here here -- I use speakup all day long -- have never been able to gett gnome reliably and I use that other operating system for web brousing and stuff Linux will not do. John G. Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote: > I totally disagree. Speakup has little purpose except for the fact > that it runs in kernel space. First of all, there are other screen > readers for user space. And you really need a GUI these days. I > suppose there are people using speakup all day every day. Mutt for > email, lynx or edbrowse for the web. But I'm sure the vast majority > of linux users use orca for every day tasks. > > The most important feature for speakup is to bail you out when you are > really in trouble because your server is down. I don't know what you > do for a living but I do systems admin and I cannot live without > speakup in kernel space. About the only thing that I can think of that > is equivalent to simply plugging in a hardware synth and getting boot > messages would be setting up something like a Raspberry Pie to boot > into kermit and display serial console messages. But it wouldn't be > the same because you'd need a keyboard for the RPI. I don't know -- > when a server is down, the last thing I want to do is mess with all > that stuff. I just want to plug in the hardware speech synth and press > the print screen key. > > On 05/08/13 08:37, Robert Spangler wrote: > > I throw my vote in for putting Speakup in userspace. As others have > > said, if we use software speech, we aren't hearing the earliest boot > > messages anyways. While there are still many folks using hardware > > speech, it seems as though the software speech trend is expanding. In > > addition, there are other ways of checking boot messages. It is a > > little disheartening, however, because being able to hear messages from > > the start of boot time has been a major advantage to Linux users but I > > think that getting Speakup out of the kernel will benefit us all in the > > long run. > > > > Thanks, > > Robert Spangler, B.A. in Urban Studies and Spanish > > spangler.robert at gmail.com > > > > On 5/2/2013 3:22 AM, covici at ccs.covici.com wrote: > >> If we gave up the kernel, which I would really prefer not to do, then we > >> could use speech dispatcher and write drivers for the serial synths or > >> usb ones. But this is to be decided. > >> > >> acollins at icsmail.net wrote: > >> > >>> Hello all. If Speakup were a user space app, you could start it from > >>> inittab, like you can brltty. It would also be able to access the video > >>> scrollback buffer. > >>> > >>> I don't think the support for isa synths needs to go away just yet. > >>> Believe it or not, there are still a few folks running older machines > >>> with > >>> isa slots with isa synths in them. Besides this, for those who really > >>> want them, it is still possible to buy machines with isa slots, so if > >>> you have an isa synth, you can use it in a new machine. So I don't > >>> think it's time to drop isa support yet. > >>> > >>> Having said that, adding usable usb serial, and support for usb synths > >>> should be a priority. At this point, I find myself ambivalent about > >>> whether speakup stays in the kernel or not. You don't get any better > >>> access to boot messages with software speech than you could from user > >>> space. If the user space Speakup could be started from inittab, then > >>> you could still get info about file system checks and such. The only > >>> thing you couldn't get, which you can't get with software speech either, > >>> is kernle panic errors. With Speakup in the kernel, and using a > >>> hardware synth, you can sometimes still get that info, depending on how > >>> the kernel panics. There have been a couple of times when this has been > >>> a life saver for me, but it happens so rarely, that I could probably > >>> live with the inconvenience. Thus I'm finding myself ambivalent about > >>> Speakup staying in the kernel. But then I'm getting older, and > >>> ambivalent about a lot of things. (grin) > >>> > >>> Gene Collins > >>> > >>>> hmmm, I wonder if we could just add a kernel driver as though we were > >>>> writing one for a new serial card that way we would conform to what the > >>>> kernel devs want? From within that, maybe you could specify the way to > >>>> get the device to use, or maybe have some simple user space program to > >>>> tell it the device -- this is way off the top of my head, but is > >>>> interesting to me. You could write drivers for speech dispatcher for > >>>> serial synths, but getting that into an initramfs would be difficult, > >>>> you would have to change the generation scripts for each distribution, > >>>> etc. > >>>> > >>>> my $.02 (or .2 trillion with hyperinflation). > >>>> > >>>> William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs at gmail.com> wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> All, > >>>>> > >>>>> let's start a new thread here to figure out what needs to be done with > >>>>> speakup. > >>>>> > >>>>> Here are my ideas and the issues I see with them: > >>>>> > >>>>> 1. What should we do with support for the internal ISA synthesizers? > >>>>> > >>>>> My thought is that these can be dropped. > >>>>> > >>>>> 2. We basically have two choices for the serial synthesizer issues. > >>>>> > >>>>> a. If we keep this code inside the kernel, the bottom line is it needs > >>>>> to be completely rewritten and there need to be changes made on the > >>>>> kernel side to make it work correctly. > >>>>> This will take time, and someone here will need to > >>>>> work closely with the kernel developers, and we'll need to find > >>>>> someone > >>>>> in the kernel community to guide us -- maybe not by writing the > >>>>> code for > >>>>> us, but at least consulting with us. > >>>>> > >>>>> b. If we move this code into user space, we can code it however we > >>>>> want, > >>>>> and that frees us from involving the kernel team. > >>>>> > >>>>> question: > >>>>> > >>>>> If we move the serial code to user space, I realize there is a concern > >>>>> about missing early boot messages. Would putting the user space daemon > >>>>> into an initramfs solve this? would you be able to start it early > >>>>> enough to get all of the boot messages if it was in an initramfs? > >>>>> > >>>>> William > >>>>> > >>>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>>> Speakup mailing list > >>>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org > >>>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > >>>> > >>>> -- > >>>> Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: > >>>> How do > >>>> you spend it? > >>>> > >>>> John Covici > >>>> covici at ccs.covici.com > >>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>> Speakup mailing list > >>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org > >>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Speakup mailing list > >>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org > >>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at linux-speakup.org > > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > -- > --- > John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at linux-speakup.org > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici covici at ccs.covici.com
