> Is there any way you could open the port from kernel space as though you > were in user space and just write to it without taking exclusive > control? It's not particularly easy to do that. Plus, we need a device file, which may not be available when Speakup is loaded. If we could use device files, we could also work with other kinds of serial hardware, like USB-to-serial converters and certain PCI cards. Personally, I'd love to see a version of Speakup that runs entirely in user-space. It would be far more flexible and future-proof. I'd start the project, but I have too many unanswered questions. E.G., how does a user-space daemon know when a new character has been written to the console? Could the daemon be written in such a way that it can run from initramfs? If so, it could still be available early in the boot process. But those are just my musings, and I know that quite a few folks wouldn't be happy with a user-space implementation. -- Chris
