>> that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press
>> the print screen key.
>>
>> On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
>>> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
>>> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
>>> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
>>> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
>>> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
>>> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
>>> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
>>> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
>>> long run.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
>>> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>>>
>>> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>>>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
>>>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>>>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>>>>
>>>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>>>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>>>> with
>>>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>>>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>>>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>>>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>>>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>>>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>>>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>>>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>>>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>>>>
>>>>> Gene Collins
>>>>>
>>>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>>>>> etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> All,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>>>> someone
>>>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>>>> code for
>>>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>>>> want,
>>>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> question:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> William
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>>>>> How do
>>>>>> you spend it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>           John Covici
>>>>>>           covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>>
>> --
>> ---
>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
 In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
doing things the Windows way?

On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
> 
> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

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Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable. Orca 
came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after finishing the 
install.

Some recommendations:
1. Go with debian stable.
2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you a 
3.2 kernel.
3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not use 
the equivalent debian packages.
4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the same 
voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google it.) Voxin 
may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much more.





On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
> doing things the Windows way?
>
> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>
>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
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> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs
> =Ghdw
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

RE: Switching to Linux

[Øyvind Lode]

Current Debian stable ships with kernel 3.2.41 so no need for backports.
Debian 7.0 codename "wheezy" released May 4th.

I have already upgraded my firewalls to Debian 7.0 and so far so good.

Next up is one of my main servers which runs a few services like web, NTP, Samba and is currently powered by Debian 6.0.

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim
Sent: 9. mai 2013 16:01
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Switching to Linux

All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable. Orca 
came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after finishing the 
install.

Some recommendations:
1. Go with debian stable.
2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you a 
3.2 kernel.
3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not use 
the equivalent debian packages.
4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the same 
voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google it.) Voxin 
may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much more.





On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
> doing things the Windows way?
>
> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>
>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
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> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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> =Ghdw
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Switching to Linux

[Buddy Brannan]

I've been a little out of the loop for a while. Quite a while, as it happens. How does one do a talking Debian stable install these days? Serial synth required, or does speak happen somehow? 

I haven't actually done a Debian install in something like 5 years, probably. Maybe more. I really need to get my hand back in this stuff.
--
Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
Phone: (814) 860-3194 or 888-75-BUDDY



On May 9, 2013, at 11:41 AM, Øyvind Lode <oyvind@lode.is> wrote:

> Current Debian stable ships with kernel 3.2.41 so no need for backports.
> Debian 7.0 codename "wheezy" released May 4th.
> 
> I have already upgraded my firewalls to Debian 7.0 and so far so good.
> 
> Next up is one of my main servers which runs a few services like web, NTP, Samba and is currently powered by Debian 6.0.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim
> Sent: 9. mai 2013 16:01
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: Switching to Linux
> 
> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable. Orca 
> came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after finishing the 
> install.
> 
> Some recommendations:
> 1. Go with debian stable.
> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you a 
> 3.2 kernel.
> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not use 
> the equivalent debian packages.
> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the same 
> voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google it.) Voxin 
> may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much more.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA256
>> 
>> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
>> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
>> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
>> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
>> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
>> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
>> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
>> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
>> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
>> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
>> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
>> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
>> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
>> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
>> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
>>  In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
>> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
>> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
>> doing things the Windows way?
>> 
>> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
>>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
>>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
>>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>> 
>>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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>> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs
>> =Ghdw
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> 
> 
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Switching to Linux

[Samuel Thibault]

Buddy Brannan, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:24:27 -0400, a écrit :
> I've been a little out of the loop for a while. Quite a while, as it happens. How does one do a talking Debian stable install these days? Serial synth required, or does speak happen somehow? 

See http://wiki.debian.org/accessibility

Samuel

Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

I think today, squeeze is still debian's stable version. For squeeze, 
you need a hardware synth. For wheezy, you press the S key and it speaks 
with software speech. You can still do an install with your hardware 
synth with wheezy. I put wheezy on a server about a month ago figuring 
it would be moved to stable soon.

  05/09/13 11:39, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Buddy Brannan, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:24:27 -0400, a écrit :
>> I've been a little out of the loop for a while. Quite a while, as it happens. How does one do a talking Debian stable install these days? Serial synth required, or does speak happen somehow?
>
> See http://wiki.debian.org/accessibility
>
> Samuel
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Switching to Linux

[Samuel Thibault]

John G. Heim, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:04:47 -0500, a écrit :
> I think today, squeeze is still debian's stable version.

No. Wheezy came out last week-end.

Samuel

Re: Switching to Linux

[Karen Lewellen]

indeed it did, with many on the main debian list strongly recommending that 
you upgrade only if you must.  Debian 7 has issues for many.
As for the source question on this thread.  Do your homework in advance 
and be very very sure 1, what you desire to do in Linux and cannot 
effortlessly do with whatever you are using now can actually be done with 
the distribution .
and, 2, be very sure you can access the total tools and usability things 
you will require.
Personally I remain amazed at how complex something with so many hands 
remains. but that is just my opinion.
Karen

On Thu, 9 May 2013, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> John G. Heim, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:04:47 -0500, a écrit :
>> I think today, squeeze is still debian's stable version.
>
> No. Wheezy came out last week-end.
>
> Samuel
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>

Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 04:32:16PM -0400, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> indeed it did, with many on the main debian list strongly
> recommending that you upgrade only if you must.  Debian 7 has issues
> for many.

Can you provide pointers to such discussions? If these are things not
mentioned in the release notes or errata for debian seven I for one
would like to know about them.

Greg


-- 
web site: http://www.gregn..net
gpg public key: http://www.gregn..net/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

--
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org

Re: Switching to Linux

[Rob Hudson]

My problem with gnome/orca is that it is extreeeemely slow. If there was a 
way to strip out most of the unnessential stuff in gnome, I'd probably use 
it more often. I'm talking about almost thirty seconds to launch firefox, as 
an example. Under XP on the same system, it only takes maybe five to ten 
seconds. Granted, I haven't used gnome outside of vinux and i haven't really 
played around much with default gnome as installed from source or package 
management, so maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's orca that's slow, I just 
don't know.

Working in the terminal on the other hand is very snappy. I get no lag, and 
everything just responds nice and fast. I get about a fifteen second boot 
time, whereas with xorg installed it takes about forty five seconds. There's 
three gigs of memory on the box in question and I think a 2.0 ghz processor. 
So, unless i can find a way to make gnome faster i won't be using it.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2013 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: Switching to Linux


I think today, squeeze is still debian's stable version. For squeeze,
you need a hardware synth. For wheezy, you press the S key and it speaks
with software speech. You can still do an install with your hardware
synth with wheezy. I put wheezy on a server about a month ago figuring
it would be moved to stable soon.

  05/09/13 11:39, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Buddy Brannan, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:24:27 -0400, a écrit :
>> I've been a little out of the loop for a while. Quite a while, as it 
>> happens. How does one do a talking Debian stable install these days? 
>> Serial synth required, or does speak happen somehow?
>
> See http://wiki.debian.org/accessibility
>
> Samuel
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Switching to Linux

[Hart Larry]

So how many different graphical screen-readers are there in Linux?  I have an 
old version of "lsr" but not sure how to install it.  As far as console, there 
are what 4, Speakup, YASR, Jupiter, and emacsSpeak
Thanks in advance
Hart

Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

Wow! It takes 30 seconds to start Firefox? There's definitely a problem
there somewhere. I do have a really fast processor, but even when I had
a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, I got firefox running in less than 10
seconds. I didn't really time it, but it wasn't anywhere near 30
seconds. Maybe that's because GNOME itself was much older then or
something. I can't comment now, as it only takes about 2 seconds for
Firefox to come up here now, but I have a 3.1Ghz 8-core processor. Any
comment I make about that would certainly be an apples to oranges
comparison.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

Well, a GUI is always going to be slower than a CUI.  But I used to have 
Windows 7 on this worstation, the one I'm typing this message on rigght 
now. And linux is approximately as fast a Windows 7. Launching 
Thunderbird and Firefox take approximately the same time.


I have a quad-core I5 with 8Gb of RAM though. That's pretty big/fast.




On 05/09/13 13:06, Rob Hudson wrote:
> My problem with gnome/orca is that it is extreeeemely slow. If there was
> a way to strip out most of the unnessential stuff in gnome, I'd probably
> use it more often. I'm talking about almost thirty seconds to launch
> firefox, as an example. Under XP on the same system, it only takes maybe
> five to ten seconds. Granted, I haven't used gnome outside of vinux and
> i haven't really played around much with default gnome as installed from
> source or package management, so maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's orca
> that's slow, I just don't know.
>
> Working in the terminal on the other hand is very snappy. I get no lag,
> and everything just responds nice and fast. I get about a fifteen second
> boot time, whereas with xorg installed it takes about forty five
> seconds. There's three gigs of memory on the box in question and I think
> a 2.0 ghz processor. So, unless i can find a way to make gnome faster i
> won't be using it.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
> <speakup@linux-speakup.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2013 12:04 PM
> Subject: Re: Switching to Linux
>
>
> I think today, squeeze is still debian's stable version. For squeeze,
> you need a hardware synth. For wheezy, you press the S key and it speaks
> with software speech. You can still do an install with your hardware
> synth with wheezy. I put wheezy on a server about a month ago figuring
> it would be moved to stable soon.
>
>   05/09/13 11:39, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>> Buddy Brannan, le Thu 09 May 2013 12:24:27 -0400, a écrit :
>>> I've been a little out of the loop for a while. Quite a while, as it
>>> happens. How does one do a talking Debian stable install these days?
>>> Serial synth required, or does speak happen somehow?
>>
>> See http://wiki.debian.org/accessibility
>>
>> Samuel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

This is probably a bit late, but how much swap space do you have?  Just
like Windows, any graphical environment takes a lot of memory, both
physical and virtual.  You might want to install the swapspace package
and/or increase the size of your swap partition.  Yes, Vinux did seem a
lot slower to me when I tried it here, but I agree that a system with X on
it boots slower.  However, XP boots slower than plain Debian without X, so
I'm not sure if that's a valid comparison.  Here, my Firefox on XP starts
in less than 30 seconds.  It always takes longer the first time I open it
in a session.  If you can upgrade to 64-bit Linux, that would help.  If
nothing else, you would get better memory management.  I have an XP
partition, a plain Debian partition without X and a 10 GB Debian unstable
with X installed.  The Debian unstable boots faster than XP and about the
same as the partition without X.

On 5/9/2013 11:06 AM, Rob Hudson wrote:
> My problem with gnome/orca is that it is extreeeemely slow. If there
> was a way to strip out most of the unnessential stuff in gnome, I'd
> probably use it more often. I'm talking about almost thirty seconds to
> launch firefox, as an example. Under XP on the same system, it only
> takes maybe five to ten seconds. Granted, I haven't used gnome outside
> of vinux and i haven't really played around much with default gnome as
> installed from source or package management, so maybe it's just me. Or
> maybe it's orca that's slow, I just don't know.
> 
> Working in the terminal on the other hand is very snappy. I get no lag,
> and everything just responds nice and fast. I get about a fifteen
> second boot time, whereas with xorg installed it takes about forty five
> seconds. There's three gigs of memory on the box in question and I
> think a 2.0 ghz processor. So, unless i can find a way to make gnome
> faster i won't be using it.
> 
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Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Brandon McGinty-Carroll]

As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
Is this no longer correct?

Brandon McGinty-Carroll

On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:01:28AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable.
> Orca came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after
> finishing the install.
> 
> Some recommendations:
> 1. Go with debian stable.
> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you
> a 3.2 kernel.
> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not
> use the equivalent debian packages.
> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the
> same voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google
> it.) Voxin may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much
> more.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >Hash: SHA256
> >
> >What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
> >switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
> >primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
> >X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
> >experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
> >I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
> >the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
> >anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
> >Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
> >reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
> >bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
> >anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
> >packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
> >soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
> >I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
> >  In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
> >but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
> >could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
> >doing things the Windows way?
> >
> >On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
> >>But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
> >>was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
> >>too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
> >>mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
> >>have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
> >>thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
> >>Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
> >>
> >>I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
> >>doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
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> >=Ghdw
> >-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >_______________________________________________
> >Speakup mailing list
> >Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> 
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
# As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.

As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
makes my head hurt.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Littlefield, Tyler]

 >but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
 >doing for years <smile>
yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about 
short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually be 
able to take you seriously.

Also I honestly see nothing wrong with voxen/eloquence. Sure it is 
outdated and has problems, but I prefer it to the harsh headcold sound 
of ESpeak. It's a matter of preference that doesn't exactly set voxen or 
espeak above one or the other.
On 5/9/2013 4:57 PM, Kyle wrote:
> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>
> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> makes my head hurt.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

According to Littlefield, Tyler:
# yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about
# short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually be
# able to take you seriously.

My aren't we cranky today. Anyway, the stab at Microsoft was meant
mainly as a joke, but I do indeed have a clue what I'm talking about. I
build computers, and have tried doing technical support for Windows. I
gave it up in favor of only supporting Linux, because all I ended up
doing with Windows was figuring out how to clean viruses and spyware off
the systems I fixed and finding out why all those pesky Internet
Explorer pop-up ads for pornographic websites kept coming on the screen
in the middle of doing normal everyday tasks. I got pretty good at
manually finding keys in the Windows registry that didn't belong there
and stripping them out, only to have them come back again later, even
after thinking I had uninstalled the responsible application. I also got
very good at recommending antivirus and spyware removal software, but
not much else, since once all that mess was running, there weren't much
system resources left to do any real work. BTW, I can't stand offer
buddies and so-called web accelerators, none of which I find bundled in
any software I have ever installed on a Linux system.

Also, if you had bothered to read past my weak attempt at humor, you
would have been able to see that I recommended several viable options
that are better maintained and more stable than Voxin, and even sound
better than either Voxin or eSpeak, but you were too busy trying to
figure out how not to take me seriously simply because of half of a
sentence, completely disregarding the rest of my post. This type of
cherrypicking is usually counterproductive, and generally only helps the
person toward whom you have decided to show undue hostility.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Littlefield, Tyler]

yes yes, you build computers. That insta-qualifies you to bash on things 
you know nothing about. But here, I'll school you.

First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a Windows 
vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the user runs as 
something besides admin it's even harder still. Those "pesky popups" 
come up because well, your pesky users are actually viewing porn with a 
horrible browser. There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and 
Chrome which are much better  suited to acting as a browser.

I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't belong 
there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people were paying you 
for this random manual registry key removal, you would've used a 
registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with it. As to anti virus 
solutions, I routinely install them for people and they still have the 
resources to spare, funny enough. Perhaps you should've done more 
research there as well.

On 5/9/2013 5:41 PM, Kyle wrote:
> According to Littlefield, Tyler:
> # yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about
> # short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually be
> # able to take you seriously.
>
> My aren't we cranky today. Anyway, the stab at Microsoft was meant
> mainly as a joke, but I do indeed have a clue what I'm talking about. I
> build computers, and have tried doing technical support for Windows. I
> gave it up in favor of only supporting Linux, because all I ended up
> doing with Windows was figuring out how to clean viruses and spyware off
> the systems I fixed and finding out why all those pesky Internet
> Explorer pop-up ads for pornographic websites kept coming on the screen
> in the middle of doing normal everyday tasks. I got pretty good at
> manually finding keys in the Windows registry that didn't belong there
> and stripping them out, only to have them come back again later, even
> after thinking I had uninstalled the responsible application. I also got
> very good at recommending antivirus and spyware removal software, but
> not much else, since once all that mess was running, there weren't much
> system resources left to do any real work. BTW, I can't stand offer
> buddies and so-called web accelerators, none of which I find bundled in
> any software I have ever installed on a Linux system.
>
> Also, if you had bothered to read past my weak attempt at humor, you
> would have been able to see that I recommended several viable options
> that are better maintained and more stable than Voxin, and even sound
> better than either Voxin or eSpeak, but you were too busy trying to
> figure out how not to take me seriously simply because of half of a
> sentence, completely disregarding the rest of my post. This type of
> cherrypicking is usually counterproductive, and generally only helps the
> person toward whom you have decided to show undue hostility.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

You can't say I don't know what I'm talking about when I have a client
who had these pop-ups and the computer ran very slowly, but installing
Linux on the computer made it run much faster, and there has been no
further complaint about pop-ups, even though the client's browsing
habits haven't changed. And yes, I know all about that CCleaner mess. It
misses a lot of obvious stuff, just like all the other crap they put out
there, expecting us to wrestle with our computers trying to get them to
work properly with this easy fix and that easy fix that just makes the
problem worse. And actually, CCleaner was one of the better "easy
fixes," even though its best feature was just removing temporary files.
I never noticed the claimed speed improvements and performance
enhancements that were supposed to come from letting yet another little
cleanup tool do its thing, probably because the Windows registry is a
huge thing that is very hard to clean completely, and one wrong move can
make your machine completely unbootable, whereas in Linux, if I get
bloated configuration files due to multiple upgrades and such, even if I
just go in and

rm ~/.??*

I just have to reconfigure my settings again, because all the
configuration files recreate themselves from defaults, and I'll never
have an unbootable system that way. Let me just say that I know enough
about Windows to help people find better alternatives, and I know enough
about computers in general enough to help people find alternatives to
broken and outdated software. And yes, I know enough about Linux to help
people find alternatives to broken Linux software also.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response on
this thread.  My comments are below.

On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a
> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the user runs
> as something besides admin it's even harder still. Those "pesky popups"
> come up because well, your pesky users are actually viewing porn with a
> horrible browser.

That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus
scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP
with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've never
had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and true
virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop who
built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running a
backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure out why
I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got that cleaned
up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus since.  However,
with OE in particular, it opens email attachments without the knowledge of
the user, so it's next to impossible to prevent getting a virus at some
point.  Thunderbird is better, but you still have to turn off the message
preview by hand.  Eudora would automatically save and open attachments
unless you turned it off.

What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and get
pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no interest.
Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I still get pop-up
ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I hear that IE 7 is
better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19, but not often.
Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker doesn't seem to
block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's not a Windows vs.
Linux issue.

> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which are
> much better  suited to acting as a browser.

See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca nowadays?
 Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but I wasn't
impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons to use IE,
like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV is one.  Some
banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be viewed with other
browsers.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't belong 
> there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people were paying
> you for this random manual registry key removal, you would've used a
> registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with it. As to anti virus
> solutions, I routinely install them for people and they still have the
> resources to spare, funny enough. Perhaps you should've done more
> research there as well.

Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one time,
also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard to get
anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete stop every
morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up the system
completely after it was installed and doing its routine virus check.
Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.  While I agree
with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove everything.  After
Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a trial and we weren't
going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys left which I manually had
to find and delete.  That only took me about 30 minutes or so.

You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or something,
but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to know the basics
of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I guess that's what keeps
security professionals employed full-time.  Just to be fair, I don't
totally agree with Kyle either and I think he makes too many general
assumptions based on his own preferences which are not always true.  Not
everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices to build a computer are
unrealistic.
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

Now just a minute here! I *never* said that everyone runs Arch, nor did
I say that everyone should. Arch is what I use on my own system,
although I can get it working on a system I build if the client wants to
use it, or if it fits a specific need. I generally recommend openSUSE
and Ubuntu for people who are using Linux systems for the first time. I
installed openSUSE on a client's computer and he has had much fewer
complaints about his machine now than he did before the installation. It
went from taking 5 minutes to boot a too new version of Windows on a too
old machine to booting openSUSE in about a minute, and that is really
good, considering the age of his computer and the amount of ram/CPU
power it has.

As for my prices, I purchase my parts and build the computer to order. I
don't give people 2-year-old junk, call it new and sell it for $300; I
can't, and I flatly refuse to do so. But I have done enough research to
know that I can build a really powerful computer, complete with all the
software bells and whistles, and ship it for around $900, or if not,
definitely under $1000 and this is a computer that Dell won't even sell.
Their closest match is not near as powerful, and it costs $1400. Now
whose prices are unrealistic?
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I still say that Kyle, your prices are unrealistic.  I have no idea where
the $300 for two year old junk reference comes from as I neither build nor
sell computers.  I bought my server parts on Amazon last August.  Without
hard drives, my cost, including the case, mobo, CPU and memory was $585,
substantially cheaper than what you're offering.  Even if you get two 1 TB
drives, we're up to less than $800.  I even got the specialized server
motherboard and CPU, so I'm sure a plain vanilla desktop is cheaper.  Even
with my RAID 1 and RAID 5 setup and paying labor, my total cost out the
door was $1,100 and I challenge you to find a custom-built server for less
than that.  I'm sure it can be done, but not custom built from the ground
up with two 1 TB and three 3 TB drives.  Also, unless I'm terribly behind
the times, Dell Small Business usually has machines for sale for around
$500 or less for a desktop.  I've even seen very nice HP notebooks for
less than the $900 you quote below.  I should also add that $100 of the
$1,100 for extra labor was because it's a server.  A plain desktop would
probably be about half the price.

OK, it just seems like in various threads here and on the Blinux list that
running Arch seems to be your answer to everything.  I haven't used Arch
and I don't see any point since I have a very nice Debian setup here.  I
really don't know why you would recommend something other than Ubuntu or
Debian, at least from an accessibility point of view, but to each his own.
 I'm the first to admit that there is no one right distro of Linux.

On 5/10/2013 6:44 AM, Kyle wrote:
> Now just a minute here! I *never* said that everyone runs Arch, nor
> did I say that everyone should. Arch is what I use on my own system, 
> although I can get it working on a system I build if the client wants
> to use it, or if it fits a specific need. I generally recommend
> openSUSE and Ubuntu for people who are using Linux systems for the
> first time. I installed openSUSE on a client's computer and he has had
> much fewer complaints about his machine now than he did before the
> installation. It went from taking 5 minutes to boot a too new version
> of Windows on a too old machine to booting openSUSE in about a minute,
> and that is really good, considering the age of his computer and the
> amount of ram/CPU power it has.
> 
> As for my prices, I purchase my parts and build the computer to order.
> I don't give people 2-year-old junk, call it new and sell it for $300;
> I can't, and I flatly refuse to do so. But I have done enough research
> to know that I can build a really powerful computer, complete with all
> the software bells and whistles, and ship it for around $900, or if
> not, definitely under $1000 and this is a computer that Dell won't even
> sell. Their closest match is not near as powerful, and it costs $1400.
> Now whose prices are unrealistic? ~Kyle http://kyle.tk/
> 

- -- 
Have a good day,
Tony Baechler
tony@baechler.net
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Littlefield, Tyler]

Hello:
I understand that it's not always people that view porn. Basically 
though, you know what to do to disable attachments and you don't click 
on random weird links. usually that's enough to save you the trouble. 
End-users on say, facebook usually aren't as lucky. My grandma clicks 
everything that looks like a link and usually has a virus. The 
difference is mainly that you know what you're doing and she doesn't. 
Also, I recognize that it's not just porn browsers, I guess that was 
more of a genearlization. There are sites like Sendspace that do give 
popups, but usually the flood of popups (porn or otherwise) appears with 
viruses and it doesn't really matter what site you're on.

I do know Norton sucked, but that's far from the only solution now if 
they're still even around. I don't remember seeing Norton on a system 
for a long time, regardless. Usually I replace it with something like 
AVG that doesn't store resources.

Either way, I'm not sure where the bigshot programmer that knows php 
came in. That obviously is one of the languages I use since I use it on 
my site, but it's not even relevant. I just thought I'd reply to the 
windows bashing since it's done by a guy I've seen make totally ludacris 
hardware suggestions and shove arch at people that probably shouldn't 
use it. On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I use it all 
the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should be used for 
end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer him job 
security, though.
On 5/10/2013 7:19 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response on
> this thread.  My comments are below.
>
> On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a
>> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the user runs
>> as something besides admin it's even harder still. Those "pesky popups"
>> come up because well, your pesky users are actually viewing porn with a
>> horrible browser.
> That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus
> scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP
> with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've never
> had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and true
> virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop who
> built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running a
> backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure out why
> I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got that cleaned
> up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus since.  However,
> with OE in particular, it opens email attachments without the knowledge of
> the user, so it's next to impossible to prevent getting a virus at some
> point.  Thunderbird is better, but you still have to turn off the message
> preview by hand.  Eudora would automatically save and open attachments
> unless you turned it off.
>
> What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and get
> pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no interest.
> Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I still get pop-up
> ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I hear that IE 7 is
> better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19, but not often.
> Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker doesn't seem to
> block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's not a Windows vs.
> Linux issue.
>
>> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which are
>> much better  suited to acting as a browser.
> See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca nowadays?
>   Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but I wasn't
> impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons to use IE,
> like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV is one.  Some
> banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be viewed with other
> browsers.
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't belong
>> there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people were paying
>> you for this random manual registry key removal, you would've used a
>> registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with it. As to anti virus
>> solutions, I routinely install them for people and they still have the
>> resources to spare, funny enough. Perhaps you should've done more
>> research there as well.
> Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one time,
> also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard to get
> anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete stop every
> morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up the system
> completely after it was installed and doing its routine virus check.
> Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.  While I agree
> with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove everything.  After
> Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a trial and we weren't
> going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys left which I manually had
> to find and delete.  That only took me about 30 minutes or so.
>
> You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or something,
> but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to know the basics
> of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I guess that's what keeps
> security professionals employed full-time.  Just to be fair, I don't
> totally agree with Kyle either and I think he makes too many general
> assumptions based on his own preferences which are not always true.  Not
> everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices to build a computer are
> unrealistic.
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> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Glenn]

Tyler,
I have had a lot of success fixing viruses on computers by tapping the hard 
drive with a USB to IDE or SATA cable and scanning the drive like an 
external drive.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler@tysdomain.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux


Hello:
I understand that it's not always people that view porn. Basically
though, you know what to do to disable attachments and you don't click
on random weird links. usually that's enough to save you the trouble.
End-users on say, facebook usually aren't as lucky. My grandma clicks
everything that looks like a link and usually has a virus. The
difference is mainly that you know what you're doing and she doesn't.
Also, I recognize that it's not just porn browsers, I guess that was
more of a genearlization. There are sites like Sendspace that do give
popups, but usually the flood of popups (porn or otherwise) appears with
viruses and it doesn't really matter what site you're on.

I do know Norton sucked, but that's far from the only solution now if
they're still even around. I don't remember seeing Norton on a system
for a long time, regardless. Usually I replace it with something like
AVG that doesn't store resources.

Either way, I'm not sure where the bigshot programmer that knows php
came in. That obviously is one of the languages I use since I use it on
my site, but it's not even relevant. I just thought I'd reply to the
windows bashing since it's done by a guy I've seen make totally ludacris
hardware suggestions and shove arch at people that probably shouldn't
use it. On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I use it all
the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should be used for
end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer him job
security, though.
On 5/10/2013 7:19 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response on
> this thread.  My comments are below.
>
> On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a
>> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the user runs
>> as something besides admin it's even harder still. Those "pesky popups"
>> come up because well, your pesky users are actually viewing porn with a
>> horrible browser.
> That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus
> scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP
> with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've never
> had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and true
> virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop who
> built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running a
> backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure out why
> I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got that cleaned
> up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus since.  However,
> with OE in particular, it opens email attachments without the knowledge of
> the user, so it's next to impossible to prevent getting a virus at some
> point.  Thunderbird is better, but you still have to turn off the message
> preview by hand.  Eudora would automatically save and open attachments
> unless you turned it off.
>
> What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and get
> pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no interest.
> Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I still get pop-up
> ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I hear that IE 7 is
> better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19, but not often.
> Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker doesn't seem to
> block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's not a Windows vs.
> Linux issue.
>
>> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which are
>> much better  suited to acting as a browser.
> See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca nowadays?
>   Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but I wasn't
> impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons to use IE,
> like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV is one.  Some
> banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be viewed with other
> browsers.
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't belong
>> there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people were paying
>> you for this random manual registry key removal, you would've used a
>> registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with it. As to anti virus
>> solutions, I routinely install them for people and they still have the
>> resources to spare, funny enough. Perhaps you should've done more
>> research there as well.
> Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one time,
> also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard to get
> anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete stop every
> morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up the system
> completely after it was installed and doing its routine virus check.
> Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.  While I agree
> with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove everything.  After
> Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a trial and we weren't
> going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys left which I manually had
> to find and delete.  That only took me about 30 minutes or so.
>
> You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or something,
> but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to know the basics
> of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I guess that's what keeps
> security professionals employed full-time.  Just to be fair, I don't
> totally agree with Kyle either and I think he makes too many general
> assumptions based on his own preferences which are not always true.  Not
> everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices to build a computer are
> unrealistic.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that 
dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

According to Littlefield, Tyler:
# I just thought I'd reply to the windows bashing since it's done by a guy
# I've seen make totally ludacris hardware suggestions and shove arch at
# people that probably shouldn't use it.

You obviously have me confused with someone else. In the real world
where I live, I built the computer I'm using to write this message, and
it serves my needs quite well. In the same real world,, the totally
ludacris hardware suggestions I have made, as you so elloquently put it,
have resulted in satisfied customers and no complaints. Furthermore, in
the real world where I live, I have only installed Arch Linux once, and
that was a portable install on a flash drive, because although I wanted
my client to start out with openSUSE, it wouldn't allow me to install to
the flash drive in a fullly portable way, insisting that I install GRUB
to the hard disk on my own computer, and giving me no easy to find
option to change it. So I put Arch on that flash drive and did all the
necessary installation procedures to get GNOME 3.6 running on it, along
with Packagekit to keep it updated and install additional applications
in a more simplified way. The point was to have a flash drive that would
run on any computer that can boot from USB, with the user's own files,
bookmarks, applications that are always in the same place, and a full
operating system that doesn't touch anything, even temporary files or
cookies, on the computer on which it runs. Currently Linux is by far the
best operating system to fill this need, and though Arch was certainly
not my first choice for someone new to Linux, it ended up being the best
for the job, as the client is unable to purchase a computer, and I
needed to provide much needed basic training involving the internet,
e-mail and other applications related to finding and acquiring jobs, at
as low a cost as possible to me, and at absolutely no cost to the client.

So what in the world did I do wrong here? Where have I forced you or
anyone else to use Arch Linux against your will? What hardware
suggestions have I made that you didn't like? What crime did I commit
against you that made you feel the need to personally attack me and the
way I do business, seeing as how you don't know me, and I know you in
name only, and only from this list? Perhaps I have every right to
personally attack you for the statement you make below, but I will use
my better judgment in this matter, although I do have a response.

# On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I use it all
# the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should be used for
# end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer him job
# security, though.

Actually, I had plenty of job security, had I wanted it, just removing
viruses, spyware and all other kinds of malicious and otherwise nasty
software from people's Windows computers, but over the years, Linux has
become less and less of an operating system just for geeks, and has
become quite a viable operating system for anyone. Major commercial
developers, including Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming
platform, are finally coming onboard, making more commercial
applications available for Linux operating systems. So this is not just
a generalization based on personal preference, as you suggested in
another post. So I made a decision to only support freedom operating
systems and software, such as Linux and its quite full and capable list
of available applications. My job is to give people the freedom to use
their computers, the freedom to share the applications they use, and if
they really want to get more deeply involved, the freedom to study and
adapt the underlying code to their own needs. And yes, this does give me
job security, not from all the extra technical support that you imply is
needed just to make Linux work, but because there will always be people
who want the alternative to the proprietary software that is put onto
the computers they purchase, whether they want it or not, especially
when I am able to offer a full suite of applications that are not time
limited trials, at a lower price than the major manufacturers, at least
when it comes to mid to high-end computers.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/


-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I got my dad switched to Ubuntu quite a while ago and he was happy enough
with it as a desktop at home.  He can't use it at the office because he
still has Windows apps which don't run in Linux.  I tried to convince him
to set up a Windows virtual machine but he wasn't interested.  He pretty
much gave up on running Ubuntu now for whatever reason, but he didn't have
a problem adjusting.  He liked it better than Debian.

Yes, Norton Internet Security is still around.  I put it on my brother's
notebook because I didn't know what else to suggest and it worked as well
as any other antivirus solution in the past.  It's totally inaccessible
and I told him not to bother to renew.  AVG is now pretty much dead and it
was the antivirus which totally made my machine come to a complete stop at
8 AM daily.  OK, it turned out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is
part of AVG, but I couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but
no matter what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I
liked it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
typical Windows behavior.

I have to agree with Kyle that I never had good luck with registry
cleaners.  I actually had to boot into Linux a couple of times to fix my
Windows registry.  I didn't try every registry cleaner out there, but I
tried a few.  I used to specialize in Windows utilities and I was fairly
aware of what's out there.  Now, I just use XP for basic tasks like
Firefox and email and that's about it.

I say you're a bigshot programmer because you seem to think you know best
how to administer an operating system.  I've seen this kind of attitude
from other programmers in the past, but from you more than most.  You
write some long program in php when a one or two line shell script works
just as well.  System admins still get paid more than programmers for a
reason.  As a note from a security point of view, php code almost always
has tons of security problems.  It's amazing how many problems constantly
crop up in php apps, including WordPress and Drupal contributed modules.
There is a lot of sloppy C code out there as well, but it seems to be a
disease with php.  I'm not bashing you or the language as I run WordPress
for my podcast and I'm not really a programmer at all, I'm just pointing
out observations.

On 5/10/2013 7:11 AM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
> Hello: I understand that it's not always people that view porn.
> Basically though, you know what to do to disable attachments and you
> don't click on random weird links. usually that's enough to save you
> the trouble. End-users on say, facebook usually aren't as lucky. My
> grandma clicks everything that looks like a link and usually has a
> virus. The difference is mainly that you know what you're doing and she
> doesn't. Also, I recognize that it's not just porn browsers, I guess
> that was more of a genearlization. There are sites like Sendspace that
> do give popups, but usually the flood of popups (porn or otherwise)
> appears with viruses and it doesn't really matter what site you're on.
> 
> I do know Norton sucked, but that's far from the only solution now if 
> they're still even around. I don't remember seeing Norton on a system
> for a long time, regardless. Usually I replace it with something like
> AVG that doesn't store resources.
> 
> Either way, I'm not sure where the bigshot programmer that knows php
> came in. That obviously is one of the languages I use since I use it on
> my site, but it's not even relevant. I just thought I'd reply to the
> windows bashing since it's done by a guy I've seen make totally
> ludacris hardware suggestions and shove arch at people that probably
> shouldn't use it. On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I
> use it all the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should
> be used for end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer
> him job security, though. On 5/10/2013 7:19 AM, Tony Baechler wrote: 
> OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response
> on this thread.  My comments are below.
> 
> On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>>>> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a 
>>>> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the
>>>> user runs as something besides admin it's even harder still.
>>>> Those "pesky popups" come up because well, your pesky users are
>>>> actually viewing porn with a horrible browser.
> That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus 
> scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP 
> with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've
> never had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and
> true virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop
> who built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running
> a backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure
> out why I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got
> that cleaned up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus
> since.  However, with OE in particular, it opens email attachments
> without the knowledge of the user, so it's next to impossible to
> prevent getting a virus at some point.  Thunderbird is better, but you
> still have to turn off the message preview by hand.  Eudora would
> automatically save and open attachments unless you turned it off.
> 
> What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and
> get pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no
> interest. Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I
> still get pop-up ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I
> hear that IE 7 is better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19,
> but not often. Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker
> doesn't seem to block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's
> not a Windows vs. Linux issue.
> 
>>>> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which
>>>> are much better  suited to acting as a browser.
> See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca
> nowadays? Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but
> I wasn't impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons
> to use IE, like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV
> is one.  Some banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be
> viewed with other browsers.
>>>> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't
>>>> belong there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people
>>>> were paying you for this random manual registry key removal, you
>>>> would've used a registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with
>>>> it. As to anti virus solutions, I routinely install them for
>>>> people and they still have the resources to spare, funny enough.
>>>> Perhaps you should've done more research there as well.
> Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one
> time, also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard
> to get anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete
> stop every morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up
> the system completely after it was installed and doing its routine
> virus check. Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.
> While I agree with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove
> everything.  After Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a
> trial and we weren't going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys
> left which I manually had to find and delete.  That only took me about
> 30 minutes or so.
> 
> You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or
> something, but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to
> know the basics of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I
> guess that's what keeps security professionals employed full-time.
> Just to be fair, I don't totally agree with Kyle either and I think he
> makes too many general assumptions based on his own preferences which
> are not always true.  Not everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices
> to build a computer are unrealistic.
>> _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list 
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org 
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

- -- 
Have a good day,
Tony Baechler
tony@baechler.net
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Littlefield, Tyler]

I think there is a good point here, though there is something else to 
point out.
First, I've done a lot of systems security an ddeploymet--it's always 
Linux with lamp/lemp/etc. That's not really totally relevant to the 
point you make though, but I do have some security experience so I'm not 
totally clueless for my next point. You mention a lot of sloppy php/c 
code, which is due to a ton of factors.
  a lot of programmers are jumping out of school with hardly any 
experience and flinging code together. A lot of the security holes you 
are talking about are mysql injection which is the biggest one and comes 
from people being totally uneducated as to security implications. PHP is 
trying to solve this issue, but as with any language it's backward 
compatible as far as it's API for specific things, so there is a lot of 
old code out there, which is still being used. Theres not all that much 
that can be done about that honestly, it's just something that has to 
fade out.


I think bad c++ code exists as well, but there's a different issue at 
hand here. Where as high level scripts provide a way for someone to 
quickly throw something together, c/c++ is rarely used by people that 
don't know what they're doing. This is more of a claim that can't be 
set, but I think it has a lower usage pattern of people that just want 
to quickly hack something together. Again though, this goes back to 
people jumping out of school; my old c++ professor used to love to make 
up her own random terms and had totally screwed up ideas about how to 
program and she passed a lot of this on. I forsee a rather rude 
awakening to the people that only use Mallik's book and her advice when 
they actually get a job that requires c++.
On 5/11/2013 2:13 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> I got my dad switched to Ubuntu quite a while ago and he was happy enough
> with it as a desktop at home.  He can't use it at the office because he
> still has Windows apps which don't run in Linux.  I tried to convince him
> to set up a Windows virtual machine but he wasn't interested.  He pretty
> much gave up on running Ubuntu now for whatever reason, but he didn't have
> a problem adjusting.  He liked it better than Debian.
>
> Yes, Norton Internet Security is still around.  I put it on my brother's
> notebook because I didn't know what else to suggest and it worked as well
> as any other antivirus solution in the past.  It's totally inaccessible
> and I told him not to bother to renew.  AVG is now pretty much dead and it
> was the antivirus which totally made my machine come to a complete stop at
> 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is
> part of AVG, but I couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but
> no matter what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I
> liked it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
> typical Windows behavior.
>
> I have to agree with Kyle that I never had good luck with registry
> cleaners.  I actually had to boot into Linux a couple of times to fix my
> Windows registry.  I didn't try every registry cleaner out there, but I
> tried a few.  I used to specialize in Windows utilities and I was fairly
> aware of what's out there.  Now, I just use XP for basic tasks like
> Firefox and email and that's about it.
>
> I say you're a bigshot programmer because you seem to think you know best
> how to administer an operating system.  I've seen this kind of attitude
> from other programmers in the past, but from you more than most.  You
> write some long program in php when a one or two line shell script works
> just as well.  System admins still get paid more than programmers for a
> reason.  As a note from a security point of view, php code almost always
> has tons of security problems.  It's amazing how many problems constantly
> crop up in php apps, including WordPress and Drupal contributed modules.
> There is a lot of sloppy C code out there as well, but it seems to be a
> disease with php.  I'm not bashing you or the language as I run WordPress
> for my podcast and I'm not really a programmer at all, I'm just pointing
> out observations.
>
> On 5/10/2013 7:11 AM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>> Hello: I understand that it's not always people that view porn.
>> Basically though, you know what to do to disable attachments and you
>> don't click on random weird links. usually that's enough to save you
>> the trouble. End-users on say, facebook usually aren't as lucky. My
>> grandma clicks everything that looks like a link and usually has a
>> virus. The difference is mainly that you know what you're doing and she
>> doesn't. Also, I recognize that it's not just porn browsers, I guess
>> that was more of a genearlization. There are sites like Sendspace that
>> do give popups, but usually the flood of popups (porn or otherwise)
>> appears with viruses and it doesn't really matter what site you're on.
>>
>> I do know Norton sucked, but that's far from the only solution now if
>> they're still even around. I don't remember seeing Norton on a system
>> for a long time, regardless. Usually I replace it with something like
>> AVG that doesn't store resources.
>>
>> Either way, I'm not sure where the bigshot programmer that knows php
>> came in. That obviously is one of the languages I use since I use it on
>> my site, but it's not even relevant. I just thought I'd reply to the
>> windows bashing since it's done by a guy I've seen make totally
>> ludacris hardware suggestions and shove arch at people that probably
>> shouldn't use it. On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I
>> use it all the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should
>> be used for end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer
>> him job security, though. On 5/10/2013 7:19 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
>> OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response
>> on this thread.  My comments are below.
>>
>> On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>>>>> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a
>>>>> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the
>>>>> user runs as something besides admin it's even harder still.
>>>>> Those "pesky popups" come up because well, your pesky users are
>>>>> actually viewing porn with a horrible browser.
>> That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus
>> scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP
>> with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've
>> never had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and
>> true virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop
>> who built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running
>> a backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure
>> out why I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got
>> that cleaned up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus
>> since.  However, with OE in particular, it opens email attachments
>> without the knowledge of the user, so it's next to impossible to
>> prevent getting a virus at some point.  Thunderbird is better, but you
>> still have to turn off the message preview by hand.  Eudora would
>> automatically save and open attachments unless you turned it off.
>>
>> What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and
>> get pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no
>> interest. Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I
>> still get pop-up ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I
>> hear that IE 7 is better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19,
>> but not often. Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker
>> doesn't seem to block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's
>> not a Windows vs. Linux issue.
>>
>>>>> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which
>>>>> are much better  suited to acting as a browser.
>> See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca
>> nowadays? Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but
>> I wasn't impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons
>> to use IE, like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV
>> is one.  Some banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be
>> viewed with other browsers.
>>>>> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't
>>>>> belong there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people
>>>>> were paying you for this random manual registry key removal, you
>>>>> would've used a registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with
>>>>> it. As to anti virus solutions, I routinely install them for
>>>>> people and they still have the resources to spare, funny enough.
>>>>> Perhaps you should've done more research there as well.
>> Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one
>> time, also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard
>> to get anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete
>> stop every morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up
>> the system completely after it was installed and doing its routine
>> virus check. Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.
>> While I agree with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove
>> everything.  After Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a
>> trial and we weren't going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys
>> left which I manually had to find and delete.  That only took me about
>> 30 minutes or so.
>>
>> You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or
>> something, but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to
>> know the basics of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I
>> guess that's what keeps security professionals employed full-time.
>> Just to be fair, I don't totally agree with Kyle either and I think he
>> makes too many general assumptions based on his own preferences which
>> are not always true.  Not everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices
>> to build a computer are unrealistic.
>>> _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
> - -- 
> Have a good day,
> Tony Baechler
> tony@baechler.net
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> KTn8dTIT3axJkbGO9vdT
> =F60r
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


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Take care,
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http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:13:16AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> AVG is now pretty much dead and it
> was the antivirus which totally made my machine come to a complete stop at
> 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is
> part of AVG, but I couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but
> no matter what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I
> liked it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
> typical Windows behavior.

What do you mean when you say that AVG is pretty much dead? I use
AVG-free on one of my machines here, and it still seems to be very
much alive. It has definition updates daily as far as I can tell. It
also seems to come out with a minor version upgrade about every half a
year, and with a major version upgrade about once a year.

As far as your box locking up, you must have been running on a very old
machine. I'm running AVG-free 2013 on a 2.2GHz pentium IV single core with no
hyperthreading, and one gig of RAM. The machine doesn't fly while
doing virus scanning, but it's still quite useable, and fairly
responsive. As far as scheduling full virus scans, it is possible to
schedule both how often AVG-free runs them, and at what time of day. I
have mine scheduled to run once a week for instance. Guess what? You
can even turn off full virus scanning completely if you don't want it
to run at all on any schedule.

I'm not trying to defend AVG-free. Like many things, it isn't
perfect. I do know from personal experience though that your
statements above aren't correct regarding the latest version of
AVG-free. As far as controlling your machine, I'll admit that windows
doesn't give you as much control as GNU/Linux does. Having said that,
I still maintain that windows, and AVG-free give the user quite a bit
of control. I would say it gives the user more control than it
doesn't. It's just a matter of knowing what to set, and where, and the
internet is your friend here if your own knowledge comes up short.

Greg


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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Glenn]

I did get a nasty virus a couple of years ago, while I was using AVG, and I 
had to slap in a new harddrive, and reinstall, and then I installed 
Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a free download, and I scanned and 
repaired the old drive, and have been not using AVG ever since.
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@gregn.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:13:16AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> AVG is now pretty much dead and it
> was the antivirus which totally made my machine come to a complete stop at
> 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is
> part of AVG, but I couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but
> no matter what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I
> liked it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
> typical Windows behavior.

What do you mean when you say that AVG is pretty much dead? I use
AVG-free on one of my machines here, and it still seems to be very
much alive. It has definition updates daily as far as I can tell. It
also seems to come out with a minor version upgrade about every half a
year, and with a major version upgrade about once a year.

As far as your box locking up, you must have been running on a very old
machine. I'm running AVG-free 2013 on a 2.2GHz pentium IV single core with 
no
hyperthreading, and one gig of RAM. The machine doesn't fly while
doing virus scanning, but it's still quite useable, and fairly
responsive. As far as scheduling full virus scans, it is possible to
schedule both how often AVG-free runs them, and at what time of day. I
have mine scheduled to run once a week for instance. Guess what? You
can even turn off full virus scanning completely if you don't want it
to run at all on any schedule.

I'm not trying to defend AVG-free. Like many things, it isn't
perfect. I do know from personal experience though that your
statements above aren't correct regarding the latest version of
AVG-free. As far as controlling your machine, I'll admit that windows
doesn't give you as much control as GNU/Linux does. Having said that,
I still maintain that windows, and AVG-free give the user quite a bit
of control. I would say it gives the user more control than it
doesn't. It's just a matter of knowing what to set, and where, and the
internet is your friend here if your own knowledge comes up short.

Greg


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AVG, was: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

Interesting. Was your version of AVG and virus definitions up to date?
Like I said in another message, I've been using AVG-free for a long
while now. Besides a few minor viruses during that time which AVG took
care of, I haven't had any problems with it.

Greg


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 07:46:56PM -0500, Glenn wrote:
> I did get a nasty virus a couple of years ago, while I was using AVG, and I 
> had to slap in a new harddrive, and reinstall, and then I installed 
> Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a free download, and I scanned and 
> repaired the old drive, and have been not using AVG ever since.
> Glenn

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Re: AVG, was: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Glenn]

Oh yeh, I always set it to update at least once a week, and to do a nightly 
scan while I am sleeping.
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@gregn.net>
To: "Glenn" <glennervin@gmail.com>; "Speakup is a screen review system for 
Linux." <speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 8:50 PM
Subject: AVG, was: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to 
Linux


Interesting. Was your version of AVG and virus definitions up to date?
Like I said in another message, I've been using AVG-free for a long
while now. Besides a few minor viruses during that time which AVG took
care of, I haven't had any problems with it.

Greg


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 07:46:56PM -0500, Glenn wrote:
> I did get a nasty virus a couple of years ago, while I was using AVG, and 
> I
> had to slap in a new harddrive, and reinstall, and then I installed
> Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a free download, and I scanned and
> repaired the old drive, and have been not using AVG ever since.
> Glenn

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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

I forgot to add that I've been running AVG-free since the 6.x days
starting under win98,
and it has always been possible to schedule when full scanning runs, and
to prevent it from running on a schedule completely as far as I recall.


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 05:35:13PM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:13:16AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> > AVG is now pretty much dead and it
> > was the antivirus which totally made my machine come to a complete stop at
> > 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is
> > part of AVG, but I couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but
> > no matter what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I
> > liked it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
> > typical Windows behavior.
> 
> What do you mean when you say that AVG is pretty much dead? I use
> AVG-free on one of my machines here, and it still seems to be very
> much alive. It has definition updates daily as far as I can tell. It
> also seems to come out with a minor version upgrade about every half a
> year, and with a major version upgrade about once a year.
> 
> As far as your box locking up, you must have been running on a very old
> machine. I'm running AVG-free 2013 on a 2.2GHz pentium IV single core with no
> hyperthreading, and one gig of RAM. The machine doesn't fly while
> doing virus scanning, but it's still quite useable, and fairly
> responsive. As far as scheduling full virus scans, it is possible to
> schedule both how often AVG-free runs them, and at what time of day. I
> have mine scheduled to run once a week for instance. Guess what? You
> can even turn off full virus scanning completely if you don't want it
> to run at all on any schedule.
> 
> I'm not trying to defend AVG-free. Like many things, it isn't
> perfect. I do know from personal experience though that your
> statements above aren't correct regarding the latest version of
> AVG-free. As far as controlling your machine, I'll admit that windows
> doesn't give you as much control as GNU/Linux does. Having said that,
> I still maintain that windows, and AVG-free give the user quite a bit
> of control. I would say it gives the user more control than it
> doesn't. It's just a matter of knowing what to set, and where, and the
> internet is your friend here if your own knowledge comes up short.
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> -- 
> web site: http://www.gregn.net
> gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> 
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> 

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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

As I said, my experience with AVG was many years ago on Windows 98, so
perhaps some of the issues are fixed nowadays.  My machine didn't totally
lock up, but it was so slow that it might as well have.  I could just plan
on not having my machine for about 15 minutes and there seemed to be no
way to stop it.  I looked into it last year for my brother's Windows 7
notebook and it wasn't recommended.  Norton Internet Security and
Microsoft Security Essentials seemed to be the recommended options, so we
went with Norton because it's relatively cheap and the notebook is for
business.  AVG was not free for personal use as I recall, but after not
only my problems with it but reading about several other people having
problems and several months going by with no updates, I assumed it was
dead.  I thought I read that you had to pay some nominal fee even for
personal use, but that could be wrong.  I know that it isn't licensed for
a business which was the main concern.  I liked the looks of Nod32, but it
was too expensive compared to Norton and the other options.  As it turned
out, his Norton expired and he's onto something else anyway.  Avast now
seems to be the recommended personal free virus scanner.

On my machine here, I actually do have a virus scanner installed, but I
don't run it in the background.  It's called ClamWin and is the same as
clamav but for Windows.  It works well enough for me without constantly
running and eating up resources while still scanning downloads and zip
files.  I almost never open email attachments, so that isn't an issue here.

On 5/11/2013 5:35 PM, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:13:16AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
>> AVG is now pretty much dead and it was the antivirus which totally
>> made my machine come to a complete stop at 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned
>> out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is part of AVG, but I
>> couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but no matter
>> what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I liked
>> it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's 
>> typical Windows behavior.
> 
> What do you mean when you say that AVG is pretty much dead? I use 
> AVG-free on one of my machines here, and it still seems to be very much
> alive. It has definition updates daily as far as I can tell. It also
> seems to come out with a minor version upgrade about every half a year,
> and with a major version upgrade about once a year.
> 
> As far as your box locking up, you must have been running on a very
> old machine. I'm running AVG-free 2013 on a 2.2GHz pentium IV single
> core with no hyperthreading, and one gig of RAM. The machine doesn't
> fly while doing virus scanning, but it's still quite useable, and
> fairly responsive. As far as scheduling full virus scans, it is
> possible to schedule both how often AVG-free runs them, and at what
> time of day. I have mine scheduled to run once a week for instance.
> Guess what? You can even turn off full virus scanning completely if you
> don't want it to run at all on any schedule.
> 
> I'm not trying to defend AVG-free. Like many things, it isn't perfect.
> I do know from personal experience though that your statements above
> aren't correct regarding the latest version of AVG-free. As far as
> controlling your machine, I'll admit that windows doesn't give you as
> much control as GNU/Linux does. Having said that, I still maintain that
> windows, and AVG-free give the user quite a bit of control. I would say
> it gives the user more control than it doesn't. It's just a matter of
> knowing what to set, and where, and the internet is your friend here if
> your own knowledge comes up short.
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Glenn]

Microsoft Security Essentials is free for personal use.  The state of 
Nebraska uses the corporate version.  When xP is no longer supported, if I 
want to keep using XP, I will need a non-Microsoft alternative to Security 
Essentials.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 3:33 AM
Subject: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

As I said, my experience with AVG was many years ago on Windows 98, so
perhaps some of the issues are fixed nowadays.  My machine didn't totally
lock up, but it was so slow that it might as well have.  I could just plan
on not having my machine for about 15 minutes and there seemed to be no
way to stop it.  I looked into it last year for my brother's Windows 7
notebook and it wasn't recommended.  Norton Internet Security and
Microsoft Security Essentials seemed to be the recommended options, so we
went with Norton because it's relatively cheap and the notebook is for
business.  AVG was not free for personal use as I recall, but after not
only my problems with it but reading about several other people having
problems and several months going by with no updates, I assumed it was
dead.  I thought I read that you had to pay some nominal fee even for
personal use, but that could be wrong.  I know that it isn't licensed for
a business which was the main concern.  I liked the looks of Nod32, but it
was too expensive compared to Norton and the other options.  As it turned
out, his Norton expired and he's onto something else anyway.  Avast now
seems to be the recommended personal free virus scanner.

On my machine here, I actually do have a virus scanner installed, but I
don't run it in the background.  It's called ClamWin and is the same as
clamav but for Windows.  It works well enough for me without constantly
running and eating up resources while still scanning downloads and zip
files.  I almost never open email attachments, so that isn't an issue here.

On 5/11/2013 5:35 PM, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 01:13:16AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
>> AVG is now pretty much dead and it was the antivirus which totally
>> made my machine come to a complete stop at 8 AM daily.  OK, it turned
>> out that it's a scheduling "feature" which is part of AVG, but I
>> couldn't turn it off.  I could change when it ran, but no matter
>> what, it was going to do a full virus scan every day whether I liked
>> it or not.  So much for me controlling the machine, but that's
>> typical Windows behavior.
>
> What do you mean when you say that AVG is pretty much dead? I use
> AVG-free on one of my machines here, and it still seems to be very much
> alive. It has definition updates daily as far as I can tell. It also
> seems to come out with a minor version upgrade about every half a year,
> and with a major version upgrade about once a year.
>
> As far as your box locking up, you must have been running on a very
> old machine. I'm running AVG-free 2013 on a 2.2GHz pentium IV single
> core with no hyperthreading, and one gig of RAM. The machine doesn't
> fly while doing virus scanning, but it's still quite useable, and
> fairly responsive. As far as scheduling full virus scans, it is
> possible to schedule both how often AVG-free runs them, and at what
> time of day. I have mine scheduled to run once a week for instance.
> Guess what? You can even turn off full virus scanning completely if you
> don't want it to run at all on any schedule.
>
> I'm not trying to defend AVG-free. Like many things, it isn't perfect.
> I do know from personal experience though that your statements above
> aren't correct regarding the latest version of AVG-free. As far as
> controlling your machine, I'll admit that windows doesn't give you as
> much control as GNU/Linux does. Having said that, I still maintain that
> windows, and AVG-free give the user quite a bit of control. I would say
> it gives the user more control than it doesn't. It's just a matter of
> knowing what to set, and where, and the internet is your friend here if
> your own knowledge comes up short.
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

I'm just curious, where are you getting these various recommendations
from? Word of mouth, or one or more sites? If sites, which ones?

I had a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software

and it seems that MSE doesn't provide boot time scanning, and web
protection. While AVG doesn't provide as much as other scanners, it
does provide those two. That, along with the fact that I haven't had
problems with AVG so far would still prompt me to choose it over MSE,
but that's just my personal choice of course.

Yes, AVG is free for personal use, but not for business. It's been
this way since I started using it in the 6.x days:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)#Versions_for_Windows_desktop_clients

If there's a nominal fee, I'm not aware of it. I'm using it just fine,
and haven't been asked once by AVG for a credit card number.

>From what I know, avast requires one to register, even though it's
free. Nothing wrong with that, but if I have to choose between free
alternatives which require me to register, and those that don't, I'll
naturally go with those that don't, as long as they work for me.

Greg


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 01:33:23AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> As I said, my experience with AVG was many years ago on Windows 98, so
> perhaps some of the issues are fixed nowadays.  My machine didn't totally
> lock up, but it was so slow that it might as well have.  I could just plan
> on not having my machine for about 15 minutes and there seemed to be no
> way to stop it.  I looked into it last year for my brother's Windows 7
> notebook and it wasn't recommended.  Norton Internet Security and
> Microsoft Security Essentials seemed to be the recommended options, so we
> went with Norton because it's relatively cheap and the notebook is for
> business.  AVG was not free for personal use as I recall, but after not
> only my problems with it but reading about several other people having
> problems and several months going by with no updates, I assumed it was
> dead.  I thought I read that you had to pay some nominal fee even for
> personal use, but that could be wrong.  I know that it isn't licensed for
> a business which was the main concern.  I liked the looks of Nod32, but it
> was too expensive compared to Norton and the other options.  As it turned
> out, his Norton expired and he's onto something else anyway.  Avast now
> seems to be the recommended personal free virus scanner.


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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[William F. Acker WB2FLW +1 303 722 7209]

Hi,

      I wonder if y'all could find it in your collective hearts to find a 
more appropriate list for discussing your favorite virus scanners for an 
operating system which, apparently needs them, to another list. ${DEITY} 
knows that the world is infested with Windows users, so, surely such a 
list must exist.

           Thanks.


-- 
           Bill in Denver

On Sun, 12 May 2013, Gregory Nowak wrote:

> I'm just curious, where are you getting these various recommendations
> from? Word of mouth, or one or more sites? If sites, which ones?
>
> I had a look at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software
>
> and it seems that MSE doesn't provide boot time scanning, and web
> protection. While AVG doesn't provide as much as other scanners, it
> does provide those two. That, along with the fact that I haven't had
> problems with AVG so far would still prompt me to choose it over MSE,
> but that's just my personal choice of course.
>
> Yes, AVG is free for personal use, but not for business. It's been
> this way since I started using it in the 6.x days:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)#Versions_for_Windows_desktop_clients
>
> If there's a nominal fee, I'm not aware of it. I'm using it just fine,
> and haven't been asked once by AVG for a credit card number.
>
>> From what I know, avast requires one to register, even though it's
> free. Nothing wrong with that, but if I have to choose between free
> alternatives which require me to register, and those that don't, I'll
> naturally go with those that don't, as long as they work for me.
>
> Greg
>
>
> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 01:33:23AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
>> As I said, my experience with AVG was many years ago on Windows 98, so
>> perhaps some of the issues are fixed nowadays.  My machine didn't totally
>> lock up, but it was so slow that it might as well have.  I could just plan
>> on not having my machine for about 15 minutes and there seemed to be no
>> way to stop it.  I looked into it last year for my brother's Windows 7
>> notebook and it wasn't recommended.  Norton Internet Security and
>> Microsoft Security Essentials seemed to be the recommended options, so we
>> went with Norton because it's relatively cheap and the notebook is for
>> business.  AVG was not free for personal use as I recall, but after not
>> only my problems with it but reading about several other people having
>> problems and several months going by with no updates, I assumed it was
>> dead.  I thought I read that you had to pay some nominal fee even for
>> personal use, but that could be wrong.  I know that it isn't licensed for
>> a business which was the main concern.  I liked the looks of Nod32, but it
>> was too expensive compared to Norton and the other options.  As it turned
>> out, his Norton expired and he's onto something else anyway.  Avast now
>> seems to be the recommended personal free virus scanner.
>
>
> -- 
> web site: http://www.gregn.net
> gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
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> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> _______________________________________________
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> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Littlefield, Tyler]

Heh. I love the good ol' Linux doesn't need virus scanners.
Because there is a smaller user base obviously means that viruses are 
less common. Why write a virus for 10% of the user base when you can 
target 90%? Also, um, anyone bothered looking at the number of viruses 
for android?
On 5/12/2013 2:15 PM, William F. Acker WB2FLW +1 303 722 7209 wrote:
> Hi,
>
>      I wonder if y'all could find it in your collective hearts to find 
> a more appropriate list for discussing your favorite virus scanners 
> for an operating system which, apparently needs them, to another list. 
> ${DEITY} knows that the world is infested with Windows users, so, 
> surely such a list must exist.
>
>           Thanks.
>
>


-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
The aspen project: a barebones light-weight mud engine:
http://code.google.com/p/aspenmud
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.

Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256


On 5/12/2013 12:25 PM, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> I'm just curious, where are you getting these various recommendations 
> from? Word of mouth, or one or more sites? If sites, which ones?

https://www.techsupportalert.com/security-wizard-infection-check.htm
> 
> I had a look at:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software
> 
> and it seems that MSE doesn't provide boot time scanning, and web 
> protection. While AVG doesn't provide as much as other scanners, it 
> does provide those two. That, along with the fact that I haven't had 
> problems with AVG so far would still prompt me to choose it over MSE, 
> but that's just my personal choice of course.

I read from a site now gone (the Langa List) that several months went by
with no AVG updates and no word as to why.  I clearly remember registering
AVG before it would run.  It was free of charge but required a yearly
renewal.  I think I had to give them an email address for an unlock code,
but I could be misremembering that part.  This was all several years ago.
 I used Avast once and didn't like it, but I don't recall it requiring
registration.  Nod32 has been recommended several times by GW Micro and
you can search the gw-info list archives.  I used to have good luck with
Norton Antivirus as far as accessibility but now Norton Internet Security
has a totally different interface and I couldn't use it at all.

After I installed ClamWin and was determining whether to dump AVG and
switch to ClamWin as my primary virus scanner, I did a full system scan.
What's interesting about that is how much less resources ClamWin used.  It
found about a dozen viruses totally missed by AVG.  They were not active.
 They were email attachments which I didn't open and Eudora had saved
before I switched to Thunderbird.
> 
> Yes, AVG is free for personal use, but not for business. It's been this
> way since I started using it in the 6.x days:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)#Versions_for_Windows_desktop_clients
>
>  If there's a nominal fee, I'm not aware of it. I'm using it just
> fine, and haven't been asked once by AVG for a credit card number.

No, not for personal use.  I wasn't asked either, but I'm pretty sure it
showed an ad to upgrade to the pro version.  I don't think the pro version
is still around as I don't see it mentioned anywhere.
> 
> From what I know, avast requires one to register, even though it's 
> free. Nothing wrong with that, but if I have to choose between free 
> alternatives which require me to register, and those that don't, I'll 
> naturally go with those that don't, as long as they work for me.
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Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Gregory Nowak]

Yes, AVG-free used to generate a license key for you, but doesn't do
that currently. The pro version is still around. The free version
seems to just be called AVG, and the pro version is called AVG
Internet Essentials I believe. Yes, AVG still shows ads to upgrade to
the paid version, and you have to be very diligent to make sure you
get the free version when you install from scratch, or update to the
new version when one comes out.

Yes, AVG does ask for your e-mail address when you install, but that's
only if you want to register on the user forum to get community
support. You don't need to provide your e-mail address to just use it,
and I can't recall ever providing mine. Avast can be used for 30 days,
but does require registration if you want to use it longer than that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avast#Registration

Greg


On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 01:35:08AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> 
> On 5/12/2013 12:25 PM, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > I'm just curious, where are you getting these various recommendations 
> > from? Word of mouth, or one or more sites? If sites, which ones?
> 
> https://www.techsupportalert.com/security-wizard-infection-check.htm
> > 
> > I had a look at:
> > 
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software
> > 
> > and it seems that MSE doesn't provide boot time scanning, and web 
> > protection. While AVG doesn't provide as much as other scanners, it 
> > does provide those two. That, along with the fact that I haven't had 
> > problems with AVG so far would still prompt me to choose it over MSE, 
> > but that's just my personal choice of course.
> 
> I read from a site now gone (the Langa List) that several months went by
> with no AVG updates and no word as to why.  I clearly remember registering
> AVG before it would run.  It was free of charge but required a yearly
> renewal.  I think I had to give them an email address for an unlock code,
> but I could be misremembering that part.  This was all several years ago.
>  I used Avast once and didn't like it, but I don't recall it requiring
> registration.  Nod32 has been recommended several times by GW Micro and
> you can search the gw-info list archives.  I used to have good luck with
> Norton Antivirus as far as accessibility but now Norton Internet Security
> has a totally different interface and I couldn't use it at all.
> 
> After I installed ClamWin and was determining whether to dump AVG and
> switch to ClamWin as my primary virus scanner, I did a full system scan.
> What's interesting about that is how much less resources ClamWin used.  It
> found about a dozen viruses totally missed by AVG.  They were not active.
>  They were email attachments which I didn't open and Eudora had saved
> before I switched to Thunderbird.
> > 
> > Yes, AVG is free for personal use, but not for business. It's been this
> > way since I started using it in the 6.x days:
> > 
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)#Versions_for_Windows_desktop_clients
> >
> >  If there's a nominal fee, I'm not aware of it. I'm using it just
> > fine, and haven't been asked once by AVG for a credit card number.
> 
> No, not for personal use.  I wasn't asked either, but I'm pretty sure it
> showed an ad to upgrade to the pro version.  I don't think the pro version
> is still around as I don't see it mentioned anywhere.
> > 
> > From what I know, avast requires one to register, even though it's 
> > free. Nothing wrong with that, but if I have to choose between free 
> > alternatives which require me to register, and those that don't, I'll 
> > naturally go with those that don't, as long as they work for me.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
web site: http://www.gregn..net
gpg public key: http://www.gregn..net/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

--
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

If the source code for Eloquence is truly lost, imho that is totally 
absurd. Especially since it at one time was IBM TTS or Via Voice or 
whatever. I mean, a big huge company like that doesn't just go around 
losing source code. You know somebody, somewhere, almost certainly has a 
copy of some version of the source.

As for me, I don't like Espeak either. I personally think Eloquence is 
the best thing out there other than good old DECtalk. And no, don't get 
me on a rant about what Force Computers and Fonix did to that poor 
thing! When I say DECtalk, I mean DECtalk 4.3 at the latest.
Jayson

On 5/9/2013 7:05 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
> >but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> >doing for years <smile>
> yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about 
> short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually 
> be able to take you seriously.
>
> Also I honestly see nothing wrong with voxen/eloquence. Sure it is 
> outdated and has problems, but I prefer it to the harsh headcold sound 
> of ESpeak. It's a matter of preference that doesn't exactly set voxen 
> or espeak above one or the other.
> On 5/9/2013 4:57 PM, Kyle wrote:
>> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
>> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>>
>> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
>> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
>> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
>> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
>> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
>> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
>> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
>> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
>> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
>> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
>> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
>> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
>> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
>> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
>> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
>> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
>> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
>> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
>> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
>> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
>> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
>> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
>> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
>> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
>> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
>> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
>> makes my head hurt.
>> ~Kyle
>> http://kyle.tk/
>
>

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

Not lost. Problem is that it has a lot of owners, i.e.
people/corporations who own a piece of it. Getting a rebuild, especially
with enhancements, would take a firm of lawyers just to get the project
started.

Janina

Jayson Smith writes:
> Hi,
> 
> If the source code for Eloquence is truly lost, imho that is totally
> absurd. Especially since it at one time was IBM TTS or Via Voice or
> whatever. I mean, a big huge company like that doesn't just go
> around losing source code. You know somebody, somewhere, almost
> certainly has a copy of some version of the source.
> 
> As for me, I don't like Espeak either. I personally think Eloquence
> is the best thing out there other than good old DECtalk. And no,
> don't get me on a rant about what Force Computers and Fonix did to
> that poor thing! When I say DECtalk, I mean DECtalk 4.3 at the
> latest.
> Jayson
> 
> On 5/9/2013 7:05 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
> >>but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> >>doing for years <smile>
> >yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking
> >about short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might
> >actually be able to take you seriously.
> >
> >Also I honestly see nothing wrong with voxen/eloquence. Sure it is
> >outdated and has problems, but I prefer it to the harsh headcold
> >sound of ESpeak. It's a matter of preference that doesn't exactly
> >set voxen or espeak above one or the other.
> >On 5/9/2013 4:57 PM, Kyle wrote:
> >>According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> >># As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> >>
> >>As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> >>only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> >>ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
> >>or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
> >>can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
> >>its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
> >>which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
> >>also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
> >>also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
> >>Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
> >>OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
> >>especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
> >>and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
> >>Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
> >>but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
> >>nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
> >>or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
> >>making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
> >>unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> >>doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
> >>my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
> >>Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> >>don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> >>and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> >>also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> >>these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> >>makes my head hurt.
> >>~Kyle
> >>http://kyle.tk/
> >
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Jason White]

Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> Not lost. Problem is that it has a lot of owners, i.e.
> people/corporations who own a piece of it. Getting a rebuild, especially
> with enhancements, would take a firm of lawyers just to get the project
> started.

There might be lawyers associated with the free/open-source software community
who would work on this if it could lead to the release of the code. However,
any one of the aforementioned people/corporations could just say "no", or
demand royalties.

This is one way in which proprietary software dies, unfortunately.

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Brandon McGinty-Carroll]

Janina and list,
I would appreciate a list of any companies of names you know who are associated with this incarnation of IBMTTS.
It's worth a shot to see if we can contact one or all of these entities; doing nothing, as we (read that "me") have seen with speakup leads to a buggered situation.
Janina, didn't you work with these folks a while back distributing TTSynth? Or was that someone else...
Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,
Brandon McGinty-Caroll


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:35:24AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> > Not lost. Problem is that it has a lot of owners, i.e.
> > people/corporations who own a piece of it. Getting a rebuild, especially
> > with enhancements, would take a firm of lawyers just to get the project
> > started.
> 
> There might be lawyers associated with the free/open-source software community
> who would work on this if it could lead to the release of the code. However,
> any one of the aforementioned people/corporations could just say "no", or
> demand royalties.
> 
> This is one way in which proprietary software dies, unfortunately.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Jason White]

Brandon McGinty-Carroll <bmmcginty@bmcginty.hopto.org> wrote:
> Janina and list, I would appreciate a list of any companies of names you
> know who are associated with this incarnation of IBMTTS.  It's worth a shot
> to see if we can contact one or all of these entities; doing nothing, as we
> (read that "me") have seen with speakup leads to a buggered situation.

I think this has been tried before, but if you know any good, well connected
lawyers who do pro bono work you could ask them.

First, there's IBM, naturally enough.

The original work was done by Susan Hertz at Cornell University, who I think
sold her company to Nuance. She has a Web site indicating that a new
synthesizer is under development.

Any of those parties could have obtained components from yet other companies
or individuals.

If you want to open up a formerly proprietary text to speech system, the ideal
candidate would be one which is not sold commercially, only has one copyright
holder, and can easily be made to run under Linux. The open synthesizers (with
the exception of ESpeak) tend to be research systems where the development
priorities aren't necessarily in line with achieving the highest speech
quality and the right feature set for applications. That is, the code is used
as a platform for experimentation and research projects rather than for the
development of applications.

SVOX Pico is a special case: the source code of the synthesizer is open, but
the tools needed to generate voices and implement new languages are not
available. These days, as I understand it, statistical techniques and machine
learning algorithms are used to derive text to speech models from collections
of linguistic data. This is how new languages can be supported quickly, for
example.

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Grandon:

First, let me clear up what I think may be a misperception. We should
not assume that this product is unprofitable for its various owners. In
fact, it is precisely my dealings with a commercial wholesaler, the
legal basis behind TTSyinth, that makes me understand these voices
continue to generate solid revenue. Before they would work with me on a
contract for just a few thousand licenses, friends of Linux
accessibility advocated that this was important. Usually, their
contracts involve tens of thousands of license seats.

You should also know that I explored the prospect of recompiling to
64-bit and to newer libc++. This was not dismissed. I was simply asked
how many licenses I was prepared to buy should this be done. In other
words, give us enough money, and we'll do it.

Frankly, nothing in my experience gives me any reason to believe that
this product could be wrested from the proprietary domain anytime soon.
These guys have lots of commercial customers. AT hardly rates as a
market share.

Janina

Brandon McGinty-Carroll writes:
> Janina and list,
> I would appreciate a list of any companies of names you know who are associated with this incarnation of IBMTTS.
> It's worth a shot to see if we can contact one or all of these entities; doing nothing, as we (read that "me") have seen with speakup leads to a buggered situation.
> Janina, didn't you work with these folks a while back distributing TTSynth? Or was that someone else...
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Brandon McGinty-Caroll
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:35:24AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> > Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> > > Not lost. Problem is that it has a lot of owners, i.e.
> > > people/corporations who own a piece of it. Getting a rebuild, especially
> > > with enhancements, would take a firm of lawyers just to get the project
> > > started.
> > 
> > There might be lawyers associated with the free/open-source software community
> > who would work on this if it could lead to the release of the code. However,
> > any one of the aforementioned people/corporations could just say "no", or
> > demand royalties.
> > 
> > This is one way in which proprietary software dies, unfortunately.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Thank you for mentioning this!  That was the point I was trying to make,
but I wasn't sure how to put it.  No, I don't see it becoming open source
any time soon.  It would be better to either rewrite something already out
there or write something from scratch, such as what was done with ESpeak.
 Say what you want about the quality of the voice, but ESpeak still
remains the only truly open source solution in active development which
doesn't crash and is very responsive.  The Festival voices seem to be
abandoned if I understand correctly.  Mbrola isn't bad, but it is non-free
and is also not further developed.

With that said, I know very little about Voxin or whatever you want to
call it except that Oralux probably shouldn't legally be packaging it,
which is another reason why I wouldn't buy it.  I do know that there is
such a thing as Eloquence for Linux which sounds the same as ViaVoice but
it isn't.  I have used it and the old APH Braille+ ships it.  When this
was pointed out to me, I didn't believe it, but I tracked down the library
on the system.  I'm pretty sure it uses an ARM processor, so that won't
help much.  Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, GW Micro ships a
"new" version with Window-Eyes now.  I don't know what version it is or
what the differences are, but it's supposed to not crash as often and
maybe (I don't know) it supports 64-bit Windows since there is a 64-bit
Window-Eyes.  Therefore, just from my own evidence, I would agree that
it's still making money under whatever name you want to call it.  By all
means I hope they're willing to release the source, but don't hold your
breath.

On 5/11/2013 11:36 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:

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Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Jason White]

Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:
 
> Thank you for mentioning this!  That was the point I was trying to make,
> but I wasn't sure how to put it.  No, I don't see it becoming open source
> any time soon.  It would be better to either rewrite something already out
> there or write something from scratch, such as what was done with ESpeak.
>  Say what you want about the quality of the voice, but ESpeak still
> remains the only truly open source solution in active development which
> doesn't crash and is very responsive.  The Festival voices seem to be
> abandoned if I understand correctly.  Mbrola isn't bad, but it is non-free
> and is also not further developed.

Mary TTS is being developed - I don't know about responsiveness though.
> 
> With that said, I know very little about Voxin or whatever you want to
> call it except that Oralux probably shouldn't legally be packaging it,
> which is another reason why I wouldn't buy it.  

I think they simply bought a large number of licences from IBM. Of course,
given that IBM et al., apparently aren't working on it anymore, any licence
revenue they receive, for any operating system, is 100% profit at this point.

If you want to buy out a proprietary synthesizer  (crowd source the funding for example), I don't think this is a good candidate, and the money would be better contributed to a development effort around a newer synthesizer anyway.

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Brandon McGinty-Carroll]

Ah well, figured it was worth asking about.
Just some thoughts:
A lot of these voices, e.g. pico and flite, sound quite good, aside from their pitch shifting.
IBM's synth has a much "rougher" sound to me, but the roughness is tempered with the constant but small pitch shifts.
I would find it educational to get a list of attributes that make IBMTTS better than some of the alternatives.
Maybe see if we could change one of the alternatives to have these attributes.
Just my 2C after a sleepless night; take it with a grain of salt.

Brandon McGinty-Carroll


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 01:19:53AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> Thank you for mentioning this!  That was the point I was trying to make,
> but I wasn't sure how to put it.  No, I don't see it becoming open source
> any time soon.  It would be better to either rewrite something already out
> there or write something from scratch, such as what was done with ESpeak.
>  Say what you want about the quality of the voice, but ESpeak still
> remains the only truly open source solution in active development which
> doesn't crash and is very responsive.  The Festival voices seem to be
> abandoned if I understand correctly.  Mbrola isn't bad, but it is non-free
> and is also not further developed.
> 
> With that said, I know very little about Voxin or whatever you want to
> call it except that Oralux probably shouldn't legally be packaging it,
> which is another reason why I wouldn't buy it.  I do know that there is
> such a thing as Eloquence for Linux which sounds the same as ViaVoice but
> it isn't.  I have used it and the old APH Braille+ ships it.  When this
> was pointed out to me, I didn't believe it, but I tracked down the library
> on the system.  I'm pretty sure it uses an ARM processor, so that won't
> help much.  Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, GW Micro ships a
> "new" version with Window-Eyes now.  I don't know what version it is or
> what the differences are, but it's supposed to not crash as often and
> maybe (I don't know) it supports 64-bit Windows since there is a 64-bit
> Window-Eyes.  Therefore, just from my own evidence, I would agree that
> it's still making money under whatever name you want to call it.  By all
> means I hope they're willing to release the source, but don't hold your
> breath.
> 
> On 5/11/2013 11:36 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
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> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with Kyle and the Speakup developers here.
 On the Windows side of things, GW Micro has to ship a custom dictionary
with Window-Eyes to prevent the "new" version of Eloquence from crashing.
 Regardless of the issues with old C libraries, it is not maintained and
can't be for the reason Kyle said.  IBM used to maintain Viavoice and
dropped it in 2000 if that gives a clue.  However, to me, even though I
also see John's point and agree that it sounds better than ESpeak for
daily use, it is not free software.  It's non-free both in the sense of
cost and source.  People here can complain all they want about ESpeak, but
there is absolutely nothing preventing a programmer from modifying the
source and data as they wish to make it sound better, hint hint.  Also as
Kyle says, Festival isn't too bad and I like it a little better, but it's
very sluggish when reading. There is also MBrola, but it's also non-free.
 Samuel Thibault did package MBrola for Debian though, so at least you can
install it like a regular package.

On 5/9/2013 4:05 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>> but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been doing
>> for years <smile>
> yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about
> short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually
> be able to take you seriously.
> 
> Also I honestly see nothing wrong with voxen/eloquence. Sure it is
> outdated and has problems, but I prefer it to the harsh headcold sound
> of ESpeak. It's a matter of preference that doesn't exactly set voxen
> or espeak above one or the other.
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Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Hart Larry]

Actually I thought Voxen was just a re-packaging of IBM TTS, but not a 
screen-reader.  And have only heard of Pico as an editor.  I rather like the 
sound of an Eliquence style voice, also, wouldn't mind if we could run SAPI5 
style voices.
Hart

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kyle]

According to Hart Larry:
# Actually I thought Voxen was just a re-packaging of IBM TTS, but not a
# screen-reader.

This is correct, which is what makes it so bad. Any way you look at it,
there is no usable source code for this synthesizer, which means that it
gets progressively harder and harder to keep the ancient binary code
working on modern hardware and software. It's like the whole car gets
newer, but you're trying to keep one old engine part going, even though
the engine itself keeps getting replaced and updated around it.
Eventually, even if the part lasts forever, it just won't fit anymore.

# And have only heard of Pico as an editor.

Pico is an editor, but there is also a speech synthesizer called Pico,
made by SVox, which is the speech data that can be downloaded on Android
2.2 and 2.3, and I think it runs on 2.1 as well. It has been built for
Linux, although I can't yet make it work on Arch now, because something
has gone wrong in the build system. It actually sounds rather good.
Debian derivatives have a package called libttspico0 and another called
libttspico-utils I believe, which provide this speech synthesizer.

# I rather like the sound of an Eliquence style voice,

I understand that some people prefer the way this voice sounds, although
it does hurt my head. To each their own, I guess. The main problem with
it is not the sound, or the fact that some people like the way it
sounds. The problem is that no voice that sounds like it can be made
more stable and less crash prone, and no voice like it can be updated to
support the latest libraries and sound API's, because the source code
has either been misplaced or has been locked away, and whoever owns the
rights to the actual code refuses to either release the code to those
who could clean it up and fix it or to clean it up and fix it
themselves, so it will eventually die a painful, albeit slow, death,
becoming more and more unstable and requiring more and more coaxing just
to get it installed and running until the final death occurs.

# also, wouldn't mind if we could run SAPI5 style voices.

Apparently this is being worked on, although I believe it needs a full
installation of Wine to make it usable. If you already have Wine for
something else, this isn't a real problem. I'm not absolutely sure of
the details, but there are a couple of projects to address SAPI, and I
believe they are trying to take advantage of speech-dispatcher in some
way to make your favorite voice speak. I'm not a huge fan of Wine, but
some of this stuff looks like it could work. I'll have to give it a
shot, although my Wine installation currently only has the old Microsoft
voices from XP and eSpeak.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

As someone who uses voxin 8 to 10 hours a day, my opinion is that the 
problems you mention below are minor compared to the clarity and 
responsiveness of voxin.

It only costs six bucks. If you have to listen to your workstation for 8 
to 10 hours a day, it's well worth it.





n 05/09/13 17:57, Kyle wrote:
> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>
> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> makes my head hurt.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Mike Ray]

I listen to espeak for twelve or more hours a day and most of that time 
I'm concentrating on what I'm doing, not on how fluffy and cute the 
voice sounds.

Mike

On 10/05/2013 15:59, John G. Heim wrote:
> As someone who uses voxin 8 to 10 hours a day, my opinion is that the 
> problems you mention below are minor compared to the clarity and 
> responsiveness of voxin.
>
> It only costs six bucks. If you have to listen to your workstation for 
> 8 to 10 hours a day, it's well worth it.
>
>
>
>
>
> n 05/09/13 17:57, Kyle wrote:
>> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
>> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>>
>> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
>> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
>> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
>> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
>> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
>> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
>> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
>> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
>> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
>> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
>> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
>> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
>> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
>> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
>> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
>> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
>> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
>> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
>> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
>> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
>> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
>> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
>> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
>> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
>> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
>> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
>> makes my head hurt.
>> ~Kyle
>> http://kyle.tk/
>>
>


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

You don't really want to suggest that the quality of a synthesized voice 
is meaningless, do you?

First of all, confort isn't "fluff". Do you think it doesn't matter what 
the temperature of your office is? What if they took away your chair and 
made you stand all day?  If someone want to spend six buck for the sheer 
comfort they get from voxin it would make sense.

Secondly, I can understand more from boxin at a higher speech rate than 
I can with espeak. Most likely, when people are reporting that they find 
voxin easier to listen too, what they really mean is that they can 
understand it better. The reason they get tired listening to espeak is 
that they are straining to understand it. If you find espeak easier to 
understand, that's fine. But it's silly to dismiss the quality of the 
synthesized voice as meaningless.

If you're going to say the quality of the voice doesn't matter, you're 
going to go against just every review of every hardware speech 
synthesizer ever written. Everybody cares about the quality of the 
synthesized voice.





On 05/10/13 10:30, Mike Ray wrote:
>
> I listen to espeak for twelve or more hours a day and most of that time
> I'm concentrating on what I'm doing, not on how fluffy and cute the
> voice sounds.
>
> Mike
>
> On 10/05/2013 15:59, John G. Heim wrote:
>> As someone who uses voxin 8 to 10 hours a day, my opinion is that the
>> problems you mention below are minor compared to the clarity and
>> responsiveness of voxin.
>>
>> It only costs six bucks. If you have to listen to your workstation for
>> 8 to 10 hours a day, it's well worth it.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> n 05/09/13 17:57, Kyle wrote:
>>> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
>>> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>>>
>>> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
>>> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
>>> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
>>> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
>>> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
>>> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
>>> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
>>> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
>>> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
>>> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
>>> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
>>> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
>>> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
>>> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
>>> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
>>> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
>>> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
>>> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
>>> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
>>> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
>>> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
>>> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
>>> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
>>> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
>>> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
>>> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
>>> makes my head hurt.
>>> ~Kyle
>>> http://kyle.tk/
>>>
>>
>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Tony Baechler]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

John, I pretty much agree with your point.  I personally don't have an
issue with paying $6 for a synth.  My issue is that it's totally non-free
and the source is apparently gone, so problems like it only being 32-bit
and requireing ancient libraries will never be fixed.  I'm hoping that one
of the newer synths discussed here will eventually replace it for people
who insist on using it.  I'm not surprised that you would have a sluggish
speech experience with Voxin as I had a similar problem with Vinux and
Festival.  I think it has something to do with Speech-Dispatcher.  That,
by the way, is one of the reasons why I haven't jumped into X with both
feet.  I just can't give up my hardware speech.  As Jayson said, DECtalk
is still the best.  Compared to that, I don't like any software speech and
I've heard lots of them.  Even putting stability and open source issues
aside, regardless of operating system, I've never heard a software voice
that I could stand for more than an hour or two.  On Windows, the trend
seems to be a high quality female voice.  I don't like them either and I
end up slowing them way down to make them understandable, thus losing any
productivity advantage.

On 5/10/2013 9:16 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
> First of all, confort isn't "fluff". Do you think it doesn't matter
> what the temperature of your office is? What if they took away your
> chair and made you stand all day?  If someone want to spend six buck
> for the sheer comfort they get from voxin it would make sense.
> 
> Secondly, I can understand more from boxin at a higher speech rate than
> I can with espeak. Most likely, when people are reporting that they
> find voxin easier to listen too, what they really mean is that they can
> understand it better. The reason they get tired listening to espeak is
> that they are straining to understand it. If you find espeak easier to
> understand, that's fine. But it's silly to dismiss the quality of the
> synthesized voice as meaningless.
> 
> If you're going to say the quality of the voice doesn't matter, you're
> going to go against just every review of every hardware speech
> synthesizer ever written. Everybody cares about the quality of the
> synthesized voice.
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Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The
compatibility library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:

compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686

PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a
second physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share
the same alsa device.

And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.

That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking
login--don't get me started talking about that, though!

Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to
use recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively
being updated these days

Janina

Kyle writes:
> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> 
> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost
> or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it
> can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of
> its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e,
> which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is
> also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It
> also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word
> Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common
> OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was
> especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's
> and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause
> Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase
> but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is
> nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available
> or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually
> making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and
> unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been
> doing for years <smile>. It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but
> my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it.
> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> makes my head hurt.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> -- 
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

RE: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Albert Sten-Clanton]

Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:

The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
key four
times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.

The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
headphones almost all the time.

Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
Sajka
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:

compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686

PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
alsa device.

And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.

That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
get me started talking about that, though!

Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
updated these days

Janina

Kyle writes:
> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> 
> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not 
> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires 
> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either 
> lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, 
> so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get 
> any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s 
> u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in 
> Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness 
> related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when 
> recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns 
> out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning 
> newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives 
> from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of 
> random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines 
> with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the 
> screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because 
> the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may 
> fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
and all the other voices like it.
> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you 
> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working, 
> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's 
> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All 
> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally 
> makes my head hurt.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> --
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Al:

Glad to hear someone got this working! <grin> Though, I certainly agree
it's not good to have your password read outloud.

I tried this just now, but got no joy. Do you do this from the Desktop,
once Orca is loaded and running? Or do you do this from the GDM login
screen itself? Just for grins, I tried both.

Janina

Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
> instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> 
> The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
> ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
> key four
> times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> 
> The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
> headphones almost all the time.
> 
> Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> 
> Al 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
> Sajka
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> 
> I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
> library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> 
> compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> 
> PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
> physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
> alsa device.
> 
> And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> 
> That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
> get me started talking about that, though!
> 
> Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
> recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
> updated these days
> 
> Janina
> 
> Kyle writes:
> > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> > 
> > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not 
> > only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires 
> > ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either 
> > lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, 
> > so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get 
> > any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s 
> > u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in 
> > Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness 
> > related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when 
> > recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns 
> > out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning 
> > newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives 
> > from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of 
> > random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines 
> > with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the 
> > screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because 
> > the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> > that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> > something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> > different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may 
> > fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
> and all the other voices like it.
> > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you 
> > don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working, 
> > and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's 
> > also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All 
> > these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally 
> > makes my head hurt.
> > ~Kyle
> > http://kyle.tk/
> > --
> > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Al Sten-Clanton]

Hi, Janina.

I'm pretty sure I did it from the login screen; I seem to remember 
having no speech and counting myself lucky to hear Orca.  Sorry I'm not 
more certain, but I guess sixteen days is too long ago for me to 
remember some things. :-)

Al

On 05/10/2013 03:28 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Al:
>
> Glad to hear someone got this working! <grin> Though, I certainly agree
> it's not good to have your password read outloud.
>
> I tried this just now, but got no joy. Do you do this from the Desktop,
> once Orca is loaded and running? Or do you do this from the GDM login
> screen itself? Just for grins, I tried both.
>
> Janina
>
> Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
>> Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
>> instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
>>
>> The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
>> ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
>> key four
>> times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
>>
>> The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
>> headphones almost all the time.
>>
>> Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
>>
>> Al
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
>> Sajka
>> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
>> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
>> Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
>>
>> I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
>> library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
>>
>> compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
>>
>> PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
>> physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
>> alsa device.
>>
>> And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
>>
>> That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
>> get me started talking about that, though!
>>
>> Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
>> recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
>> updated these days
>>
>> Janina
>>
>> Kyle writes:
>>> According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
>>> # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>>>
>>> As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
>>> only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
>>> ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either
>>> lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it,
>>> so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get
>>> any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s
>>> u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in
>>> Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness
>>> related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when
>>> recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns
>>> out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning
>>> newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives
>>> from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of
>>> random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines
>>> with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the
>>> screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because
>>> the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact
>>> that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing
>>> something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no
>>> different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may
>>> fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
>> and all the other voices like it.
>>> Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
>>> don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
>>> and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
>>> also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
>>> these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
>>> makes my head hurt.
>>> ~Kyle
>>> http://kyle.tk/
>>> --
>>> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
>>> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>> --
>>
>> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
>> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
>> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
>>
>> Linux Foundation Fellow
>> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
>>
>> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
>> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
>> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Janina Sajka]

Thanks again, Al. You are encouraging me to give this a reasonable try.
unfortunately, I'm suspecting I might need to enable pulseaudio on my
system for this to work. I'm willing to do that, especially as I
understand the application pavucontrol might solve my pulseaudio
complaints, but I can't tear down my working system for the half-day
this might all take just now.

I will report back, though, when I do get around to trying this all.

Janina

Al Sten-Clanton writes:
> Hi, Janina.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I did it from the login screen; I seem to remember
> having no speech and counting myself lucky to hear Orca.  Sorry I'm
> not more certain, but I guess sixteen days is too long ago for me to
> remember some things. :-)
> 
> Al
> 
> On 05/10/2013 03:28 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> >Hi, Al:
> >
> >Glad to hear someone got this working! <grin> Though, I certainly agree
> >it's not good to have your password read outloud.
> >
> >I tried this just now, but got no joy. Do you do this from the Desktop,
> >once Orca is loaded and running? Or do you do this from the GDM login
> >screen itself? Just for grins, I tried both.
> >
> >Janina
> >
> >Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> >>Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
> >>instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> >>
> >>The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
> >>ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
> >>key four
> >>times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> >>
> >>The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
> >>headphones almost all the time.
> >>
> >>Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> >>
> >>Al
> >>
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
> >>Sajka
> >>Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> >>To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> >>Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> >>
> >>I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
> >>library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> >>
> >>compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> >>
> >>PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
> >>physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
> >>alsa device.
> >>
> >>And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> >>
> >>That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
> >>get me started talking about that, though!
> >>
> >>Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
> >>recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
> >>updated these days
> >>
> >>Janina
> >>
> >>Kyle writes:
> >>>According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> >>># As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> >>>
> >>>As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> >>>only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> >>>ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either
> >>>lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it,
> >>>so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get
> >>>any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s
> >>>u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in
> >>>Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness
> >>>related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when
> >>>recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns
> >>>out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning
> >>>newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives
> >>>from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of
> >>>random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines
> >>>with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the
> >>>screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because
> >>>the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact
> >>>that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing
> >>>something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no
> >>>different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may
> >>>fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
> >>and all the other voices like it.
> >>>Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> >>>don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> >>>and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> >>>also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> >>>these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> >>>makes my head hurt.
> >>>~Kyle
> >>>http://kyle.tk/
> >>>--
> >>>"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> >>>Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>Speakup mailing list
> >>>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>
> >>--
> >>
> >>Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> >>			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> >>		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> >>
> >>Linux Foundation Fellow
> >>Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> >>
> >>The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> >>Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> >>	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Speakup mailing list
> >>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Speakup mailing list
> >>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

All right! Now we're cooking with gas.

Thanks, Al. It took a reboot, but GDM came up talking.

So, my previous disappointment was just the missing piece of info that
the steps below don't work on the fly, but they will work for your next
boot.

Explaining the Steps:

Ctrl-Alt-TAB Goes to the Two menu TABS up top.

Right-Arrow once takes one to the Accessibility menu (Once more would be
to Power)

Down four times is the Screenreader checkbox.

Pressing RETURN checks the checkbox.

Janina

Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
> instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> 
> The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
> ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
> key four
> times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> 
> The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
> headphones almost all the time.
> 
> Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> 
> Al 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
> Sajka
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> 
> I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
> library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> 
> compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> 
> PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
> physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
> alsa device.
> 
> And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> 
> That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
> get me started talking about that, though!
> 
> Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
> recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
> updated these days
> 
> Janina
> 
> Kyle writes:
> > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> > 
> > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not 
> > only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires 
> > ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either 
> > lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, 
> > so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get 
> > any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s 
> > u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in 
> > Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness 
> > related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when 
> > recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns 
> > out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning 
> > newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives 
> > from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of 
> > random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines 
> > with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the 
> > screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because 
> > the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> > that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> > something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> > different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may 
> > fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
> and all the other voices like it.
> > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you 
> > don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working, 
> > and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's 
> > also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All 
> > these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally 
> > makes my head hurt.
> > ~Kyle
> > http://kyle.tk/
> > --
> > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Kyle]

Yes, these are indeed the steps I took to make the screen reader start:
alt-control-tab, right arrow once, down arrow 4 times, enter and reboot.
I had only tested them on Arch, but I think it's a gnome-shell thing, so
it should work on any distro with gnome-shell 3.6, and may work on
earlier versions as well. I have read that there may be a hotkey option
coming in the future, but some funky things with pulseaudio will have to
be worked out also, or there will be a lot of disappointments when it
doesn't work as expected. Of course I refer to the autospawn  being
turned off by default, which causes a copy of /etc/pulse/client.conf to
need to be copied to /var/lib/gdm/.config/pulse/client.conf and
autospawn to need to be enabled in GDM's copy just to make that talking
login screen work properly. I'm sure turning autospawn off by default
fixed some things for other users, but it sure did make things more
difficult for those of us who need Orca at the login screen. Of course
this won't be a problem at all for users who disable pulseaudio
systemwide, as speech should work in gdm the same as it does on the desktop.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

Hi,

Just for completeness sake ...

Pulseaudio is not active on my system. So, getting GDM to speak does not
require pulseaudio. It may work with pulse, I wouldn't know. But, it
definitely isn't a prerequisite.

Janina

Kyle writes:
> Yes, these are indeed the steps I took to make the screen reader start:
> alt-control-tab, right arrow once, down arrow 4 times, enter and reboot.
> I had only tested them on Arch, but I think it's a gnome-shell thing, so
> it should work on any distro with gnome-shell 3.6, and may work on
> earlier versions as well. I have read that there may be a hotkey option
> coming in the future, but some funky things with pulseaudio will have to
> be worked out also, or there will be a lot of disappointments when it
> doesn't work as expected. Of course I refer to the autospawn  being
> turned off by default, which causes a copy of /etc/pulse/client.conf to
> need to be copied to /var/lib/gdm/.config/pulse/client.conf and
> autospawn to need to be enabled in GDM's copy just to make that talking
> login screen work properly. I'm sure turning autospawn off by default
> fixed some things for other users, but it sure did make things more
> difficult for those of us who need Orca at the login screen. Of course
> this won't be a problem at all for users who disable pulseaudio
> systemwide, as speech should work in gdm the same as it does on the desktop.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> -- 
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Kyle]

According to Janina Sajka:
# Pulseaudio is not active on my system. So, getting GDM to speak does not
# require pulseaudio. It may work with pulse, I wouldn't know. But, it
# definitely isn't a prerequisite.

This is indeed good to know. I leave Pulseaudio enabled here, and I
don't have any problems. In fact, it helped me out with a project I
needed to do involving streaming and piping audio from multiple
applications into a single application's input. But it's good to know
that if it's disabled or otherwise inactive, most everything, especially
the talking GDM login, works as expected. Too bad about the earcons in
GNOME though. Do you at least still get a terminal bell?
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Kyle:

I actually had to go launch Terminal on the GUI to answer your question,
as I don't have a reason to use it, generally. I'm very pleased with
Speakup on my 23 other consoles, with screen running as well in about 9/10 of
those .


But, to answer your question directly, no, I do not have a bell in
terminal. So, I guess I have two casualties from not running pulse. I do
wish I had the earcons, but I can frankly live wwithout them and without
the GUI terminal.

Janina



Kyle writes:
> According to Janina Sajka:
> # Pulseaudio is not active on my system. So, getting GDM to speak does not
> # require pulseaudio. It may work with pulse, I wouldn't know. But, it
> # definitely isn't a prerequisite.
> 
> This is indeed good to know. I leave Pulseaudio enabled here, and I
> don't have any problems. In fact, it helped me out with a project I
> needed to do involving streaming and piping audio from multiple
> applications into a single application's input. But it's good to know
> that if it's disabled or otherwise inactive, most everything, especially
> the talking GDM login, works as expected. Too bad about the earcons in
> GNOME though. Do you at least still get a terminal bell?
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> -- 
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

One additional bit of data for the sake of completeness ...

Talking GDM seems only to work the first time you access it.

I do not auto start the GUI on boot, preferring the additional control
over all those numerous issues that can break boots.

Rather, I use

systemctl start gdm

To kick off my GUI when I need it.

So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.

Wonder what that's all about?

Janina

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[covici]

Well, at least you get gdm, what I get is a message on the screen oh no
something has gone wrong.

Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:

> One additional bit of data for the sake of completeness ...
> 
> Talking GDM seems only to work the first time you access it.
> 
> I do not auto start the GUI on boot, preferring the additional control
> over all those numerous issues that can break boots.
> 
> Rather, I use
> 
> systemctl start gdm
> 
> To kick off my GUI when I need it.
> 
> So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.
> 
> Wonder what that's all about?
> 
> Janina
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

John:

Is this from Fedora?

Janina

covici@ccs.covici.com writes:
> Well, at least you get gdm, what I get is a message on the screen oh no
> something has gone wrong.
> 
> Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> 
> > One additional bit of data for the sake of completeness ...
> > 
> > Talking GDM seems only to work the first time you access it.
> > 
> > I do not auto start the GUI on boot, preferring the additional control
> > over all those numerous issues that can break boots.
> > 
> > Rather, I use
> > 
> > systemctl start gdm
> > 
> > To kick off my GUI when I need it.
> > 
> > So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> > I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> > the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> > login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.
> > 
> > Wonder what that's all about?
> > 
> > Janina
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> How do
> you spend it?
> 
>          John Covici
>          covici@ccs.covici.com
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[covici]

Nope, I have gentoo and can't get gdm or even startx to work properly
using gnome 3.8.

Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:

> John:
> 
> Is this from Fedora?
> 
> Janina
> 
> covici@ccs.covici.com writes:
> > Well, at least you get gdm, what I get is a message on the screen oh no
> > something has gone wrong.
> > 
> > Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > One additional bit of data for the sake of completeness ...
> > > 
> > > Talking GDM seems only to work the first time you access it.
> > > 
> > > I do not auto start the GUI on boot, preferring the additional control
> > > over all those numerous issues that can break boots.
> > > 
> > > Rather, I use
> > > 
> > > systemctl start gdm
> > > 
> > > To kick off my GUI when I need it.
> > > 
> > > So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> > > I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> > > the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> > > login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.
> > > 
> > > Wonder what that's all about?
> > > 
> > > Janina
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > -- 
> > Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> > How do
> > you spend it?
> > 
> >          John Covici
> >          covici@ccs.covici.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

Sorry about that. Don't think I can help much.

Unless the following is of any use ...

At each round of the development cycle, i.e. the odd numbered dot
releases, the GNOME people publish a "it's ready to build and break"
email that includes build instructions. I think they still rely on
jhbuild. There may be notes in there that might help.

Janina

covici@ccs.covici.com writes:
> Nope, I have gentoo and can't get gdm or even startx to work properly
> using gnome 3.8.
> 
> Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> 
> > John:
> > 
> > Is this from Fedora?
> > 
> > Janina
> > 
> > covici@ccs.covici.com writes:
> > > Well, at least you get gdm, what I get is a message on the screen oh no
> > > something has gone wrong.
> > > 
> > > Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > One additional bit of data for the sake of completeness ...
> > > > 
> > > > Talking GDM seems only to work the first time you access it.
> > > > 
> > > > I do not auto start the GUI on boot, preferring the additional control
> > > > over all those numerous issues that can break boots.
> > > > 
> > > > Rather, I use
> > > > 
> > > > systemctl start gdm
> > > > 
> > > > To kick off my GUI when I need it.
> > > > 
> > > > So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> > > > I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> > > > the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> > > > login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.
> > > > 
> > > > Wonder what that's all about?
> > > > 
> > > > Janina
> > > > 
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Speakup mailing list
> > > > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> > > How do
> > > you spend it?
> > > 
> > >          John Covici
> > >          covici@ccs.covici.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > -- 
> > 
> > Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> > 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> > 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> > 
> > Linux Foundation Fellow
> > Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> > 
> > The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> > Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> > 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> How do
> you spend it?
> 
>          John Covici
>          covici@ccs.covici.com
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Jason White]

Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
 
> So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.

It happens to me too under Debian if I log out of Gnome, closing the X
session.

The problem is that Speech-Dispatcher isn't killed, and Orca doesn't
re-establish a connection with a running Speech-Dispatcher properly in these
circumstances. You can work around it by killing the Speech-Dispatcher process
once gdm is no longer running.

This is a bug that merits a report.

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

Thanks, Jason! This is exactly it. Doing a:

killall speech-dispatcher

as root takes care of the issue. So, I simply need to add this second
command after stopping gdm with systemctl.

I see there are going to be some serious process updates to
SpeakupModified.Org. Guess we'll simply target the forthcoming Fedora 19
with this, and a few other updates.

Janina

Jason White writes:
> Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
>  
> > So, I now get speech the first time I do this. But, if for some reason,
> > I need to bring down the GUI and restart it, I do NOT get talking GDM on
> > the second time, and on any successive times through GDM. I can still
> > login, and Orca speaks, but no speech on GDM after the first round.
> 
> It happens to me too under Debian if I log out of Gnome, closing the X
> session.
> 
> The problem is that Speech-Dispatcher isn't killed, and Orca doesn't
> re-establish a connection with a running Speech-Dispatcher properly in these
> circumstances. You can work around it by killing the Speech-Dispatcher process
> once gdm is no longer running.
> 
> This is a bug that merits a report.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Cleverson Casarin Uliana]

Jason White writes:
> The problem is that Speech-Dispatcher isn't killed, and Orca doesn't
> re-establish a connection with a running Speech-Dispatcher properly in these
> circumstances. You can work around it by killing the Speech-Dispatcher process
> once gdm is no longer running.
>
I think GDM should not be told to kill speech-dispatcher on terminating, 
as I may want to continue using it at the console, for example with 
speechd-up.

Regards
Cleverson

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Jason White]

Cleverson Casarin Uliana <clcaul@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think GDM should not be told to kill speech-dispatcher on
> terminating, as I may want to continue using it at the console, for
> example with speechd-up.

It isn't a gdm problem, so it won't be solved by having gdm kill
Speech-Dispatcher.

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Kyle]

According to Cleverson Casarin Uliana:
# I think GDM should not be told to kill speech-dispatcher on terminating,
# as I may want to continue using it at the console, for example with
# speechd-up.

GDM should kill its own speech-dispatcher process rather than
speech-dispatcher processes owned by other users. If you have only a
system-wide speech-dispatcher configuration, it can't kill it, although
if your speech-dispatcher runs system-wide, it shouldn't need to be
killed by GDM in order for the next login prompt to speak. If
speech-dispatcher runs specifically for the gdm user, you can safely
tell it to kill its own speech-dispatcher process. If using something
like killall or pkill to kill speech-dispatcher, it will need to be done
from a GDM script that runs at termination, rather than from the service
responsible for starting and stopping GDM, because pkill and killall
running as user gdm will only kill gdm's processes, whereas the service
responsible for starting and stopping GDM will kill all
speech-dispatcher processes owned by all users.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

RE: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Albert Sten-Clanton]

Janina, thanks for the added info.  Are you still able to avoid using
Pulseaudio?  If so, does that mean avoiding it completely, or just with
Speakup?  

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
Sajka
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:48 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

All right! Now we're cooking with gas.

Thanks, Al. It took a reboot, but GDM came up talking.

So, my previous disappointment was just the missing piece of info that the
steps below don't work on the fly, but they will work for your next boot.

Explaining the Steps:

Ctrl-Alt-TAB Goes to the Two menu TABS up top.

Right-Arrow once takes one to the Accessibility menu (Once more would be to
Power)

Down four times is the Screenreader checkbox.

Pressing RETURN checks the checkbox.

Janina

Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these 
> instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> 
> The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to 
> press
> ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down 
> ctrl+alt+arrow
> key four
> times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> 
> The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that 
> I use headphones almost all the time.
> 
> Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> 
> Al
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of 
> Janina Sajka
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> 
> I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The 
> compatibility library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> 
> compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> 
> PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a 
> second physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share 
> the same alsa device.
> 
> And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> 
> That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking 
> login--don't get me started talking about that, though!
> 
> Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful 
> to use recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively 
> being updated these days
> 
> Janina
> 
> Kyle writes:
> > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> > 
> > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. 
> > Not only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also 
> > requires ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code 
> > is either lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would 
> > maintain it, so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C 
> > libraries or even get any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still 
> > crashes on words like c a e s u r e, which according to Google is a 
> > bitcoin client written in Python, and is also a rather common 
> > username on some non-blindness related forums. It also crashes on a 
> > rather common OCR error when recognizing the word Wednesday. I 
> > googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common OCR 
> > scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was 
> > especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 
> > 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes 
> > that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact 
> > same codebase but different names to randomly kill the screen 
> > reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because the 
> > source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> > that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> > something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> > different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It 
> > may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to 
> > avoid Voxin
> and all the other voices like it.
> > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If 
> > you don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival 
> > working, and Festival is capable of running some amazing free 
> > voices. There's also Pico, which is now supported natively in 
> > speech-dispatcher. All these voices sound better and work better 
> > than Voxin, which literally makes my head hurt.
> > ~Kyle
> > http://kyle.tk/
> > --
> > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> --
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Al:

Yes, I should have been more clear.

Pulseaudio is fully inactive on my systems. This means no pulseaudio
whatsoever, not for any of my 5 audio devices. This includes my Orca
over espeak, as well as my Speakup over TTSynth. As far as I can tell,
the only penalty I've incurred is that I do NOT have earcons on the GUI
desktop. Everything else works as it should.

I am nevertheless investigating how to enable pulseaudio access to one or two specific cards. I'm perfectly happy to have it running, but only if I can restrict it at the card-level. Since I need to use jack for audio work, this is the only tenable approach, imo.

Janina

Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> Janina, thanks for the added info.  Are you still able to avoid using
> Pulseaudio?  If so, does that mean avoiding it completely, or just with
> Speakup?  
> 
> Al 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
> Sajka
> Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:48 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]
> 
> All right! Now we're cooking with gas.
> 
> Thanks, Al. It took a reboot, but GDM came up talking.
> 
> So, my previous disappointment was just the missing piece of info that the
> steps below don't work on the fly, but they will work for your next boot.
> 
> Explaining the Steps:
> 
> Ctrl-Alt-TAB Goes to the Two menu TABS up top.
> 
> Right-Arrow once takes one to the Accessibility menu (Once more would be to
> Power)
> 
> Down four times is the Screenreader checkbox.
> 
> Pressing RETURN checks the checkbox.
> 
> Janina
> 
> Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> > Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these 
> > instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> > 
> > The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to 
> > press
> > ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down 
> > ctrl+alt+arrow
> > key four
> > times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> > 
> > The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that 
> > I use headphones almost all the time.
> > 
> > Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> > 
> > Al
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of 
> > Janina Sajka
> > Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> > Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> > 
> > I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The 
> > compatibility library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> > 
> > compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> > 
> > PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a 
> > second physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share 
> > the same alsa device.
> > 
> > And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> > 
> > That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking 
> > login--don't get me started talking about that, though!
> > 
> > Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful 
> > to use recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively 
> > being updated these days
> > 
> > Janina
> > 
> > Kyle writes:
> > > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> > > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> > > 
> > > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. 
> > > Not only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also 
> > > requires ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code 
> > > is either lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would 
> > > maintain it, so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C 
> > > libraries or even get any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still 
> > > crashes on words like c a e s u r e, which according to Google is a 
> > > bitcoin client written in Python, and is also a rather common 
> > > username on some non-blindness related forums. It also crashes on a 
> > > rather common OCR error when recognizing the word Wednesday. I 
> > > googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common OCR 
> > > scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was 
> > > especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 
> > > 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes 
> > > that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact 
> > > same codebase but different names to randomly kill the screen 
> > > reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because the 
> > > source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> > > that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> > > something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> > > different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It 
> > > may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to 
> > > avoid Voxin
> > and all the other voices like it.
> > > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If 
> > > you don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival 
> > > working, and Festival is capable of running some amazing free 
> > > voices. There's also Pico, which is now supported natively in 
> > > speech-dispatcher. All these voices sound better and work better 
> > > than Voxin, which literally makes my head hurt.
> > > ~Kyle
> > > http://kyle.tk/
> > > --
> > > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> > > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> > 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> > 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> > 
> > Linux Foundation Fellow
> > Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> > 
> > The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> > Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> > 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

RE: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

[Albert Sten-Clanton]

Thanks, Janina.  I'm glad to know that.  Not sure I'll try to follow suit,
but it's nice to know that so far I may be able to if necessary.

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
Sajka
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 3:38 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]

Hi, Al:

Yes, I should have been more clear.

Pulseaudio is fully inactive on my systems. This means no pulseaudio
whatsoever, not for any of my 5 audio devices. This includes my Orca over
espeak, as well as my Speakup over TTSynth. As far as I can tell, the only
penalty I've incurred is that I do NOT have earcons on the GUI desktop.
Everything else works as it should.

I am nevertheless investigating how to enable pulseaudio access to one or
two specific cards. I'm perfectly happy to have it running, but only if I
can restrict it at the card-level. Since I need to use jack for audio work,
this is the only tenable approach, imo.

Janina

Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> Janina, thanks for the added info.  Are you still able to avoid using 
> Pulseaudio?  If so, does that mean avoiding it completely, or just 
> with Speakup?
> 
> Al
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of 
> Janina Sajka
> Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:48 PM
> To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> Subject: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux]
> 
> All right! Now we're cooking with gas.
> 
> Thanks, Al. It took a reboot, but GDM came up talking.
> 
> So, my previous disappointment was just the missing piece of info that 
> the steps below don't work on the fly, but they will work for your next
boot.
> 
> Explaining the Steps:
> 
> Ctrl-Alt-TAB Goes to the Two menu TABS up top.
> 
> Right-Arrow once takes one to the Accessibility menu (Once more would 
> be to
> Power)
> 
> Down four times is the Screenreader checkbox.
> 
> Pressing RETURN checks the checkbox.
> 
> Janina
> 
> Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> > Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using 
> > these instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> > 
> > The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to 
> > press
> > ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down 
> > ctrl+alt+arrow
> > key four
> > times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch
linux.
> > 
> > The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good 
> > that I use headphones almost all the time.
> > 
> > Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> > 
> > Al
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces@linux-speakup.org] On Behalf 
> > Of Janina Sajka
> > Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> > Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> > 
> > I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The 
> > compatibility library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> > 
> > compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> > 
> > PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a 
> > second physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to 
> > share the same alsa device.
> > 
> > And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme
prejudice.
> > 
> > That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking 
> > login--don't get me started talking about that, though!
> > 
> > Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's 
> > useful to use recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is 
> > actively being updated these days
> > 
> > Janina
> > 
> > Kyle writes:
> > > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> > > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> > > 
> > > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. 
> > > Not only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also 
> > > requires ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code 
> > > is either lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would 
> > > maintain it, so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C 
> > > libraries or even get any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still 
> > > crashes on words like c a e s u r e, which according to Google is 
> > > a bitcoin client written in Python, and is also a rather common 
> > > username on some non-blindness related forums. It also crashes on 
> > > a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word Wednesday. I 
> > > googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common OCR 
> > > scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was 
> > > especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 
> > > 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes 
> > > that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact 
> > > same codebase but different names to randomly kill the screen 
> > > reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because the 
> > > source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact 
> > > that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing 
> > > something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no 
> > > different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It 
> > > may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to 
> > > avoid Voxin
> > and all the other voices like it.
> > > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If 
> > > you don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival 
> > > working, and Festival is capable of running some amazing free 
> > > voices. There's also Pico, which is now supported natively in 
> > > speech-dispatcher. All these voices sound better and work better 
> > > than Voxin, which literally makes my head hurt.
> > > ~Kyle
> > > http://kyle.tk/
> > > --
> > > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> > > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> > 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> > 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> > 
> > Linux Foundation Fellow
> > Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> > 
> > The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> > Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> > 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> --
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina@rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

I don't know all the extra debian packages voxxin  requires. It goes out 
and installs them itself. IIRC, /dev/dsp is created by installing the 
alsa-oss package. That may be one of the extra packages voxin requires. 
I don't know.  All I had to do to install voxim was unzip it and run the 
install script. When I restarted gdm, I went into orca preferences and 
was able to configure orca to use voxin for the TTS.

I've had some minor problems since switching to voxin like having the 
speech rate and the pitch get stuc at the wrong settings. Orca 
identifies links in mail messages and web pages by slowing the speech 
rate way down. And it identifies all caps by raising the pitch. 
Sometimes those settings don't go back where they belong. I also 
sometimes have to restart orca by pressing alt+f2 and typeing "orca 
--replace". But that almost always works if orca crashes or gets messed 
up somehow.

As I said, orca isn't anywhere near as stable as speakup. In fact, I'd 
rate it behind jaws, voiceover, and even nvda. But even so, it's darn 
good. Good enough for me to feel I can do my job with it approximately 
as efficiently as I could with Windows. I'm a linux systems admin and 
not using linux myself is kind of like cheating.  I'm finally using the 
same OS that all my end users are using.

On 05/09/13 14:37, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
> As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> Is this no longer correct?
>
> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>
> On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:01:28AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
>> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable.
>> Orca came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after
>> finishing the install.
>>
>> Some recommendations:
>> 1. Go with debian stable.
>> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you
>> a 3.2 kernel.
>> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not
>> use the equivalent debian packages.
>> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
>> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the
>> same voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google
>> it.) Voxin may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much
>> more.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA256
>>>
>>> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
>>> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
>>> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
>>> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
>>> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
>>> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
>>> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
>>> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
>>> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
>>> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
>>> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
>>> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
>>> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
>>> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
>>> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
>>>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
>>> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
>>> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
>>> doing things the Windows way?
>>>
>>> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>>>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
>>>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
>>>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>>>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
>>>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>>>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>>>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>>>
>>>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>>>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
>>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
>>>
>>> iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJRi0/LAAoJEPrAuJWnLe0y+yMP/RxUIuVbYrTv8cGcEo1aNMEj
>>> g2qstErfKEtEZKUapAryVr/QfVXdpVt10bPdynFqScKKKQfjMqTmP3CkoCVO02Ao
>>> BGhDnReuc4BI/DWuDnqJYayUusvjINnII47w4cjbfbLY+OEwmOajGlnvTLwIB6p5
>>> +VVoCKdzIbTBrDk08lCSso24TToNfmVYUMBUDT8mBnRwGNjN182eDVPWy8PAvIUK
>>> QdkTOr1X1RMnn+6JsoHybRr3Owo55ILnL+XDQLEnUe1f5aGlrVXT9sdLPcCwa/uH
>>> Ff61apGsMOX20dZ2DiB4U8aiTuU0dV81eTywFt1UZmu8dGLsEGnhvHRCoNEl0JEN
>>> XwGH61/DdfpXnlBeusHG7quq2mTjPEy4dMpxaDoaVDVVVOf65TnVBcBBUupxZ44W
>>> ZEY/AgbJ5eOFwd8ZZouiVNIQt+BX7gRQ5wVjHwEXlx6d3kNVEsxKIVxhx24+gpXx
>>> Ro5Ci3fUoX/TCK3JjznxnkM7ZVPoom5B1s5ZEjEwfbVNBkOp7G6zOAeFO8N7EyRS
>>> V8upZXTkL+GWi2vT4bfyYz14yo1Vge22OoFXuPc5nftrjvKcKtzuw5QleYct3MYT
>>> UbMbZ0mmKSpVG58P7r6gQljOT0eWCq5z8wLXPzNmCcHAt8Tf9604upZClz7axGnT
>>> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs
>>> =Ghdw
>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>>
>> --
>> ---
>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[John G. Heim]

Just a note, I switched back to espeak just to try it again. A couple of 
things.

1. Espeak has a problem with key echo. I can type faster than espeak can 
echo my keystrokes. I didn't have that problem with voxin.
2. It's still doing that thing where the speech rate or the ptich gets 
stuck at the wrong values. So that is obviously an orca problem, not voxin.

The real test for me wont' be with writing email messages though. The 
test wwill be seeing whether espeak or voxin work better when I'm 
editing code or typing commands into a terminal window.




On 05/10/13 09:38, John G. Heim wrote:
> I don't know all the extra debian packages voxxin  requires. It goes out
> and installs them itself. IIRC, /dev/dsp is created by installing the
> alsa-oss package. That may be one of the extra packages voxin requires.
> I don't know.  All I had to do to install voxim was unzip it and run the
> install script. When I restarted gdm, I went into orca preferences and
> was able to configure orca to use voxin for the TTS.
>
> I've had some minor problems since switching to voxin like having the
> speech rate and the pitch get stuc at the wrong settings. Orca
> identifies links in mail messages and web pages by slowing the speech
> rate way down. And it identifies all caps by raising the pitch.
> Sometimes those settings don't go back where they belong. I also
> sometimes have to restart orca by pressing alt+f2 and typeing "orca
> --replace". But that almost always works if orca crashes or gets messed
> up somehow.
>
> As I said, orca isn't anywhere near as stable as speakup. In fact, I'd
> rate it behind jaws, voiceover, and even nvda. But even so, it's darn
> good. Good enough for me to feel I can do my job with it approximately
> as efficiently as I could with Windows. I'm a linux systems admin and
> not using linux myself is kind of like cheating.  I'm finally using the
> same OS that all my end users are using.
>
> On 05/09/13 14:37, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
>> As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>> Is this no longer correct?
>>
>> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>>
>> On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:01:28AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
>>> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable.
>>> Orca came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after
>>> finishing the install.
>>>
>>> Some recommendations:
>>> 1. Go with debian stable.
>>> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you
>>> a 3.2 kernel.
>>> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not
>>> use the equivalent debian packages.
>>> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
>>> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the
>>> same voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google
>>> it.) Voxin may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much
>>> more.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA256
>>>>
>>>> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you
>>>> made the
>>>> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
>>>> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely
>>>> haven't put
>>>> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with
>>>> X and
>>>> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have
>>>> speech when
>>>> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
>>>> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try
>>>> to do
>>>> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca
>>>> but not
>>>> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
>>>> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable
>>>> experimental to
>>>> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
>>>> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
>>>> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
>>>> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from
>>>> Windows, but
>>>> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of
>>>> view.
>>>>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not
>>>> me,
>>>> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
>>>> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make
>>>> compared to
>>>> doing things the Windows way?
>>>>
>>>> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>>>>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago
>>>>> and it
>>>>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating
>>>>> system
>>>>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>>>>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux.
>>>>> But I
>>>>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>>>>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>>>>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>>>>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
>>>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
>>>>
>>>> iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJRi0/LAAoJEPrAuJWnLe0y+yMP/RxUIuVbYrTv8cGcEo1aNMEj
>>>> g2qstErfKEtEZKUapAryVr/QfVXdpVt10bPdynFqScKKKQfjMqTmP3CkoCVO02Ao
>>>> BGhDnReuc4BI/DWuDnqJYayUusvjINnII47w4cjbfbLY+OEwmOajGlnvTLwIB6p5
>>>> +VVoCKdzIbTBrDk08lCSso24TToNfmVYUMBUDT8mBnRwGNjN182eDVPWy8PAvIUK
>>>> QdkTOr1X1RMnn+6JsoHybRr3Owo55ILnL+XDQLEnUe1f5aGlrVXT9sdLPcCwa/uH
>>>> Ff61apGsMOX20dZ2DiB4U8aiTuU0dV81eTywFt1UZmu8dGLsEGnhvHRCoNEl0JEN
>>>> XwGH61/DdfpXnlBeusHG7quq2mTjPEy4dMpxaDoaVDVVVOf65TnVBcBBUupxZ44W
>>>> ZEY/AgbJ5eOFwd8ZZouiVNIQt+BX7gRQ5wVjHwEXlx6d3kNVEsxKIVxhx24+gpXx
>>>> Ro5Ci3fUoX/TCK3JjznxnkM7ZVPoom5B1s5ZEjEwfbVNBkOp7G6zOAeFO8N7EyRS
>>>> V8upZXTkL+GWi2vT4bfyYz14yo1Vge22OoFXuPc5nftrjvKcKtzuw5QleYct3MYT
>>>> UbMbZ0mmKSpVG58P7r6gQljOT0eWCq5z8wLXPzNmCcHAt8Tf9604upZClz7axGnT
>>>> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs
>>>> =Ghdw
>>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ---
>>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Rob Hudson]

I agree. I am extremely hearing impaired and I can only understand about 2 
out of 3 words when using espeak. When I heard that there was an 
eloquence-sounding voice available for linux, I jumped at it. I didn't 
quibble at the cost since having a nice, clear voice I could understand was 
more important to me than six bucks. It is a crying shame that nobody's 
doing anything with the via voice or eloquence anymore, but still hanging on 
to the source code greedily so that nobody can update it.

I use voxin with speech-dispatcher and speechd-up and i am able to work very 
well in my terminal with those tools. I avoid pulseAudio like the plague 
since from what I hear you can't have speech in console without jumping 
through weird hoops. I don't really see what the advantage of PulseAudio is 
anyway, except something about having per user audio settings or something 
like that. Since I'm the only user, I don't need that, and alsa works just 
fine.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux


>I don't know all the extra debian packages voxxin  requires. It goes out 
>and installs them itself. IIRC, /dev/dsp is created by installing the 
>alsa-oss package. That may be one of the extra packages voxin requires. I 
>don't know.  All I had to do to install voxim was unzip it and run the 
>install script. When I restarted gdm, I went into orca preferences and was 
>able to configure orca to use voxin for the TTS.
>
> I've had some minor problems since switching to voxin like having the 
> speech rate and the pitch get stuc at the wrong settings. Orca identifies 
> links in mail messages and web pages by slowing the speech rate way down. 
> And it identifies all caps by raising the pitch. Sometimes those settings 
> don't go back where they belong. I also sometimes have to restart orca by 
> pressing alt+f2 and typeing "orca --replace". But that almost always works 
> if orca crashes or gets messed up somehow.
>
> As I said, orca isn't anywhere near as stable as speakup. In fact, I'd 
> rate it behind jaws, voiceover, and even nvda. But even so, it's darn 
> good. Good enough for me to feel I can do my job with it approximately as 
> efficiently as I could with Windows. I'm a linux systems admin and not 
> using linux myself is kind of like cheating.  I'm finally using the same 
> OS that all my end users are using.
>
> On 05/09/13 14:37, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
>> As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
>> Is this no longer correct?
>>
>> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>>
>> On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:01:28AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
>>> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable.
>>> Orca came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after
>>> finishing the install.
>>>
>>> Some recommendations:
>>> 1. Go with debian stable.
>>> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you
>>> a 3.2 kernel.
>>> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not
>>> use the equivalent debian packages.
>>> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
>>> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the
>>> same voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google
>>> it.) Voxin may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much
>>> more.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA256
>>>>
>>>> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made 
>>>> the
>>>> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
>>>> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't 
>>>> put
>>>> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X 
>>>> and
>>>> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech 
>>>> when
>>>> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
>>>> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to 
>>>> do
>>>> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but 
>>>> not
>>>> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
>>>> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental 
>>>> to
>>>> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
>>>> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
>>>> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
>>>> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, 
>>>> but
>>>> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of 
>>>> view.
>>>>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not 
>>>> me,
>>>> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
>>>> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared 
>>>> to
>>>> doing things the Windows way?
>>>>
>>>> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>>>>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and 
>>>>> it
>>>>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating 
>>>>> system
>>>>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>>>>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But 
>>>>> I
>>>>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>>>>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>>>>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>>>>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)
>>>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
>>>>
>>>> iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJRi0/LAAoJEPrAuJWnLe0y+yMP/RxUIuVbYrTv8cGcEo1aNMEj
>>>> g2qstErfKEtEZKUapAryVr/QfVXdpVt10bPdynFqScKKKQfjMqTmP3CkoCVO02Ao
>>>> BGhDnReuc4BI/DWuDnqJYayUusvjINnII47w4cjbfbLY+OEwmOajGlnvTLwIB6p5
>>>> +VVoCKdzIbTBrDk08lCSso24TToNfmVYUMBUDT8mBnRwGNjN182eDVPWy8PAvIUK
>>>> QdkTOr1X1RMnn+6JsoHybRr3Owo55ILnL+XDQLEnUe1f5aGlrVXT9sdLPcCwa/uH
>>>> Ff61apGsMOX20dZ2DiB4U8aiTuU0dV81eTywFt1UZmu8dGLsEGnhvHRCoNEl0JEN
>>>> XwGH61/DdfpXnlBeusHG7quq2mTjPEy4dMpxaDoaVDVVVOf65TnVBcBBUupxZ44W
>>>> ZEY/AgbJ5eOFwd8ZZouiVNIQt+BX7gRQ5wVjHwEXlx6d3kNVEsxKIVxhx24+gpXx
>>>> Ro5Ci3fUoX/TCK3JjznxnkM7ZVPoom5B1s5ZEjEwfbVNBkOp7G6zOAeFO8N7EyRS
>>>> V8upZXTkL+GWi2vT4bfyYz14yo1Vge22OoFXuPc5nftrjvKcKtzuw5QleYct3MYT
>>>> UbMbZ0mmKSpVG58P7r6gQljOT0eWCq5z8wLXPzNmCcHAt8Tf9604upZClz7axGnT
>>>> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs
>>>> =Ghdw
>>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ---
>>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

[Kirk Reiser]

On Fri, 10 May 2013, Rob Hudson wrote:

> I agree. I am extremely hearing impaired and I can only understand about 2 
> out of 3 words when using espeak. When I heard that there was an 
> eloquence-sounding voice available for linux, I jumped at it. I didn't 
> quibble at the cost since having a nice, clear voice I could understand was 
> more important to me than six bucks. It is a crying shame that nobody's doing
> anything with the via voice or eloquence anymore, but still hanging on to the 
> source code greedily so that nobody can update it.

I understand that most everybody has a personal preference toward a
synth they find enjoyable and easy to listen to. I will just say that
speech synths are like many things in life that take practice to
become comfortible with. I have listened to many, many synths over the
years writing drivers for them and working on them directly. You can
become perfectly comfortible with any of them even the worst with
prolonged practice. The human brain is an amazing device and will over
time build the connections to accommodate even the worst synths like
the old tuxtalk or even the Braille 'n Speak synth.

> I use voxin with speech-dispatcher and speechd-up and i am able to work very 
> well in my terminal with those tools. I avoid pulseAudio like the plague 
> since from what I hear you can't have speech in console without jumping 
> through weird hoops. I don't really see what the advantage of PulseAudio is 
> anyway, except something about having per user audio settings or something 
> like that. Since I'm the only user, I don't need that, and alsa works just 
> fine.

There really doesn't need to be any jumping through hoops to bypass
pulse audio. There is a pulse audio configuration file in
/usr/share/alsa which if removed will totally ignore it. That, at
least has been my experience. I never use gnome so don't know if it
does something to complicate the situation.


-- 
Well that's it then, colour me gone!

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kelly Prescott]

I also use Linux all day long with the command-line interface.
I only use MicroShaft when I need to use a browser or something that just 
simply doesn't support Linux.


On Wed, 8 May 2013, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:

> here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett
> gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing
> and stuff Linux will not do.

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kyle]

According to Kelly Prescott:
# I only use MicroShaft when I need to use a browser or something that
# just simply doesn't support Linux.

FOr the browser, go with Firefox. For e-mail, it's Thunderbird. Both are
quite well supported on Linux, and both speak with Orca. I found there's
nothing I can't do on Linux. I can even use Wine to play self-voicing
games. I haven't used Windows, even in a virtual machine for about 3
years, and I'm not going back. I run GNOME 3.8 and Orca for most
everything, and I use Speakup in the text consoles when I don't have
access to GNOME, usually because I consciously broke it, either by doing
a premature upgrade or by other means that are entirely my own fault. I
have rarely if ever had a bad installation with a non-working GNOME+Orca
setup.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: the direction of speakup

[Glenn]

I have found that Orca is insufficient without Speakup, as there are times 
that Orca will not speak well enough, and I have to go to the terminal.
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: the direction of speakup


I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that
it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers
for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there
are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or
edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority of linux users use
orca for every day tasks.

The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do
for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in
kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that is
equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into
kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same
because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know -- when a
server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all that stuff.
I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press the print
screen key.

On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
> long run.
>
> Thanks,
> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>
> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>>
>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>
>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>> with
>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>
>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>>
>>> Gene Collins
>>>
>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>
>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> All,
>>>>>
>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>
>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>> someone
>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>> code for
>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>
>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>> want,
>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>
>>>>> question:
>>>>>
>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>
>>>>> William
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>>> How do
>>>> you spend it?
>>>>
>>>>          John Covici
>>>>          covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@linux-speakup.org
http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: the direction of speakup

[acollins]

I always subscribe to "The right tool for the job" philosophy.  In other
words, use whatever tool works for the task at hand.  What this boils
down to for me is that most of the time, I use text consoles.  For web
browsing, I use gnome, orca, and firefox.  Sometimes, when I know I will
want to cut and paste between a text application, and firefox, I use
gnome-terminal, but not very often.  Since I'm a dedicated user of nmh,
all my email is done in a text console using speakup.  If it works, use
it!  If it don't, find something that does!

Gene


>I have found that Orca is insufficient without Speakup, as there are times 
>that Orca will not speak well enough, and I have to go to the terminal.
>Glenn
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu>
>To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
><speakup@linux-speakup.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 10:03 AM
>Subject: Re: the direction of speakup
>
>
>I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that
>it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers
>for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there
>are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or
>edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure  the vast majority of linux users use
>orca for every day tasks.
>
>The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
>really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do
>for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in
>kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that is
>equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot
>messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into
>kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same
>because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI.   I don't know -- when a
>server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all that stuff.
>I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press the print
>screen key.
>
>On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote:
>> I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace.  As others have
>> said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot
>> messages anyways.  While there are still many folks using hardware
>> speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding.  In
>> addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages.  It is a
>> little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from
>> the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I
>> think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the
>> long run.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish
>> spangler.robert@gmail.com
>>
>> On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
>>> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we
>>> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or
>>> usb ones.  But this is to be decided.
>>>
>>> acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
>>>> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
>>>> scrollback buffer.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet.
>>>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines
>>>> with
>>>> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
>>>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
>>>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
>>>> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
>>>>
>>>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
>>>> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
>>>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
>>>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
>>>> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
>>>> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
>>>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
>>>> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
>>>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
>>>> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
>>>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
>>>> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
>>>> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
>>>> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
>>>>
>>>> Gene Collins
>>>>
>>>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
>>>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
>>>>> kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
>>>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
>>>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
>>>>> interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
>>>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
>>>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
>>>>> etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
>>>>>
>>>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
>>>>>> speakup.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
>>>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
>>>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly.
>>>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to
>>>>>> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find
>>>>>> someone
>>>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the
>>>>>> code for
>>>>>> us, but at least consulting with us.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we
>>>>>> want,
>>>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> question:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
>>>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
>>>>>> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
>>>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> William
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
>>>>> How do
>>>>> you spend it?
>>>>>
>>>>>          John Covici
>>>>>          covici@ccs.covici.com
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Speakup mailing list
>>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>
>-- 
>---
>John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[Brandon McGinty-Carroll]

Long message, be warned.
Just some thoughts off the top of my head.
1. boot speech
I don't currently have a way to read messages from my system directly at boot time, as I'm using espeak.
When I need to access the console that early, I hook up a serial cable, and connect from another machine.
This brings me to my first true point.
Given no userspace migration, might we model speakups serial access on that of the serial console driver that ships with linux?
Surely that can't be objected too by kernel dev folks.
Taking a look through the kernel sources, it seems as though the serial console driver uses the same low-level calls speakup currently uses.
(Anyone more familiar with the kernel, please correct me.)
2. kernel panics
I haven't encountered a true oops/kernel halt moment yet.
If the message couldn't be spoken, logging it in some way might be nice, though I'm sure that would depend on the error in question.
3. USB synths
I don't see why we couldn't use the softsynth device and write back to USB, like WH has done for espeakup.
Instead of software speech, the text would be sent back out the usb port.
4. ISA synths
Unfortunately, the hardware to support ISA is going away (laptops and the like).
There are some ISA to USB converters, but they're a bit pricy.
See above for my thoughts on using these USB devices.
5. userspace conversion
I've come up with the following, and attempted to confirm each point with those more in the know.
TTY=virtualConsole
5.1 thoughts
pros:
.maintainability
I believe that more development can take place in userspace than in the kernel.
Nastyness will only affect your UL screen reading application, not cause crashes as some of these issues have.
.serial/usb access
Dealing with hahrdware will be no harder than in any other application. open, write, read, flush, close.
.programming language support
Though C is the fastest language, it need not be the only language for a given task. Currently, we're locked entirely into C because the kernel rightly requires it.
.kernel devs
Less now, less in the future, for kernel developers to have to think about, and less for us to have to work through with them.
Less compatibility issues.
That isnt' to say that anyone with kernel development has caused a problem.
However, the fewer points where we're reaching into the innerds of the machine and kernel, the better.
cons:
.time/effort
It's not going to be a quick process.
There needs to be a way to access _all of the information that speakup can currently access, which means all available TTY data.
Fortunately, we know what speakup can do, and what we want it to do, so given sufficient reason, we can do it. 
I will be glad to help with coding and testing.
.kernel adoption
I don't know how kernel devs are going to feel, or if they'll care, about turning speakup into a TTY gateway (basically what I invision us having).
.boot messages
sse Gene's message below.
Those of us with soft synths don't have this currently, and there are alternatives like serial consoles.
5.2 functionality required on the kernel side
a. screen-text pulling and pushing
Given we can read data from the kernel at sufficient speed, and send our position in each TTY back into speakup, and send data to write to each console, this is doable.
b. screen updates
We must still be notified of screen changes, in userspace.
c. keyboard
The kernel has the ability to read, block and allow key presses. These key presses need to be sen to userspace, or to our reader.
If we can find a method to do this in userspace, then all the better.
(brltty might do this, will check)
5.3 userspace code
a. read and speak
read updated screen and speak it
b. read segment
given commands ,read specific portions of the visible screen, or other nonvisible screens
(here, screen=tty)
c. synthesizer drivers
Given the current synth drivers, the codes to send and receive text and parameters will need to be located, noted, and tested.
(I believe those of you with hw synths will either need to assist in coding, or provide your devices as test platforms.)
d. read keyboard output
If we want to move everything out of the kernel as much as possible, then key processing should take place in userspace.
(brltty might do this, will check)
e. act on tty switching
The current notifyer in speakup could alert us of this.


On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:42:38PM -0500, acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
> Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
> inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
> scrollback buffer.  
> 
> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet. 
> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines with
> isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
> think it's time to drop isa support yet.
> 
> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
> should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
> space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
> you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
> is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
> the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
> live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
> Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
> ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
> 
> Gene Collins
> 
> >hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
> >writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
> >kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
> >get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
> >tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
> >interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
> >serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
> >you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
> >etc.
> >
> >my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
> >
> >William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> All,
> >> 
> >> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> >> speakup.
> >> 
> >> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> >> 
> >> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> >> 
> >> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> >> 
> >> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> >> 
> >> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> >> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> >> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> >> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> >> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
> >> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
> >> us, but at least consulting with us.
> >> 
> >> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
> >> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> >> 
> >> question:
> >> 
> >> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> >> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> >> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> >> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> >> 
> >> William
> >> 
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Speakup mailing list
> >> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >-- 
> >Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> >How do
> >you spend it?
> >
> >         John Covici
> >         covici@ccs.covici.com
> >_______________________________________________
> >Speakup mailing list
> >Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

Comments in line.

Brandon McGinty-Carroll <bmmcginty@bmcginty.hopto.org> wrote:

> Long message, be warned.
> Just some thoughts off the top of my head.
> 1. boot speech
> I don't currently have a way to read messages from my system directly at boot time, as I'm using espeak.
> When I need to access the console that early, I hook up a serial cable, and connect from another machine.
> This brings me to my first true point.
> Given no userspace migration, might we model speakups serial access on
> that of the serial console driver that ships with linux?
This is the way I had done it in the very beginning, but that approach
seemes not  to be viable -- code like  that may go away sometime after
boot, but some time around 2.6.14 something happened and that idea
apparently did not work anymore.  Also, the disadvantage of this is that
only serial synths, not usb ones or anything would work that way -- what
would be nice is if we could do this at the beginning and switch to
something better, maybe a user space daemon once things got going --
once you could load a module.


> Surely that can't be objected too by kernel dev folks.
> Taking a look through the kernel sources, it seems as though the serial console driver uses the same low-level calls speakup currently uses.
> (Anyone more familiar with the kernel, please correct me.)
> 2. kernel panics
> I haven't encountered a true oops/kernel halt moment yet.
> If the message couldn't be spoken, logging it in some way might be nice, though I'm sure that would depend on the error in question.
> 3. USB synths
> I don't see why we couldn't use the softsynth device and write back to USB, like WH has done for espeakup.
> Instead of software speech, the text would be sent back out the usb
> port.

More complicated than that, probably we should use speech dispatcher for
this sort of thing.  That is why it was invented.

> 4. ISA synths
> Unfortunately, the hardware to support ISA is going away (laptops and the like).
> There are some ISA to USB converters, but they're a bit pricy.
> See above for my thoughts on using these USB devices.
> 5. userspace conversion
> I've come up with the following, and attempted to confirm each point with those more in the know.
> TTY=virtualConsole
> 5.1 thoughts
> pros:
> .maintainability
> I believe that more development can take place in userspace than in the kernel.
> Nastyness will only affect your UL screen reading application, not cause crashes as some of these issues have.
> .serial/usb access
> Dealing with hahrdware will be no harder than in any other application. open, write, read, flush, close.
> .programming language support
> Though C is the fastest language, it need not be the only language for a given task. Currently, we're locked entirely into C because the kernel rightly requires it.
> .kernel devs
> Less now, less in the future, for kernel developers to have to think about, and less for us to have to work through with them.
> Less compatibility issues.
> That isnt' to say that anyone with kernel development has caused a problem.
> However, the fewer points where we're reaching into the innerds of the machine and kernel, the better.
> cons:
> .time/effort
> It's not going to be a quick process.
> There needs to be a way to access _all of the information that speakup can currently access, which means all available TTY data.
> Fortunately, we know what speakup can do, and what we want it to do,
> so given sufficient reason, we can do it. 

I would instead use the software synth we have and just use speech
dispatcher and that would beminimal change, but still give us all the
access.  Brltty does, however anything you want -- it will take keyboard
input from a Braille display (usb hib device) etc.

> I will be glad to help with coding and testing.
> .kernel adoption
> I don't know how kernel devs are going to feel, or if they'll care, about turning speakup into a TTY gateway (basically what I invision us having).
> .boot messages
> sse Gene's message below.
> Those of us with soft synths don't have this currently, and there are alternatives like serial consoles.
> 5.2 functionality required on the kernel side
> a. screen-text pulling and pushing
> Given we can read data from the kernel at sufficient speed, and send our position in each TTY back into speakup, and send data to write to each console, this is doable.
> b. screen updates
> We must still be notified of screen changes, in userspace.
> c. keyboard
> The kernel has the ability to read, block and allow key presses. These key presses need to be sen to userspace, or to our reader.
> If we can find a method to do this in userspace, then all the better.
> (brltty might do this, will check)
> 5.3 userspace code
> a. read and speak
> read updated screen and speak it
> b. read segment
> given commands ,read specific portions of the visible screen, or other nonvisible screens
> (here, screen=tty)
> c. synthesizer drivers
> Given the current synth drivers, the codes to send and receive text and parameters will need to be located, noted, and tested.
> (I believe those of you with hw synths will either need to assist in coding, or provide your devices as test platforms.)
> d. read keyboard output
> If we want to move everything out of the kernel as much as possible, then key processing should take place in userspace.
> (brltty might do this, will check)
> e. act on tty switching
> The current notifyer in speakup could alert us of this.
> 
> 
> On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:42:38PM -0500, acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
> > Hello all.  If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from
> > inittab, like you can brltty.  It would also be able to access the video
> > scrollback buffer.  
> > 
> > I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet. 
> > Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines with
> > isa slots with isa synths in them.  Besides this, for those who really
> > want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if
> > you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine.  So I don't
> > think it's time to drop isa support yet.
> > 
> > Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths
> > should be a priority.  At this point, I find myself ambivalent about
> > whether speakup stays in the kernel or not.  You don't get any better
> > access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user
> > space.  If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then
> > you could still get info about file system checks and such.  The only
> > thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either,
> > is kernle panic errors.  With Speakup in the kernel, and using a
> > hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how
> > the kernel panics.  There have been a couple of times when this has been
> > a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably
> > live with the inconvenience.  Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about
> > Speakup staying in the kernel.  But then I'm getting older, and
> > ambivalent about a lot of things.  (grin)
> > 
> > Gene Collins
> > 
> > >hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were
> > >writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the
> > >kernel devs want?  From within that, maybe you could specify the way to
> > >get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to
> > >tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is
> > >interesting to me.  You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for
> > >serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult,
> > >you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution,
> > >etc.
> > >
> > >my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation).
> > >
> > >William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> All,
> > >> 
> > >> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with
> > >> speakup.
> > >> 
> > >> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them:
> > >> 
> > >> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers?
> > >> 
> > >> My thought is that these can be dropped.
> > >> 
> > >> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues.
> > >> 
> > >> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs
> > >> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the
> > >> kernel side to make it work correctly.
> > >> This will take time, and someone here will need to
> > >> work closely with the kernel  developers, and we'll need to find someone
> > >> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the code for
> > >> us, but at least consulting with us.
> > >> 
> > >> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we want,
> > >> and that frees us from involving the kernel team.
> > >> 
> > >> question:
> > >> 
> > >> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern
> > >> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon
> > >> into an initramfs solve this?  would you be able to start it early
> > >> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs?
> > >> 
> > >> William
> > >> 
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Speakup mailing list
> > >> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > >
> > >-- 
> > >Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> > >How do
> > >you spend it?
> > >
> > >         John Covici
> > >         covici@ccs.covici.com
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >Speakup mailing list
> > >Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > >http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[pj]

Hi :-)

Gene Collins wrote:
> If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from inittab,

I think that's tempting;
big gains in portability and ease of maintenance...

If it stays in the kernel,
isn't there some multibillionaire with a blind relative out there,
and could sponsor a kernel-hacker to work on speakup for a few weeks ?

Regards,  Peter Billam

http://www.pjb.com.au      pj@pjb.com.au     (03) 6278 9410
"Follow the charge, not the particle."  --  Richard Feynman
 from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949

Re: the direction of speakup

[Martin G. McCormick]

	This is a tough issue as I spend much of my day in the
command-line world and I do not disagree with your basic
statement about needing a GUI, these days even though it is more
of a ball and chain than a helpful tool. It's like a sore knee
or a backache. Nature usually fixes those in time, but the GUI
devours resources and there is always that one last problem that
keeps it from working right.

	I have both a Macintosh for the GUI and I use speakup
under Debian wheezy with lynx and nmh under FreeBSD for mail.
This last bit has nothing to do with screen readers but mh or
the package now known as nmh breaks the email process in to
small modules that allow one to automate different parts of the
mail process. Part of my job is building automation that sends
messages to others when various things happen so the use of nmh
is a choice. 

	I have yet to get orca working on any system I use or
have access to. One such system is a Pentium4 running at 2.7 GHZ
and there is a gigabyte of RAM sitting there but there is
something in the BIOS that seems to know when I want to install
the latest ubuntu or Debian that might open up the world of
gnome and orca and the system figures out some clever way to
fail.

	By the way, speakup works beautifully on this system in
a command line console but The only time I ever heard orca talk
was on an obsolete version of ubuntu 9.0 which played for
sometimes an hour or so and sometimes a few seconds and then
would crash.

	You are correct in that basically, the speech process
needs to be separate from just about everything except the power
supply in order to hear the system start up from black.

	A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
system? That could take care of the I/O.

	I used a hardware speech synthesizor for about 20 years
along with Kermit and DOS and a screen reader I wrote to
terminate and stay resident in MS-DOS so all my Unix boxes were
originally configured for a RS-232 console. That was back when
mother boards had RS-232 ports.

	You've really got to separate the speech or Braille
output from the rest or it will always bite you.

	Speakup should go in a sort of pre-kernel and that would
let you operate the real system in single-user mode, listen to
kernel messages and do all those things we should do if we are
to call ourselves Unix administrators.

Martin

"John G. Heim" writes:
> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that it
> runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers for 
> user
> space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there are people
> using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or edbrowse for the
> web.
> But I'm sure the vast majority of linux users use orca for every day
> tasks.
> 
> 
> 
> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do 
> for
> a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in 
> kernel
> space. About the only thing that I can think of that is equivalent to
> simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot messages would be
> setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into kermit and display
> serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same because you'd need a
> keyboard for the RPI. I don't know -- when a server is down, the last 
> thing
> I want to do is mess with all that stuff. I just want to plug in the
> hardware speech synth and press the print screen key.

Re: the direction of speakup

[Devon Stewart]

I guess including Speakup in the initrd would solve this? Modules that are loaded in the initrd are maintained when booting the rest of the system, as far as I know, so once speakup is started everything should speak from boot.

-Devon

May 8, 2013 9:45、"Martin G. McCormick" <martin@server1.shellworld.net> のメッセージ:

>    This is a tough issue as I spend much of my day in the
> command-line world and I do not disagree with your basic
> statement about needing a GUI, these days even though it is more
> of a ball and chain than a helpful tool. It's like a sore knee
> or a backache. Nature usually fixes those in time, but the GUI
> devours resources and there is always that one last problem that
> keeps it from working right.
> 
>    I have both a Macintosh for the GUI and I use speakup
> under Debian wheezy with lynx and nmh under FreeBSD for mail.
> This last bit has nothing to do with screen readers but mh or
> the package now known as nmh breaks the email process in to
> small modules that allow one to automate different parts of the
> mail process. Part of my job is building automation that sends
> messages to others when various things happen so the use of nmh
> is a choice. 
> 
>    I have yet to get orca working on any system I use or
> have access to. One such system is a Pentium4 running at 2.7 GHZ
> and there is a gigabyte of RAM sitting there but there is
> something in the BIOS that seems to know when I want to install
> the latest ubuntu or Debian that might open up the world of
> gnome and orca and the system figures out some clever way to
> fail.
> 
>    By the way, speakup works beautifully on this system in
> a command line console but The only time I ever heard orca talk
> was on an obsolete version of ubuntu 9.0 which played for
> sometimes an hour or so and sometimes a few seconds and then
> would crash.
> 
>    You are correct in that basically, the speech process
> needs to be separate from just about everything except the power
> supply in order to hear the system start up from black.
> 
>    A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
> system? That could take care of the I/O.
> 
>    I used a hardware speech synthesizor for about 20 years
> along with Kermit and DOS and a screen reader I wrote to
> terminate and stay resident in MS-DOS so all my Unix boxes were
> originally configured for a RS-232 console. That was back when
> mother boards had RS-232 ports.
> 
>    You've really got to separate the speech or Braille
> output from the rest or it will always bite you.
> 
>    Speakup should go in a sort of pre-kernel and that would
> let you operate the real system in single-user mode, listen to
> kernel messages and do all those things we should do if we are
> to call ourselves Unix administrators.
> 
> Martin
> 
> "John G. Heim" writes:
>> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that it
>> runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers for 
>> user
>> space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there are people
>> using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or edbrowse for the
>> web.
>> But I'm sure the vast majority of linux users use orca for every day
>> tasks.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
>> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do 
>> for
>> a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in 
>> kernel
>> space. About the only thing that I can think of that is equivalent to
>> simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot messages would be
>> setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into kermit and display
>> serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same because you'd need a
>> keyboard for the RPI. I don't know -- when a server is down, the last 
>> thing
>> I want to do is mess with all that stuff. I just want to plug in the
>> hardware speech synth and press the print screen key.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[John G. Heim]

As far as I can tell, there is no more solid screen reader in the world 
than speakup.  For code that is supposedly such a mess, it sure works. 
There was that bug where it couldn't start talking to synths on the 
serial port. But I don't think that bug came as a result of some 
mistake. I think it was introduced during an attempt to make the kernel 
developers happy.

So  I wouldn't refute your assertion that speakup is way more solid than 
orca. But I certanly haven't had anywhere near as much trouble with orca 
as you have.  I use it all day every day on everything from Dell servers 
to machines I built myself. I'm no orca expert either but maybe that's 
the trick. I have always just used the orca packages in debian.  I 
probably haven't tried to build it from source for 5 or 6 years.

So I'll admit that I can't say for sure that orca is stable enough to 
work as an alternative to speakup in user space.  From my experience, 
that is certainly true.



But I'll admit I might have a different opinion if we were a Red Hat
On 05/08/13 11:45, Martin G. McCormick wrote:
> 	This is a tough issue as I spend much of my day in the
> command-line world and I do not disagree with your basic
> statement about needing a GUI, these days even though it is more
> of a ball and chain than a helpful tool. It's like a sore knee
> or a backache. Nature usually fixes those in time, but the GUI
> devours resources and there is always that one last problem that
> keeps it from working right.
>
> 	I have both a Macintosh for the GUI and I use speakup
> under Debian wheezy with lynx and nmh under FreeBSD for mail.
> This last bit has nothing to do with screen readers but mh or
> the package now known as nmh breaks the email process in to
> small modules that allow one to automate different parts of the
> mail process. Part of my job is building automation that sends
> messages to others when various things happen so the use of nmh
> is a choice.
>
> 	I have yet to get orca working on any system I use or
> have access to. One such system is a Pentium4 running at 2.7 GHZ
> and there is a gigabyte of RAM sitting there but there is
> something in the BIOS that seems to know when I want to install
> the latest ubuntu or Debian that might open up the world of
> gnome and orca and the system figures out some clever way to
> fail.
>
> 	By the way, speakup works beautifully on this system in
> a command line console but The only time I ever heard orca talk
> was on an obsolete version of ubuntu 9.0 which played for
> sometimes an hour or so and sometimes a few seconds and then
> would crash.
>
> 	You are correct in that basically, the speech process
> needs to be separate from just about everything except the power
> supply in order to hear the system start up from black.
>
> 	A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
> system? That could take care of the I/O.
>
> 	I used a hardware speech synthesizor for about 20 years
> along with Kermit and DOS and a screen reader I wrote to
> terminate and stay resident in MS-DOS so all my Unix boxes were
> originally configured for a RS-232 console. That was back when
> mother boards had RS-232 ports.
>
> 	You've really got to separate the speech or Braille
> output from the rest or it will always bite you.
>
> 	Speakup should go in a sort of pre-kernel and that would
> let you operate the real system in single-user mode, listen to
> kernel messages and do all those things we should do if we are
> to call ourselves Unix administrators.
>
> Martin
>
> "John G. Heim" writes:
>> I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact that it
>> runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen readers for
>> user
>> space. And you really need a GUI these days. I suppose there are people
>> using speakup all day every day. Mutt for email, lynx or edbrowse for the
>> web.
>> But I'm sure the vast majority of linux users use orca for every day
>> tasks.
>>
>>
>>
>> The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are
>> really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you do
>> for
>> a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without speakup in
>> kernel
>> space. About the only thing that I can think of that is equivalent to
>> simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot messages would be
>> setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot into kermit and display
>> serial console messages. But it wouldn't be the same because you'd need a
>> keyboard for the RPI. I don't know -- when a server is down, the last
>> thing
>> I want to do is mess with all that stuff. I just want to plug in the
>> hardware speech synth and press the print screen key.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kelly Prescott]

Maybe the UEFI specification can help us.
What about a small UEFI application to be a screen reader then launch the 
kernel or what ever.
This would not work for older systems, but might get around the kernel 
driver problem as the reader encapsulates the kernel so to speak.


On Wed, 8 May 2013, Martin G. McCormick wrote:
--- anip ---
> 	A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
> system? That could take care of the I/O.

Re: the direction of speakup

[acollins]

I doubt that would work, I'm not familiar with uefi, but it would have
have to intercept all the kernels hardware video calls in order to speak
while the kernel is running.  Do you know what hardware specs the uefi
spec has?

Gene

>Maybe the UEFI specification can help us.
>What about a small UEFI application to be a screen reader then launch the 
>kernel or what ever.
>This would not work for older systems, but might get around the kernel 
>driver problem as the reader encapsulates the kernel so to speak.
>
>
>On Wed, 8 May 2013, Martin G. McCormick wrote:
>--- anip ---
>> 	A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
>> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
>> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
>> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
>> system? That could take care of the I/O.
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[Hart Larry]

Just a speculative thought.  Doesn't NVDA talk without video drivers?
Hart

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

NVDA is a Windows screen-reader.  It doesn't do any screen-scraping or 
video interception.  What it uses is the operating systems underlying 
MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility( and UIA (User Interface 
Automation) subsystems.

afik there is no single accessibility system in Linux.  GTK has the ATK 
(Accessibility Toolkit) which I believe a few of the graphical tools 
hook into.

Has anyone on the list used yasr (yet another screen-reader)?  I tried 
this on the Pi and it crashed every ten minutes.

yasr uses a pseudo-terminal to keep track of screen-updates and cursor 
movement etc.

Mike


On 08/05/2013 21:44, Hart Larry wrote:
> Just a speculative thought.  Doesn't NVDA talk without video drivers?
> Hart
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[Hart Larry]

Well Mike, I would love to try YASR, but some years ago its author could not 
get it running with my DecTalk.  Seemingly another option would be Jupitor, but 
its not a traditional screen-reader.
Thanks for explaining the differences.  And ofCourse I asked NVDA if they would 
consider a Linux version?  I certainly wish they would.
Hart

Re: the direction of speakup

[acollins]

Yep, tried it, didn't like it's user interface.

Gene


>
>NVDA is a Windows screen-reader.  It doesn't do any screen-scraping or 
>video interception.  What it uses is the operating systems underlying 
>MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility( and UIA (User Interface 
>Automation) subsystems.
>
>afik there is no single accessibility system in Linux.  GTK has the ATK 
>(Accessibility Toolkit) which I believe a few of the graphical tools 
>hook into.
>
>Has anyone on the list used yasr (yet another screen-reader)?  I tried 
>this on the Pi and it crashed every ten minutes.
>
>yasr uses a pseudo-terminal to keep track of screen-updates and cursor 
>movement etc.
>
>Mike
>
>
>On 08/05/2013 21:44, Hart Larry wrote:
>> Just a speculative thought.  Doesn't NVDA talk without video drivers?
>> Hart
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
>-- 
>Michael A. Ray
>Analyst/Programmer
>Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
>
>Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
>Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/
>
> From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers
>
>_______________________________________________
>Speakup mailing list
>Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

On Wed, 8 May 2013, acollins@icsmail.net wrote:

> Yep, tried it, didn't like it's user interface.

I am sure you just hurt Jamie's feelings you broot.

-- 
Well that's it then, colour me gone!

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kelly Prescott]

I am certainly not a hardware expert, but Xen VmWare etal control the 
hardware as is.
Now, they don't intercept the video at least I don't think they do, but 
the UEFI specification allows for things to run before boot and that is 
why I thought we might be able to do something with that.
Remember the Speaqualizer back in the 1980's which read the hardware 
directly?
Maybe we could have 2 parts to speakup...
first takes over at the boot process and then a module gets loaded later 
to provide more functionality.
this reads the boot and hardware kernel messages as well as providing for 
userspace support.


On Wed, 8 May 2013, acollins@icsmail.net wrote:

> I doubt that would work, I'm not familiar with uefi, but it would have
> have to intercept all the kernels hardware video calls in order to speak
> while the kernel is running.  Do you know what hardware specs the uefi
> spec has?
>
> Gene
>
>> Maybe the UEFI specification can help us.
>> What about a small UEFI application to be a screen reader then launch the
>> kernel or what ever.
>> This would not work for older systems, but might get around the kernel
>> driver problem as the reader encapsulates the kernel so to speak.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 8 May 2013, Martin G. McCormick wrote:
>> --- anip ---
>>> 	A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
>>> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
>>> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
>>> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
>>> system? That could take care of the I/O.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: the direction of speakup

[Devon Stewart]

UEFI is a neat idea, I wonder if virtual terminals would confuse it though.

-Devon

May 8, 2013 13:53、Kelly Prescott <kprescott@coolip.net> のメッセージ:

> I am certainly not a hardware expert, but Xen VmWare etal control the hardware as is.
> Now, they don't intercept the video at least I don't think they do, but the UEFI specification allows for things to run before boot and that is why I thought we might be able to do something with that.
> Remember the Speaqualizer back in the 1980's which read the hardware directly?
> Maybe we could have 2 parts to speakup...
> first takes over at the boot process and then a module gets loaded later to provide more functionality.
> this reads the boot and hardware kernel messages as well as providing for userspace support.
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 May 2013, acollins@icsmail.net wrote:
> 
>> I doubt that would work, I'm not familiar with uefi, but it would have
>> have to intercept all the kernels hardware video calls in order to speak
>> while the kernel is running.  Do you know what hardware specs the uefi
>> spec has?
>> 
>> Gene
>> 
>>> Maybe the UEFI specification can help us.
>>> What about a small UEFI application to be a screen reader then launch the
>>> kernel or what ever.
>>> This would not work for older systems, but might get around the kernel
>>> driver problem as the reader encapsulates the kernel so to speak.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, 8 May 2013, Martin G. McCormick wrote:
>>> --- anip ---
>>>>    A Unix kernel is the master process and everything else
>>>> that happens on your system is spawned as a subprocess of the
>>>> master. Would it be possible to have a kernel equipped with
>>>> speakup spawn the rest of one's system as if it was a virtual
>>>> system? That could take care of the I/O.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[Martin G. McCormick]

	The initrd idea for speakup is a great one because it
should do what you discribe. It might even be possible to build
enough of a kernel in initrd to support a thumb drive that could
augment memory storage for systems that have less than 512
megabytes of RAM. I have a couple of those myself that are still
otherwise good systems but don't have a lot of spare RAM.

	If speakup could be put in to initrd, it might also have
a home in embedded systems which opens up a whole world of
possibilities.

Martin

Devon Stewart writes:
> I guess including Speakup in the initrd would solve this? Modules that 
> are loaded in the initrd are maintained when booting the rest of the 
> system, as far as I know, so once speakup is started everything should 
> speak from boot.

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

How would you build serial drivers or sound in an initram?  It might
become too large and not fit in the space alloted.

Martin G. McCormick <martin@server1.shellworld.net> wrote:

> 	The initrd idea for speakup is a great one because it
> should do what you discribe. It might even be possible to build
> enough of a kernel in initrd to support a thumb drive that could
> augment memory storage for systems that have less than 512
> megabytes of RAM. I have a couple of those myself that are still
> otherwise good systems but don't have a lot of spare RAM.
> 
> 	If speakup could be put in to initrd, it might also have
> a home in embedded systems which opens up a whole world of
> possibilities.
> 
> Martin
> 
> Devon Stewart writes:
> > I guess including Speakup in the initrd would solve this? Modules that 
> > are loaded in the initrd are maintained when booting the rest of the 
> > system, as far as I know, so once speakup is started everything should 
> > speak from boot.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Devon Stewart]

I'm not familiar with the size constraints of the initrd, would the addition of speakup and associated modules really add much more that a couple megs (at worst)?

-Devon

May 8, 2013 11:21、covici@ccs.covici.com のメッセージ:

> How would you build serial drivers or sound in an initram?  It might
> become too large and not fit in the space alloted.
> 
> Martin G. McCormick <martin@server1.shellworld.net> wrote:
> 
>>    The initrd idea for speakup is a great one because it
>> should do what you discribe. It might even be possible to build
>> enough of a kernel in initrd to support a thumb drive that could
>> augment memory storage for systems that have less than 512
>> megabytes of RAM. I have a couple of those myself that are still
>> otherwise good systems but don't have a lot of spare RAM.
>> 
>>    If speakup could be put in to initrd, it might also have
>> a home in embedded systems which opens up a whole world of
>> possibilities.
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> Devon Stewart writes:
>>> I guess including Speakup in the initrd would solve this? Modules that 
>>> are loaded in the initrd are maintained when booting the rest of the 
>>> system, as far as I know, so once speakup is started everything should 
>>> speak from boot.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> How do
> you spend it?
> 
>         John Covici
>         covici@ccs.covici.com
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: the direction of speakup

[covici]

I am not sure either, but if you had to have sound drivers in there, it
might be difficult, and I am not sure what would happen otherwise.  If
speakup is built into the kernel and we can get the serial port stuff to
work properly, that would work OK.

Devon Stewart <devonst17@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not familiar with the size constraints of the initrd, would the addition of speakup and associated modules really add much more that a couple megs (at worst)?
> 
> -Devon
> 
> May 8, 2013 11:21、covici@ccs.covici.com のメッセージ:
> 
> > How would you build serial drivers or sound in an initram?  It might
> > become too large and not fit in the space alloted.
> > 
> > Martin G. McCormick <martin@server1.shellworld.net> wrote:
> > 
> >>    The initrd idea for speakup is a great one because it
> >> should do what you discribe. It might even be possible to build
> >> enough of a kernel in initrd to support a thumb drive that could
> >> augment memory storage for systems that have less than 512
> >> megabytes of RAM. I have a couple of those myself that are still
> >> otherwise good systems but don't have a lot of spare RAM.
> >> 
> >>    If speakup could be put in to initrd, it might also have
> >> a home in embedded systems which opens up a whole world of
> >> possibilities.
> >> 
> >> Martin
> >> 
> >> Devon Stewart writes:
> >>> I guess including Speakup in the initrd would solve this? Modules that 
> >>> are loaded in the initrd are maintained when booting the rest of the 
> >>> system, as far as I know, so once speakup is started everything should 
> >>> speak from boot.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Speakup mailing list
> >> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> > -- 
> > Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> > How do
> > you spend it?
> > 
> >         John Covici
> >         covici@ccs.covici.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: the direction of speakup

[Martin G. McCormick]

	The problem is not orca other than we need it to use the
system if we are to use the gnome GUI.

	The problem is sort of like those 35-lamp series strings
of Christmas lights. All the bulbs are in series which means
that every single last one has to have an intact filament or
none of the bulbs will light. You've got a dead string and there
is no way to tell what is wrong without checking every socket to
see where the circuit breaks.

	On that system which, in theory, should scream through
orca, I have had a sighted person tell me that the desktop shows
up on the screen. Orca may be talking away in bursts of
electrons somewhere in the system, but the audio is dead. There
are no sounds of any kind. A sighted user might not even know
the sound is dead until he or she does something that should
produce a sound.

	The actual problem in my case appears to be that live
CD's including the last Vinux distribution I tried appear to get
the sound part of the setup wrong as I have not heard so much as
a click from the sound chip on any ubuntu live CD since version
9.

	What we have is a dead parrot, in the words of "Monty
Python."

	The sound card is not bad. If I install Debian squeeze
with speakup, it roars right along. Mplayer plays music and the
hardware is genning right along though pulseaudio is sick.

	I do have a SB16 and the next step is to get my
wonderful and patient wife to help me through the bios setup to
either kill the on-board sound chip or make it secondary so the
SB16 can be the primary audio device and then try a new live CD
to see if we get sound this time.

	I suspect that once all the hoops are jumped, orca will
work fine as the problem occurs before that stage.

"John G. Heim" writes:
> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca. But I
> just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it was
> pretty much a breeze. I had been using that other operating system too but
> almost all the end users I support use linux (all good mathematicians do).
> So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I have had little to no
> trouble switching to linux with orca. I use thunderbird & firefox
> constantly. It's not quite as good as Windows/jaws but honestly, I made 
> the
> transition fairly easily.
> 
> 
> 
> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to doubt
> you. It's just that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.

Re: the direction of speakup

[John G. Heim]

The explanation for why I've had so little trouble may be that I am pretty much a plain debian user. All my machines have either debian stable or debiantesting. I haven't had much trouble. I haven't tried vinux or ubuntu lately but I never got orca working well when I tried them in the past. When I need a live CD, I use grml and speakup.
But there is no way I'd switch to linux full time if I couldn't use orca. 
On May 8, 2013, at 2:15 PM, Martin G. McCormick wrote:

> 	The problem is not orca other than we need it to use the
> system if we are to use the gnome GUI.
> 
> 	The problem is sort of like those 35-lamp series strings
> of Christmas lights. All the bulbs are in series which means
> that every single last one has to have an intact filament or
> none of the bulbs will light. You've got a dead string and there
> is no way to tell what is wrong without checking every socket to
> see where the circuit breaks.
> 
> 	On that system which, in theory, should scream through
> orca, I have had a sighted person tell me that the desktop shows
> up on the screen. Orca may be talking away in bursts of
> electrons somewhere in the system, but the audio is dead. There
> are no sounds of any kind. A sighted user might not even know
> the sound is dead until he or she does something that should
> produce a sound.
> 
> 	The actual problem in my case appears to be that live
> CD's including the last Vinux distribution I tried appear to get
> the sound part of the setup wrong as I have not heard so much as
> a click from the sound chip on any ubuntu live CD since version
> 9.
> 
> 	What we have is a dead parrot, in the words of "Monty
> Python."
> 
> 	The sound card is not bad. If I install Debian squeeze
> with speakup, it roars right along. Mplayer plays music and the
> hardware is genning right along though pulseaudio is sick.
> 
> 	I do have a SB16 and the next step is to get my
> wonderful and patient wife to help me through the bios setup to
> either kill the on-board sound chip or make it secondary so the
> SB16 can be the primary audio device and then try a new live CD
> to see if we get sound this time.
> 
> 	I suspect that once all the hoops are jumped, orca will
> work fine as the problem occurs before that stage.
> 
> "John G. Heim" writes:
>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca. But I
>> just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it was
>> pretty much a breeze. I had been using that other operating system too but
>> almost all the end users I support use linux (all good mathematicians do).
>> So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I have had little to no
>> trouble switching to linux with orca. I use thunderbird & firefox
>> constantly. It's not quite as good as Windows/jaws but honestly, I made 
>> the
>> transition fairly easily.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to doubt
>> you. It's just that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: the direction of speakup

[Jason White]

Mike Ray  <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:

>Has anyone on the list used yasr (yet another screen-reader)?  I tried 
>this on the Pi and it crashed every ten minutes.

Yes, under Debian AMD64 and with no crashes, driving a DECTALK Express.

It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

Jason,

Now I have the UART cable I will be able to go back to yasr at a later 
time, when I have either got SpeakUp to run on the Pi or given up on it, 
and see if I can find out why it crashes.  Might be easier to do that 
because it isn't a kernel module.

Mike

On 10/05/2013 07:43, Jason White wrote:
> Mike Ray  <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone on the list used yasr (yet another screen-reader)?  I tried
>> this on the Pi and it crashed every ten minutes.
> Yes, under Debian AMD64 and with no crashes, driving a DECTALK Express.
>
> It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kyle]

According to Jason White:
# It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).

This actually makes YASR the most portable text console screen reader I
am aware of, since it can run on just about any Unix-like operating
system. It runs entirely in userspace and depends on shell output rather
than relying on any kernel level code or output. It also has the benefit
of being able to work with a wide range of hardware synthesizers via
Emacspeak servers and possibly other local drivers as well, and also has
software speech available through various interfaces, including EFlite
and speech-dispatcher. The trade-off is that you will get no speech
prior to login, although with the correct login script, you can have
YASR come up automatically once you've logged into the console you want
to use. There once was a separate program included in the YASR source
tree that could read the console prior to login, but I don't currently
know if it still works. I remember getting it to work at one point, but
that was some time ago. I did most things with a single text console
that ran YASR automatically at login and did all my work in Screen,
which allowed me to have a nearly unlimited number of "windows" open on
a single console, all under a single YASR instance.

Just a quick note: because of the way YASR works in a subshell, it
should be capable of working in a desktop terminal application like
Xterm, giving you familiar functionality when you have that text-based
application that Orca doesn't like in gnome-terminal. Keybindings
shouldn't be a problem either, even if you use gnome-terminal and
silence Orca, since as far as I know, there aren't any conflicts between
Orca and YASR keyboard commands.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

Kyle,

It was totally unstable on Raspberry Pi.  I tried rebuilding it and 
speech-dispatcher.  I tried it with espeak and festival and it was only 
able to run for a few minutes before crashing.

Now I have the UART cable I can debug it as well.  Maybe it's the same 
thing that's crashing SpeakUp, in which case it's probably something 
about the architecture or the Broadcom sound driver.

yasr also hasn't seen any work for about 5 years.  I did speak to the 
developer and he wants to pass it on to someone else.  So if I can get 
my head round why it doesn't work on Raspberry Pi maybe I will have a go.

Mike

On 10/05/2013 13:30, Kyle wrote:
> According to Jason White:
> # It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).
>
> This actually makes YASR the most portable text console screen reader I
> am aware of, since it can run on just about any Unix-like operating
> system. It runs entirely in userspace and depends on shell output rather
> than relying on any kernel level code or output. It also has the benefit
> of being able to work with a wide range of hardware synthesizers via
> Emacspeak servers and possibly other local drivers as well, and also has
> software speech available through various interfaces, including EFlite
> and speech-dispatcher. The trade-off is that you will get no speech
> prior to login, although with the correct login script, you can have
> YASR come up automatically once you've logged into the console you want
> to use. There once was a separate program included in the YASR source
> tree that could read the console prior to login, but I don't currently
> know if it still works. I remember getting it to work at one point, but
> that was some time ago. I did most things with a single text console
> that ran YASR automatically at login and did all my work in Screen,
> which allowed me to have a nearly unlimited number of "windows" open on
> a single console, all under a single YASR instance.
>
> Just a quick note: because of the way YASR works in a subshell, it
> should be capable of working in a desktop terminal application like
> Xterm, giving you familiar functionality when you have that text-based
> application that Orca doesn't like in gnome-terminal. Keybindings
> shouldn't be a problem either, even if you use gnome-terminal and
> silence Orca, since as far as I know, there aren't any conflicts between
> Orca and YASR keyboard commands.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kyle]

I have read that there is some instability with the Pi sound driver, but
it usually involves distortion, clicks or pops rather than kernel
crashes. Just for laughs, try running something like Sox or another
application that makes a lot of sound. I'm guessing that the sound
driver is crashing the kernel, but I could be wrong, since I haven't yet
purchased one. I would definitely try to rule out that possibility first.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"

Re: the direction of speakup

[Mike Ray]

Kyle,

The audio 'pops' or distortion from the analogue audio via the 3.5mm 
jack has been fixed in the firmware now.

But you could be right that it is the sound driver causing the error.

I get this line in the output when I get a kernel oops:

[  749.223007] Modules linked in: speakup_soft(C) speakup(C) snd_bcm2835 
snd_pcm snd_seq snd_timer snd_seq_device snd snd_page_alloc evdev joydev 
leds_gpio led_class

I don't fully understand all that is produced after the oops yet but the 
sound driver is named in that line.

If it is the sound driver then I am stuffed.  But a lot of people are 
using multi-media distros on the Pi.  Maybe if I swapped over to using 
HDMI audio the problem would disappear.  But I don't have any means of 
connecting HDMI audio without a monitor or TV and that's useless to me.

Mike


On 10/05/2013 13:55, Kyle wrote:
> I have read that there is some instability with the Pi sound driver, but
> it usually involves distortion, clicks or pops rather than kernel
> crashes. Just for laughs, try running something like Sox or another
> application that makes a lot of sound. I'm guessing that the sound
> driver is crashing the kernel, but I could be wrong, since I haven't yet
> purchased one. I would definitely try to rule out that possibility first.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

 From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers

Re: the direction of speakup

[Brian Buhrow]

	Hello.  If you're interested, I have a bunch of patches that make Yasr
much more stable.  When I worked on it, I found the problem was that the
communication between Yasr and the speech engine (eflite in my case) was
very unstable.  Eflite would take a dump and Yasr would continue writing to
it as if nothing was wrong.  That still happens, but my patches detect when
the speech engine has disappeared and respawn it and reconnect output to
the new speech instance.  Without these fixes, I would agree that Yasr was
pretty unusable.  I submitted the patches back to the original author for
Yasr, but I don't know if he incorporated them into the official
distribution.
-Brian

On May 10,  1:37pm, Mike Ray wrote:
} Subject: Re: the direction of speakup
} Kyle,
} 
} It was totally unstable on Raspberry Pi.  I tried rebuilding it and 
} speech-dispatcher.  I tried it with espeak and festival and it was only 
} able to run for a few minutes before crashing.
} 
} Now I have the UART cable I can debug it as well.  Maybe it's the same 
} thing that's crashing SpeakUp, in which case it's probably something 
} about the architecture or the Broadcom sound driver.
} 
} yasr also hasn't seen any work for about 5 years.  I did speak to the 
} developer and he wants to pass it on to someone else.  So if I can get 
} my head round why it doesn't work on Raspberry Pi maybe I will have a go.
} 
} Mike
} 
} On 10/05/2013 13:30, Kyle wrote:
} > According to Jason White:
} > # It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).
} >
} > This actually makes YASR the most portable text console screen reader I
} > am aware of, since it can run on just about any Unix-like operating
} > system. It runs entirely in userspace and depends on shell output rather
} > than relying on any kernel level code or output. It also has the benefit
} > of being able to work with a wide range of hardware synthesizers via
} > Emacspeak servers and possibly other local drivers as well, and also has
} > software speech available through various interfaces, including EFlite
} > and speech-dispatcher. The trade-off is that you will get no speech
} > prior to login, although with the correct login script, you can have
} > YASR come up automatically once you've logged into the console you want
} > to use. There once was a separate program included in the YASR source
} > tree that could read the console prior to login, but I don't currently
} > know if it still works. I remember getting it to work at one point, but
} > that was some time ago. I did most things with a single text console
} > that ran YASR automatically at login and did all my work in Screen,
} > which allowed me to have a nearly unlimited number of "windows" open on
} > a single console, all under a single YASR instance.
} >
} > Just a quick note: because of the way YASR works in a subshell, it
} > should be capable of working in a desktop terminal application like
} > Xterm, giving you familiar functionality when you have that text-based
} > application that Orca doesn't like in gnome-terminal. Keybindings
} > shouldn't be a problem either, even if you use gnome-terminal and
} > silence Orca, since as far as I know, there aren't any conflicts between
} > Orca and YASR keyboard commands.
} > ~Kyle
} > http://kyle.tk/
} 
} 
} -- 
} Michael A. Ray
} Analyst/Programmer
} Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
} 
} Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
} Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/
} 
}  From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers
} 
} _______________________________________________
} Speakup mailing list
} Speakup@linux-speakup.org
} http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>-- End of excerpt from Mike Ray

Re: the direction of speakup

[Brian Buhrow]

	Hello.  Just to followup on what Kyle wrote, I've been using Yasr
under NetBSD for over 5 years, and I run it either from the console or in
an Xterminal.  Yasr has a pass-through key, so even if there is a key
binding conflict between two applications, Yasr can work with that.  I've
grown rather fond of the flite speech engine, and eflite works quite well
with Yasr, modulo a few bugs I had to fix in the early days.
-Brian

On May 10,  8:30am, Kyle wrote:
} Subject: Re: the direction of speakup
} According to Jason White:
} # It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).
} 
} This actually makes YASR the most portable text console screen reader I
} am aware of, since it can run on just about any Unix-like operating
} system. It runs entirely in userspace and depends on shell output rather
} than relying on any kernel level code or output. It also has the benefit
} of being able to work with a wide range of hardware synthesizers via
} Emacspeak servers and possibly other local drivers as well, and also has
} software speech available through various interfaces, including EFlite
} and speech-dispatcher. The trade-off is that you will get no speech
} prior to login, although with the correct login script, you can have
} YASR come up automatically once you've logged into the console you want
} to use. There once was a separate program included in the YASR source
} tree that could read the console prior to login, but I don't currently
} know if it still works. I remember getting it to work at one point, but
} that was some time ago. I did most things with a single text console
} that ran YASR automatically at login and did all my work in Screen,
} which allowed me to have a nearly unlimited number of "windows" open on
} a single console, all under a single YASR instance.
} 
} Just a quick note: because of the way YASR works in a subshell, it
} should be capable of working in a desktop terminal application like
} Xterm, giving you familiar functionality when you have that text-based
} application that Orca doesn't like in gnome-terminal. Keybindings
} shouldn't be a problem either, even if you use gnome-terminal and
} silence Orca, since as far as I know, there aren't any conflicts between
} Orca and YASR keyboard commands.
} ~Kyle
} http://kyle.tk/
} -- 
} "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
} Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
} _______________________________________________
} Speakup mailing list
} Speakup@linux-speakup.org
} http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>-- End of excerpt from Kyle

Re: the direction of speakup

[Janina Sajka]

Years ago I used yasr quite regularly. I used it when I was traveling
and needed my computer in situations where it just wasn't possibly to
wire up a serial synth. Obviously, this was before Speakup supported
software speech.

It worked well enough. But, I can tell you that I was alway very, very
happy to get back to a more situation where I could wire in my synth and
fire up Speakup.

PS: The guy who wrote yasr while he was still in school is now the
maintainer of AT-SPI/ATK, the APIs that help drive Orca for us.

Janina

Kyle writes:
> According to Jason White:
> # It runs its own shell and captures input/output, somewhat like screen(1).
> 
> This actually makes YASR the most portable text console screen reader I
> am aware of, since it can run on just about any Unix-like operating
> system. It runs entirely in userspace and depends on shell output rather
> than relying on any kernel level code or output. It also has the benefit
> of being able to work with a wide range of hardware synthesizers via
> Emacspeak servers and possibly other local drivers as well, and also has
> software speech available through various interfaces, including EFlite
> and speech-dispatcher. The trade-off is that you will get no speech
> prior to login, although with the correct login script, you can have
> YASR come up automatically once you've logged into the console you want
> to use. There once was a separate program included in the YASR source
> tree that could read the console prior to login, but I don't currently
> know if it still works. I remember getting it to work at one point, but
> that was some time ago. I did most things with a single text console
> that ran YASR automatically at login and did all my work in Screen,
> which allowed me to have a nearly unlimited number of "windows" open on
> a single console, all under a single YASR instance.
> 
> Just a quick note: because of the way YASR works in a subshell, it
> should be capable of working in a desktop terminal application like
> Xterm, giving you familiar functionality when you have that text-based
> application that Orca doesn't like in gnome-terminal. Keybindings
> shouldn't be a problem either, even if you use gnome-terminal and
> silence Orca, since as far as I know, there aren't any conflicts between
> Orca and YASR keyboard commands.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> -- 
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Re: the direction of speakup

[Kyle]

According to Janina Sajka:
# PS: The guy who wrote yasr while he was still in school is now the
# maintainer of AT-SPI/ATK, the APIs that help drive Orca for us.

Yes, I did indeed notice this. And these very important toolkits and
libraries have come a long way since then. My gratitude goes out to
Mike, Joanny and the rest of the team, who have made Orca/At-spi/ATK and
company what they are today. And I must personally thank Jonathan
Duddington of eSpeak fame as well, for making one of the best and
fastest freedom speech synthesizers available today. Did you know what
you were in for when you released it into the wild? <laughing>
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"