According to Janina Sajka: # PS: You can also expect serial headers on commodity network devices like # home routers. That's how OpenWRT fuels itself. On the other hand, Speakup never has, and never will, run on a home router, and the fact remains that although it may still be possible to purchase a newer hardware speech synthesizer, they just don't put serial cables on them now. The newest ones I've heard anything at all about connect to USB ports, but have been entirely neglected by Speakup for years, either due to extreme rigidity of the developers when depending on dedicated ports, or more likely due to the impossibility of coding for a changing USB enumeration from within the kernel. Please note that although on most computers, especially laptops, a dedicated serial port is past obsolete, no one here is indicating that support for such ports be dropped from Speakup. WE JUST WANT OPTIONS! Additionally, on the subject of servers, it is one thing to have a serial console that one can use if ssh or other remote connectivity stops working, but Speakup is an entirely different type of software, and comes with its own share of bugs, which are far easier to deal with in userspace than in the kernel. Some may respond to the sysadmin story of not being allowed to work on a server because of Speakup, calling it a lack of consideration for people with disabilities. I, on the other hand, recognize that the kernel should be as clean as possible, especially in a server environment, and the potential for one module to crash the entire kernel, potentially ruining the whole server, is something to be avoided at all costs. It's one thing for a screen reader to have a bug that crashes something in userspace, which is usually the screen reader, but it's another thing entirely for it to crash the kernel, which takes all of userspace down with it. This is a very good reason to keep as much out of the kernel as possible, and why at least some distributions aimed specifically at servers will not enable the staging drivers, where the Speakup modules are built. It's not a matter of keeping the blinks from being sysadmins, it's just a matter of the rock solid stability that is needed on servers more than on any other type of machine. So while you may find serial ports on servers, Speakup adoption on such machines will be seriously inhibited until or unless it makes its way out of the kernel and into userspace, where screen readers should be. And though you may find serial port headers on home routers, Speakup will never be used on those, as they have no use for it. So apples to apples, the machines that can get the most benefit from Speakup don't have the port needed to take advantage of hardware speech, and no module has been written that will allow it to communicate using the ports on such machines. Instead of focusing on which machines still have serial ports, just move Speakup out of the kernel, and improve support for software speech, USB devices and USB to serial converters from within userspace. Then from within userspace, the serial communication via a dedicated port can be repaired and improved also. ~Kyle http://kyle.tk/ -- "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?" Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie" _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
