Hi all: Well, I managed to figure out how slashdot works and such and have written a few small notes in a discussion on linux vs. windows for a blind user. I also wrote a lengthy response to that infamous comment passed onto this list. I reproduce it below for your information. Note that Kirk's E-mail and the www address are clickable. Geoff. Re:"Compatible appliances" and competition (Score:1) by linuxgeoff on Saturday March 25, @06:24PM EAS ([30]User Info) I don't know whether you are seriously miss-informed or just spouting hot air. I could assume the latter and just ignore your post, but since it has a great potential to seriously misseducate the general public, I will address every point in your comment. Zipspeak is a version of the zipslack minidistribution which incorporates the speakup kernel patches. Speakup is a screen reader project headed by a blind hacker named Kirk Reiser and assisted by speakup users and other interested people. Therefore, it is not a threat to independant producers as it is itself an independant product. It is always open to new people to get involved, it is released under the GPL, and it therefore is also free. Since speakup is a product written by the people who wish to use it, the aim is, in fact, to be as compatible with as much hardware as possible. The list of synthesisers supported in zipspeak matches those supported at the time of the last speakup release. Since then, more drivers have been written and driver code is constantly being worked on. As some of these drivers are not to a satisfactory standard, they were not included with zipspeak. I dare say that zipspeak will be updated upon the next speakup release, which by the way will only be version 0.09. Kirk is always keen to add more synths. I needed a specific driver written for my particular hardware. He began writing it one Saturday morning, and by Sunday night, I was running it. Talk about service. We are curious to know about your speech synthesiser. All Kirk needs to write a driver is a spec sheet listing the commands and the lend of a unit to test the drivers with. Even if your speech is in software, we are interested in knowing about it. Feel free to drop Kirk some mail. I can't emphasise the independence of this enough. This is free software! There is no FDA approval, tax exemptions or any such things, it's just plain hard work and satisfaction in the result. I know little about Apple's standards, but none of their operating systems are particularly usable, in fact, I'd say that linux is much more usable than any apple OS ever was or, quite probably, ever will be. If you would like to know more, you can visit the speakup webpage at [31]http://www.braille.uwo.ca/speakup/ where you can also check out the speakup mailing list. In addition, you may also contact Kirk Reiser, head of the speakup project at [32]kirk at braille.uwo.ca. Geoff.