I happen to have some close relatives that have worked, and in one case, are working in call centers. So I know just a tiny bit about what goes on there, from them, second hand (I'm pretty ignorant, in other words). But I talked to them about your situation, and will give you what info I can. Will emacspeak work for you, for the applications used in the call center? Or will yasr or some other choice work? It all depends, and neither you or we are going to be able to solve that alone. You will need to gather together the info about this mailing list, the blinux FAQ, the blinux software archive address, etc, and get it to the IT techies in your new place of employment, probably ASAP, so they can figure out the best route to go. Maybe they will install flite and a soundcard in your station, or connect a hardware synth to a serial port, who knows? But it is not something you will be able to do, or that they would want you to do independently. Maybe the call center software has a browser front end (sometimes that is the case), and they will figure out that a text mode browser like links or lynx (note the different spelling) will work good enough for what you need to do, if you are so lucky. Or maybe the call center software will work in text mode, and from within emacspeak, so that you can have access. One thing you need to address right up front, is whether the software can be accessed from text mode, as often is the case with linux (and hence my mention of text browsers above), or is all GUI, because if it is all GUI, you will get no speech access at this time (the development of GUI speech access, while coming along, is not practical in a production environment, and especially not for a newbie). There are some specific answers and comments relative to some of your more particular questions in with the previous text below. On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Amy77 wrote: > Would Emacspeak, which I just recently heard > about, work for me? Emacspeak works from within the Emacs system, which was originally a highly programable textmode editor, but now can do lots of things, like read and answer email, news, browse the web, and a host of other things, so that emacspeak leverages that capability to become an "audio desktop". This extensive functionality comes at a price, naturally. Emacs has a reputation for having a high learning curve. It might be that you could still learn a very basic set of commands and keys in the beginning, equivalent to one of the more lightweight speech front ends, like yasr, and gradually add to that, to become very adept at doing all sorts of things (there are built in tutorials/help). Or it might be better to start out with a more lightweight server, like yasr. Others here can guide you better on that than I can. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Amy77 > To: Blinux List > Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 7:44 AM > Subject: Call Centre Job > However, I have virtually no knowledge of Linux > once so ever. Many or most of the employees may not even know that Linux is the operating system underneath, so that is, or should be, unimportant to the end user in this type of environment. > ... > concerned because that would mean that I would > be working without any speech feedback. Which would be pretty foolish from your employer's perspective, if text mode access is possible. > I am wondering whether you would be able to give > me a very brief explanation as to what Linux is, http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/general.html And that site has in depth info about almost anything you want to know about linux (and a lot you don't). > ... > employer, I would just need to hit a single key. > Then I would tab through various fields to enter > in thier contact information. As much as I > would like to believe in the simplicity of this, > I don't know whether things can be that easy. If it really is that easy, it would also be dead easy for any experienced Linux IT admin to write a simple short text mode script that would collect this info (getting it into the database is another matter, but if it was a problem, someone could paste it in with a mouse later). > Even if what my employer is saying will be true, > that I will not need any speech feedback on the > job, Yea, hard to believe that this would make sense, with so many other good possibilities. Linux is very flexible. > I would like to know whether Linux compatible > speech program exists that would enable me to > hear the prompts and to hear the result of my > data entry. Several possibilities exist, but, as indicated above, they only are useful in text mode, but not with the GUI yet. Linux provides an exceptionally rich text mode environment, which continues to grow at an incredible pace, but none of that general stuff matters, unless the call center software is accessible from text mode, and call center software varies, sometimes from account to account within a call center. On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Guy Abandon. wrote: > A software synth/speech through the sound card > is the economic option again if you or the > employer has no means of getting the external > devices paid for. But my guess is that an inexpensive hardware synth would be cheap compared to your wage, and the improvement or convenience should be well worth it to your employer. They may be spending more than that on your phone headset alone, not counting the phone cards and networking for it, which may be quite pricey. Hardware cost just shouldn't be a significant factor in the decision, in any organization with intelligent managers. But you may need to let them know about the options there. > This introduces a third element to install and > get working and as such, add to the scope for > complexity though. And the time involved for the IT staff would tend to make a software synth a stupid choice (and they might still have to add a sound card, speakers or extra headset, etc). And not adding anything at all would be even more stupid, in terms of (your) employee time. In this I am assuming something like the synth recently mentioned here, which lists at $300, but can be found for about $150. LCR -- L. C. Robinson reply to lcr@xxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list