OK, then we need to fix serial support as well, so we do the registration correctly, or find some other way to do these things -- a discussion is still needed and this is why I proposed a conference call, but hardly anyone seems interested. Mike Ray <mike at raspberryvi.org> wrote: > > I think I might have addressed John when I should have said Robert. > > I'm for keeping SpeakUp in the kernel. > > However, without meaning any offense to anybody's hard work; something > needs doing to get SpeakUp back on trap. Even if that is just a revamp > of the web pages. Links are broken, the text is out of date. > > In the source distro, the install script is broken. > > I throw my hat in to the ring as a volunteer to help where I can. > > Mike > > On 08/05/2013 17:14, covici at ccs.covici.com wrote: > > 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 > > > -- > Michael A. Ray > Analyst/Programmer > Witley, Surrey, South-east UK > > Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi? > Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/ > > From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers > > _______________________________________________ > 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
