For a couple of years now I have felt that Speakup should move into userspace, and from time to time I have posted messages to this effect on this list. However I have thought it over and have come to the conclusion that Speakup as it is should remain in the kernel for the sake of those of us who have hardware synthesizers and who can receive the boot messages from start to finish for troubleshooting purposes. On the other hand, speakup in its present form will never gain wide use in major distributions unless it makes it into the mainline kernel tree. My present position is that an alternative userspace only application with the functionality of Speakup should be developed. Unfortunately, the text console userspace only screen reading applications are limited to YASR and Emacspeak. Despite being portable, these applications are quite limiting, since YASR runs a subshell under a running shell in one console only and Emacspeak requires that Emacs be running. A screen reading application based on Brltty's direct access to the console is the best approach to take, since it provides direct access to the currently visible console even if switched, including messages printed to the console by the kernel, and is quite portable, being able to run on any Unix-like OS and even DOS. The configuration is also much easier since it has a configuration menu and a persistent configuration file that it reads automatically at startup so that the persistent files don't have to be copied into /proc to change configuration options. I found also that Brltty can actually start very early on in the boot process, and can even get access to boot messages earlier than Speakup as modules using software speech. I have for some time wanted to play around with PC/Free/Open/NetBSD, but it's nearly impossible, since Speakup depends on the Linux kernel and only YASR and Emacspeak will run on such systems, and I don't want to have access only via SSH or telnet. Some sort of Brltty derived or other userspace only app that will provide the same type of access would help me and others to be able to use and possibly help develope these other OS's. I guess this message has possibly become a call for developers/others who can help me in developing a portable userspace only screen reading application, based on Brltty or not, with as much of the functionality of Speakup as possible as an alternative to a kernel based screen reader. Speakup is good for what it does and should stay in the kernel. It just needs a little work to become mainline kernel ready, and kernel code tends to scare off some developers (like me). <smile> I have played with coding some userspace applications, and have contributed some code to others, but the kernel still scares me. I also like the userspace approach for portability. If anyone who knows anything about programming or can help me in any way and is interested in helping to develope such a portable userspace only screen reader, feel free to contact me off list for discussion of concepts and how to procede. I will be posting messages to other blind Linux user lists as well, unless someone wishes to forward this message on to such lists. I look forward to getting this project off the ground, not as an insult to the Speakup developers who have put so much time and effort into a good application, but as an alternative when Speakup just won't do the job because of its dependence on the Linux kernel and the extensive patching needed to make it work with an upstream kernel. Live long and prosper, Lorenzo -- I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse. --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)
