I'd also like to add that when I speak of a battle, I am in no way referring to a battle against anyone here, or any FreeDOS developer. The rather military term was strictly in reference to the effort of overcoming or circumventing technical limitations. Best, Felix
Am Mi., 18. März 2020 um 10:22 Uhr schrieb Felix G. <constantlyvaria...@gmail.com>: > > Hello everyone, > I'd like to report that I got FreeDOS to work, and speak to me, from a > virtual machine using a speech synthesizer emulator on the host, > thanks to Joseph's kind help in the form of valuable advice and a > great live image with ASAP. I was also able to get files into the VM > by converting a folder to an iso then mounting that as a virtual > CD-ROM. Still moderately convoluted, as I am the first to admit. > Karen, I agree with you, based on first principles, that every > operating system should be accessible out of the box. However, given > the nature of FreeDOS, I currently don't see any viable way of > accomplishing this. Mind you, I want it to happen, and I have already > joined you in this battle by doing research, I just haven't figured > out how. On a related note, I like your style of advocacy for the > blind, especially your emphasis on individual preferences, freedom of > choice, and avoidance of unnecessary categorization. > Best, > Felix > > Am Mi., 18. März 2020 um 08:57 Uhr schrieb Mateusz Viste <mate...@viste.fr>: > > > > On 18/03/2020 02:37, Karen Lewellen wrote: > > > Why cannot speech be built native to freedos the way it is, I > > > understand, native to Linux distros, including the use of hardware? > > > > FreeDOS, like other flavors of DOS, is a 16-bit, real-mode operating > > system. This means it runs within an extremely constrained environment: > > typically with access to a maximum of 640 kilobytes of memory, one taks > > at a time, and being able to address objects no bigger than 64 > > kilobytes. It is technically unrealistic to expect performing any kind > > of native voice synthesis in such configuration. The only realistic way > > would be to output text through a hardware port, like the RS-232, and > > let an external device do the sound generation. And that's exactly what > > screen readers do already. But it means of course that one must have an > > extra hardware synthesizer, which may or may not be an acceptable > > investment, depending on the ultimate goal. For people like Felix, who > > only want to play an old adventure game from time to time, this seems > > overkill - hence my idea to use VirtualBox instead, to run FreeDOS > > inside of it and connect an emulated software synthesizer. All this can > > be done for free, without any extra hardware, given that one has the > > patience and skills to set it all up. > > > > Now, going back to FreeDOS: the only improvement I can think of is to > > include some sort of screen reader into the distribution. That is why I > > was interested in the PROVOX option, since PROVOX appears to have a > > license perfectly compatible with FreeDOS. Sadly, I was unable to make > > it output any sound, so I wonder whether it works at all. JAWS, on the > > other hand, works very well, but cannot be included into FreeDOS due to > > an incompatible license. > > > > Mateusz > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Freedos-user mailing list > > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
