Well, I'm probably not the best one to respond here as I am somewhat of a geek and don't mind digging around a bit or maybe a lot to figure things out. Yes, the "run of the mill" office style applications are probably confined to the X Windows environment and I would think that seriously today a sighted person using X Windows could slide right in and get down with a linux environment if they would only give it a chance. For us blind folks, its still another matter. X Windows accessibility is still in the early primative stages and not really ready for prime time. So in the mean time, we stick with character based applications where we need to learn those funky commands like in emacs and vi. I should say though, sc, the spreadsheet app, has been fairly easy for me to use. Please look over the online help; you can get at it with the question mark (?) key. IE: type the = key before any numeric entry and put a '<' before left justified text, '>' before any right justified text and I forget the character for centered text. Again, the help screen told me this. The man page lists all the possible formulas available. I use sc on a regular basis to manage a budget as I blow through my paychecks:). It even maintains automatic totals like all good spreadsheet programs do. So I would say some utils like mutt, pine, lynx and even sc are (I feel) easy enough to learn with little effort. Emacs is an extremely powerful editor but therefore requires a steep learning curve. I'm learning it and am playing around with Emacspeak as we speak and I see a lot of potential there. I've heard others say and now I agree, a combination of Speakup for the strait console and Emacspeak for various emacs applications really puts you in the driver's seat and I would say, probably more efficient than working in windows with their advanced screen readers that sell for around a thousand dollars! I think another herdle for starting up in linux is the setup phase. Getting thing setup just the way you want is probably a lot harder than many windows apps but once in place, it is stable and will run forever without breaking! On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 11:38:06AM -0500, Ed Thurston wrote: > > > hello Alex, > > When I first tried using Linux several years ago, I tried to learn emac > with emac speake and was completely lost and gave up the whole process. > > I am making a second stab at it with Speakup running slackware. My > purpose is use Linux as a end user. I. e, To have someone set up Linux > and then I will use applications on it. > > I am doing quite well with mutt using joe as its editor and lynx, but Joe > is just that, an editor and not a word processor. > > If Linux is to take a real bite out of Microsoft, it will have to be user > friendly. The operating system is great now, but the applications are not > ready for universal use. For example if an employer wanted to hire a > secretary, he might be prepared to train her in using a user friendly word > processor, something equivalent to wp51 but not Emac with its hundreds of > command line commands. Also a user friendly spreadsheet such as Lotus for > dos should be developed. I have ttried to use SC as my spreadsheet and so > far have gotten nowhere with it. I have yet to figure out how to even key > in numerric values, much less set up a complete spreadsheet. > > I do hope that there are some programmers out there busily keying many > lines of code developing such types of applications, so as to make Linux > a real contender in the home as well as in the market place environment. > > > Do you feel that such programs are in the works? > > Thanks for listening to my ramblings, -- HolmesGrown Solutions The best solutions for the best price! http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
