Re: the push to get rid of CONFIG_VT in the kernel and the future of Speakup

From: Glenn <glennervin@cableone.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
	<speakup@linux-speakup.org>
Subject: Re: the push to get rid of CONFIG_VT in the kernel and the future of Speakup
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 16:50:34 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <B7DD417F7E3F497DA26DB583139E9FCA@your2c061f0461> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5435AE9F.1090306@math.wisc.edu>

Isn't SpeakUp used in the terminal after booting to a GUI?
----- 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, October 08, 2014 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: the push to get rid of CONFIG_VT in the kernel and the future 
of Speakup

Yeah, if you're a linux sysadmin, hardware speech is not some luxury you
can do without.  It's not a matter of convenience, it's a matter of
possible or not possible.

I know there are still some people who use speakup as their primary
screen reader. But that user base has to be dwindling. In my opinion,
the only reason that speakup remains a key part of the linux
infrastructure is that it allows blind systems admins to get speech
during boot. I think it would be understandible if they said you blind
people will just have to  use the GUI if not for the fact that if you
are a sys admin, you need those boot messages.

On 10/08/14 15:16, Al Sten-Clanton wrote:
> My knowledge of this business is minimal, but I thought that one
> advantage of the current approach, if you can use a hardware speech
> synthesizer, is that you can get at least some of the boot-up
> messages--not as early as sighted folks get them, but well before
> software speech can kick in.  If this is true, wouldn't the proposed
> change be a very builty-in reduction in non-visual access?
>
> Al
>
> On 10/08/2014 03:43 PM, Kyle wrote:
>> It does appear to me that something like this will force more of Speakup
>> into userspace. However, unlike others, I'm not entirely opposed to the
>> idea of Speakup leaving the kernel, and I think it can only be a good
>> thing, especially on newer machines, where dedicated serial ports are
>> all but obsolete, and software in userspace can take better advantage of
>> things like Pulseaudio and libusb, meaning more extensive software and
>> hardware speech support. For example, there would no longer be a need
>> for kernel modules to control speech synthesizers, and there would no
>> longer be a need to have external userspace connectors such as Espeakup,
>> as the entire Speakup screen reader could be moved into userspace, and
>> anything that interfaces with a speech synthesizer could be either
>> internal or could be a library that interfaces with a speech API like
>> speech-dispatcher or others. Even better, if Speakup is moved entirely
>> into userspace, it could give rise to far better access to consoles on
>> *BSD and other Unix operating systems, as the code could be far more
>> portable between operating systems when it doesn't have to be tied into
>> a specific kernel. Just my $0.02 BSD. That's Bahamian dollars lol.
>> ~Kyle
>> http://kyle.tk/
>>
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> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
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