I would agree that generally speakup can't be messed up, but have occassionally found one or two cases where things have gone wrong, but it is probably due to poor program design and has probably messed up the terminal anyway for sighted users (so not really messing up speakup but the system). Those cases I have described are rare, and probably can be seen coming, eg. kernel stuff, or stuff which tries to access the same hardware as speakup (eg. if you get emacspeak to try and access the same synth can confuse things, etc). the things which may mess up your terminal sometimes are things which use libraries such as ncurses which may change terminal settings and if killed unexpectedly may not restore the correct settings (there possibly are commands to restore the terminal, but you need to know these, I don't). From Michael Whapples ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gaijin" <gaijin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 7:58 AM Subject: Re: does anything upset speakup? > On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 03:55:19PM +1000, Amanda Tink wrote: >> I have a little time on my hands to try installing a few new things for >> the first time ever. And it's just occurred to me to wonder if there's >> anything I could possibly install that might upset my speakup's world, >> and >> cause it to crash or not talk or whatever? > > Only installing a new kernel would do that, and only if the new > kernel didn't have SspeakUp support. Linux is a series of layers, and > the kernel is the foundation on which everything sits, so unless you tear > out that foundation, speakup will continue to work without a hitch. As > long as text is being sent to the console or text screen,, the kernel will > repeat that text to your voice synthesizer, and Debian goes out of it's > way not to break any of it's consoles. If you're going to possibly > break anything, it will be software speech synthesis in the GUI, which > isn't a text console, and redirects screen output a different way, as with > the Orca screen reader. Make a copy of your entire /etc directory, just > in case. The kernel will never be replaced unless secifically told to do > so, but Debian has an annoying habit of removing tons of packages just to > install something you thought you wanted to try out...like the the entire > X11 window system. Use aptitude, which has the option of cancelling an > operation you don't like. HTH, > > Michael > > > > >
