Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version

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Grub does have a play command that can be used to play different tones. I use it to let me know when the grub screen is up and when an entry has been selected. I don't think there's any way to have it beep as you arrow around thoe but maybe the developers would be willing to put in this feature since all the needed parts are already there.

On Thu, 26 May 2016, Glenn wrote:

I wish GRUB would do this by default, and perhaps do an increasing tone beep
as one arrowed down the screen.
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shawn Kirkpatrick" <shawn@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
<speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2016 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan Minimal Live Images -- new version


Just a couple of thoughts here.
If you want to generate beeps once the system is booted then try the beep
command. This command lets you play beeps at a specified frequency and
length. I've found it very useful to have different tones indicate different
things during the boot process.
As for starting speakup, maybe have a small script to do this? Something
that would involve typing only one command and would do all the steps
needed. The less silent typing the better.
I like the idea of having beeps at the isolinux prompt, I don't think I've
seen a live cd do that before. I really wish isolinux could do different
beep tones, then they could be used to indicate different items.
Unfortunately some machines seem to have the beep disabled at boot so this
may or may not work.

On Thu, 26 May 2016, Gregory Nowak wrote:

Hi KatolaZ and the speakup list,
KatolaZ, I'm sending a cc to the speakup list, which is full of blind
GNU/Linux speakup user's. I have my own thoughts on your comments
below, but my preferences aren't everyone else's. So, I think it's a
really good idea to give you more feedback at this point in our
discussion. Fellow speakup listers, the images that KatolaZ is
working on can be found at:

<http://devuan.kalos.mine.nu>

As I type this, we have a beep at the isolinux boot prompt, which
sounds to me like three beeps. You can either press enter here, or
wait a few seconds more. If you are booting from a burned cd, it will
spin for a bit. If you are booting some other way, wait maybe three
minutes at most, probably less. Either way, then type "root", and
"toor" as the password to login. Then to start speakup, type:

modprobe speakup_soft

followed by

service espeakup start

You should then hopefully get software speech. The images also include
brltty, which is started by default, and configured for a usb
display. Since brltty and speakup both want to use the numpad, you
will have to do service brltty stop to stop brltty, so speakup can
control the numpad. The alternative is to use speakup's laptop layout,
which does work just fine. The images include yasr as well, which I
haven't tested yet.

Comments are inline.


On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 06:54:09AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 03:33:05PM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
Hi again,
as far as getting agetty to play ctrl+g ... I don't know of a way to
do that. You can however simply edit /etc/issue, and put a ctrl+g into
that. The way I do this in vi is to do vi /etc/issue.
Then I do "i" to insert at the beginning, and then I do ctrl+v ctrl+g
to insert a ctrl+g into the file. Then I just do esc, followed by
":wq" to save the file.


Hi Greg,

thanks you very much for your reply. I am actually trying to find a
solution that is somehow configurable, but maybe that just putting a
^G in issue is just fine.

I have also scripted a simple daemon that "beeps" every second during
the boot, and emits a certain beep sequence when the boot is complete
(basically, when getty has been spawned). I will now test it and if
everything works fine I will include it in the next release.

Ok, thanks. I have tested so far with the
Devuan_1.0_Jessie-Beta_minimal-live_amd64-20160523_0028.iso image. At
the boot prompt, there are what seem to be three beeps one after the
other. I'm personally think that's probably longer than it needs to
be. I would say that a single beep is good enough. I'm also not sure
that progress during boot is necessary. I think that a beep at the
isolinux boot prompt, and another at the login prompt would be enough,
but that's just my personal opinion, others might find progress beeps
useful. I don't think such a a thing has been tried on a livecd before.


I was also thinking of "marking" the bootloader entries with beeps,
but I don'w know what is the best way to do that. Basically, at the
moment we have a single beep in each of the "bootable" entries. Maybe
it might be useful to have 1 beep for the first entry, 2 for the
second one, and so on? I am not sure though, since we also have in the
boot menu two or three "special" entries (one is memtest, the other is
a call to the chainloader, to boot whatever is found in the first
disk), which should be somehow marked differently.


I have always found it sufficient to know what was in
the boot menu, and to count arrow key presses to get what I wanted to
get to. Having different beeps for each boot entry is another concept
which I don't think has been tried before. I'm not sure
what the majority of blind
users would prefer. Perhaps you will get some feedback here.

I would appreciate your take on this aspect. I was thinking to have
something like:

1) a single beep for each "normal" boot entry

2) two beeps for the special "memtest" entry

3) three beeps for the chainloader

A visually impaired user might just scroll through the first four
options (a single beep for each line), then bump into the memtest (two
beeps), then find the chainloader options (three beeps), then come
back to the first bootable option (one beep)

That sounds reasonable to me.


Thanks again for your feedback, which is very much appreciated.

Thanks again for your work.

Greg



HND

KatolaZ

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