There are not now any open source tools either for reading or for producing DAISY content with the sole exception that Emacspeak 16 includes some level of support for DAISY 3.0 (the ANSI Z39.86-2002). The only content currently available in DAISY 3.0 comes from BookShare and is text-only. Titles from RFB&D in the U.S., RNIB in the U.K., and from libraries in Canada, Sweden, and Japan is now DAISY 2.02, so is not supported by Emacspeak 16, either. There was a meeting regarding this very issue following CSUN last year. At this meeting I was tasked to chair a committee report to the DAISY Board recommending that DAISY's next generation of user agents and authoring tools use GPL/LGPL licensing, meaning that they would be open source. The DAISY Board niether adopted nor rejected this recommendation, and I believe the issue continues unresolved within the DAISY Consortium. Regretfully, I am not attending their meeting later this month in Korea. However, nothing prevents any one of us, or any group of us, from initiating a project to create open source tools for DAISY. I would expect that creating user agents would be comparatively simpler, and provide the tool most needed. One would need to control audio file playback of .wav and .mpg, while displaying text at the same time. There are more issues, of course, but this ese are the basics in simplest terms. Synchronization is achieved through SMIL 1.0 in the case of DAISY 2.02 and SMIL 2.0 in the case of DAISY 3.0 Regretably, RFB&D has adopted a copyright scheme based on "security through obscurity," so the unpacking agent would most likely need to be binary only. Good authoring tools are another subject altogether, though there are certainly component applications that could be incorporated, such as docbook. I am happy to assist anyone wanting to look at taking this up to the extent I can. One thing I can do is to send out several DAISY 2.02 titles that are not encrypted and which provide both text and audio. I expect to have such content for DAISY 3.0 in a few months. John J. Boyer writes: > From: "John J. Boyer" <director@chpi.org> > > Hello, I am considering expanding our services to include Daisy books. > They would have full text and also a voice. Is there software to do this > in Linux? Is it open-source? What hardware is needed? How much does it > cost? > Thanks. > John > > > -- > Computers to Help People, Inc. > http://www.chpi.org > 825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list