Hi guys, OK, allow me to summarize what's going on here in another discussion some of us are having. ... First of all, y'all meet Kirk Wood. OK. So here goes. Janina, her friend Len, Kirk, Kirk, and I have been tossing around ideas for a talking PDA running Speakup. Here's a Reader's Digest version (much distilled...very condensed) of what we've been talking about. Very generally, we'd like to see a more powerful, lower cost notetaker/PDA/palmtop for blind folks. The current crop, we have established, is underpowered and overpriced. The logical place to begin here is Linux, as Janina showed with the Samsung PDA. The disadvantage to the Samsung unit--and others--is that it uses a touch screen for input. Janina and her friend Len have suggested that, very like the Palm uses Graffiti to input data, why can't we use braille, very like a slate and stylus--although I suggest we punch it forwards like it would be read. The next question was: Template or no? Seems it'd be easier to punch the braille with an overlay of some sort with cell cutouts; Kirk Reiser suggests we might think of using an eight-dot cell, or even a 10-dot cell for inputting control characters, commands, hot keys, etc. etc. The discussion has also touched on implementing a software speech synthesizer in, say, a PC card form factor; also a braille input device as above that can be connected to an off-the-shelf palm device, for instance. Now we're discussing processors and so forth to use. ... OK, so any thoughts on design for above projects are much appreciated, and those involved in previous discussions, if I left something out important, just jump right on in. ... Couple things sorta still hanging: Developing the synthesizer/finding a form factor for it Processor...which should we use? Back translation from braille to ASCII Umm. ... Whatever else. ... -- Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV Email: davros at ycardz.com Voice mail: 877-791-5298 All opinions are all mine!
