Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I see this a lot too.
I happen to be a member of both the ACB and NFB. Yeah, I know, its rare. I use 
both orgs as tools to get what I need done. 

Now, what I have found among the blind is that a lot of us are very anal 
retentive. It may have a lot to do with the fact that we have to be super 
organized. There is nothing wrong with that. However, the failure to compromise 
can be a bit of a sticking point. This is rather unfortunate as there is good 
talent among the blind, but with such mentality as to cause a lot of friction, 
even with other blind folks.

btw, I am also a blind nerd, but I have learned over the years that being 
inflexible can have serious consequences, especially for me. call it a maturing 
process. Its something we all have to learn (and it is easier for some and not 
so much so for others).

-eric

On Apr 24, 2017, at 7:32 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

> Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Again, a little give can 
> sometimes be a very good thing. Honestly, nerds all seem to have this thing 
> where they think their way is the best way. This is how distro religious wars 
> start. But of all the community of nerds I am associated with, blind nerds 
> are the worst. There is absolutely no compromise, no willingness to work 
> together, nothing! In fact, it's ubiquitous in the blind community. We even 
> have 2 different advocacy groups, the NFB and the ACB.  And the health of the 
> blind community as a whole can just go to heck for all anyone cares. Drives 
> me crazy. The reason why F12 should give you the time is that that the 
> standard. Because people expect F12 to give them the time. It's that simple.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 04/24/2017 01:11 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> Why do I want insert+f12 to tell me the time when insert+t, (t for time), 
>> can do that for me just fine and more intuitively? How is f12 better than t, 
>> which stands for time? No, that's simply not a logical keybinding, and I 
>> don't want it in Orca. BTDubs, holding in the insert Orca key and double 
>> tapping t for time does tell me the date. So again I ask what the hell does 
>> f12 mean and why is it needed to do the same thing that t already does?
>> ~Kyle
>> 
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Re: document conversion utilities was Re: the Sonar thread

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hi,
but last time i tried caliber ebook, it is not accessible with orca. really?

2017-04-25 0:55 GMT+08:00, Linux for blind general discussion
:
> calibre's ebook-convert does pdf and epub to some extent as well as some
> of those propriatory formats, as long as there is no drm on them.
> HTH, Willem
>
>
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>
>> Linux for blind general discussion  writes:
>>
>>> the following command line utilities are all useful:
>>>
>>> catdoc for .doc and I believe .rtf(and I believe catdoc also includes
>>> commands to handle xls and ppt).
>> *snip*
>>> Granted, I know of no command line tools for dealing with ePub or
>>> Kindle
>>
>> Most of the formats mentioned in this message, including epub, are
>> covered by pandoc.  Nope, it doesn't do Kindle.  It also will not read
>> PDF files, but it can write them.  It's really the most useful and
>> universal document-converting tool out there, and I highly recommend it.
>> It can even go the other way and convert Markdown to various word
>> processor formats, and that's really useful.
>>
>> -- Chris
>>
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>>
>
> --
>
> This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
> legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard.
> The full disclaimer details can be found at
> http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
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How to use fenrir screen reader

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Forgive me for this one, but, I would like to try out this new fenrir 
screen reader.  I can install it from the aur on here, but how do I get 
it to do anything after that.  I do not see any documentation, though I 
will keep looking and will probably find it all after writing this.  
However, if I don't how do I get fenrir up and running on an arch-based 
machine when I install it? Are the defaults enough?  What command do I 
run to get it going?





Thanks.




Dioug Smith



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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Actually a screen reader using f12 to tell the time does make it a standard 
probably unique to that screen reader. Standards are loved by many because 
there are so many standards from which to choose. There is a huge difference 
between a standard and the standard; those multiple standards lovers (thick 
among the software writing crowd and operating system writing crowd) get very 
combative whenever the standard gets mentioned.

Sent from BlueMail for iPhone
On Apr 24, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Linux for blind general discussion 
 wrote:

I don't think nerds or blind nerds are unique in this sense at all. In 
fact, since the blind suffer so much from prejudice, I'm always 
surprised by how prejudiced the blind themselves can be about the blind, 
although I shouldn't be, since I think that's just human nature. Anyone 
who thinks the blind are somehow worse then the general population in 
this sense don't follow the political parties in the US, read reviews on 
Amazon or follow comments on Facebook or the news sites. 

Finally just because one screen reader uses F12 to tell the time doesn't 
make it a standard. 

-- 
Christopher (CJ) 
chaltain at Gmail 

On 24/04/17 09:32, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: 
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Again, a little give can 
sometimes be a very good thing. Honestly, nerds all seem to have this 
thing where they think their way is the best way. This is how distro 
religious wars start. But of all the community of nerds I am associated 
with, blind nerds are the worst. There is absolutely no compromise, no 
willingness to work together, nothing! In fact, it's ubiquitous in the 
blind community. We even have 2 different advocacy groups, the NFB and 
the ACB. And the health of the blind community as a whole can just go 
to heck for all anyone cares. Drives me crazy. The reason why F12 should 
give you the time is that that the standard. Because people expect F12 
to give them the time. It's that simple. 





On 04/24/2017 01:11 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: 
Why do I want insert+f12 to tell me the time when insert+t, (t for 
time), can do that for me just fine and more intuitively? How is f12 
better than t, which stands for time? No, that's simply not a logical 
keybinding, and I don't want it in Orca. BTDubs, holding in the insert 
Orca key and double tapping t for time does tell me the date. So again 
I ask what the hell does f12 mean and why is it needed to do the same 
thing that t already does? 
~Kyle 

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I don't think nerds or blind nerds are unique in this sense at all. In 
fact, since the blind suffer so much from prejudice, I'm always 
surprised by how prejudiced the blind themselves can be about the blind, 
although I shouldn't be, since I think that's just human nature. Anyone 
who thinks the blind are somehow worse then the general population in 
this sense don't follow the political parties in the US, read reviews on 
Amazon or follow comments on Facebook or the news sites.


Finally just because one screen reader uses F12 to tell the time doesn't 
make it a standard.


--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail

On 24/04/17 09:32, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Again, a little give can
sometimes be a very good thing. Honestly, nerds all seem to have this
thing where they think their way is the best way. This is how distro
religious wars start. But of all the community of nerds I am associated
with, blind nerds are the worst. There is absolutely no compromise, no
willingness to work together, nothing! In fact, it's ubiquitous in the
blind community. We even have 2 different advocacy groups, the NFB and
the ACB.  And the health of the blind community as a whole can just go
to heck for all anyone cares. Drives me crazy. The reason why F12 should
give you the time is that that the standard. Because people expect F12
to give them the time. It's that simple.





On 04/24/2017 01:11 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Why do I want insert+f12 to tell me the time when insert+t, (t for
time), can do that for me just fine and more intuitively? How is f12
better than t, which stands for time? No, that's simply not a logical
keybinding, and I don't want it in Orca. BTDubs, holding in the insert
Orca key and double tapping t for time does tell me the date. So again
I ask what the hell does f12 mean and why is it needed to do the same
thing that t already does?
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

It's not that I don't care about new users coming to Linux from Windows. 
It's more that I care about the new computer user who's starting with 
Linux. Why shouldn't they have the most intuitive set of key bindings 
possible? What about those that have been using Orca all along? How 
about those who are Windows users but want a more intuitive set of key 
bindings? Should screen reader developers be held back from coming up 
with new and innovative ways of doing things because they have to stick 
to an old set of key bindings that weren't even developed for their 
platform or screen reader?


I do care about those users coming from Windows, but I'm not sure that 
should be the driving motivation for Orca's key bindings and the 
underlying features needed to support them.


I also don't think a screen reader key mapping is the biggest issue 
keeping people from moving from Linux to Windows. There are a lot more 
moving parts to this transition then just a screen reader and it's key 
mappings.


For my part, I used Windows and JAWS almost exclusively from 1997 to 
2011. I still use it on my job today. I have no problem learning a new 
set of key bindings especially if I feel it's a better and more 
intuitive set of bindings.


--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
On 24/04/17 12:47, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Okay, lets just make this perfectly clear. You don't care that a new
user trying to switch from Windows to linux would be confused by having
to learn all new shortcut keys, right? You are saying that in your
opinion insert+t just makes so much more sense than F12 that it is more
important than whether new users are confused by that shortcut key --
not to mention all the others. They can just tough it out, right? Is
that fair to say?

PS: Technically, I am not arguing that F12 should be the standard. I am
arguing that there should be a standard and whether it's insert+t or F12
isn't really to the point. To be fair, I think it would be next to
impossible to get Freedom Scientific to change to insert+t and therefore
it would be next to impossible to get nvda to change.

-- John Heim


On 04/24/2017 10:29 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

No. F12 does not mean time in any language. F12 may be a Jaws thing,
and it may even be an NVDA thing, but it's far from a standard. Last I
checked, time wasn't spelled with an f anything. Therefore, f12
telling me the time is stupid and illogical at best. I want my t damn
it. T for time, t for tell, t for anything you like, but don't make me
learn a completely stupid and illogical key combination simply because
some proprietary power decided long ago that t for time was somehow
insufficient. If you want f12 or even the page down key to tell you
the time, by all means, please do configure Orca that way, for
yourself. Those of us who have used Orca, and even those of us who
came to Orca from somewhere else, fully appreciate the benefits of
Orca's mnemonic keybindings over the stupid and illogical ones we had
to learn in other screen readers just to get them to do basic things.
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I don't think it's fair to say that Windows users just went right along 
with giving up the start menu. There was a major out cry and MS 
reintroduced the start menu.


--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail

On 24/04/17 19:06, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Windows users have had to learn and relearn basic functionality of their
own precious OS for years now, as Microsoft itself periodically changes
the way things work just for the sake of making a change. I see nothing
new here, except that the benefits of Linux far outweigh any changes in
key combinations in the screen reader. Just think of the poor Windows
user who got an upgrade and lost the whole start menu. Is this not a
major change? But they went right along with it, because they had no
other choice. Now imagine instead having the ability to use more logical
mnemonics to operate your screen reader, everything from telling the
time to listing links in a far more logical and intuitive set of
keybindings. Now imagine if you don't like the keybindings, being given
the opportunity to change every single one until it suits your personal
tastes. Then tell me that Orca somehow does things in a less logical way
than NVDA , or heaven forbid, Jaws, the cream of the crap when it comes
to any screen reader, and that orca somehow must change everything it
does and the way it does it simply to comply with some whim that the
likes of Freedom Scientific arbitrarily forced upon its users, and
everyone else in the wonderful world of Windows decided they just had to
follow like good little sheep.
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Dan Rossi here.

WOW, what a thread.  The vehemence surrounding a silly little thing like 
F-12 verses insert-t is amazing.  In JAWS, insert-t is for the title of 
the window I am in.  Title, T.  There are only 26 letters in the alphabet 
and a few modifier keys, so some things are going to get relegated to odd 
key mappings.  Is insert-f12 a better keymap for Title?


Luckily, JAWS does make changing key mappings pretty customizable.  So, If 
I want insert-t to be time, I think I can do that.


I'm still firmly grounded in Windows, but have interest in Linux.  I still 
use Pine on a unix box for my email, but would never give up FireFox on 
Windows for browsing in text mode.


Sorry, to come out of the blue, but the key mapping thing just seemed to 
be so silly with as much anger as it seemed to promote.



--
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu
Tel:(412) 422-5423

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The serial terminal is indeed built into the kernel, but the difference 
is that it isn't stuck in staging with no hope of ever getting out into 
the main tree. In fact, the serial terminal has been a part of the base 
kernel for many many years. And what in the world is wrong with using a 
cable to connect to something inexpensive instead of purchasing an 
obsolete piece of hardware that costs way more than it's worth, 
especially if it's possible to purchase a fully functional computer for 
a much lower price?


OK, Speakup is now once again in active development, and there have been 
a ton of messages to the Speakup list during the month of April of this 
year, and a few more in March as I recall. But my point is that if Red 
Hat's work toward the accessibility of its installer is "too little too 
late" as one person mentioned here, about 7 patches under review in 
Speakup over the course of 30 to 45 days is also too little too late, by 
far, as Speakup has had far longer to get it right and to position 
itself as the only screen reader to ever make it into any mainline 
kernel on any operating system, and it has thus far failed miserably. 
Sorry, I'll just stick with my $15 uart to USB cable and my $15 single 
board computer, as I can't be bothered to try to find a working hardware 
speech synthesizer and the correct port to plug it into while I wait for 
Speakup to get proper USB support and to be available on any kernel no 
matter who is distributing it.

~Kyle

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Re: list identification:

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Actually, in this age of internetdom, one can not truly be sure the 
name provided is correct.

access to the  address at least gave you some sort of firm direction.
I did not share, but when I  tried a little experiment, Amy K, the name 
associated with the spam suddenly developed a gmail address.  From the 
shift  I felt it reasonable that the person behind the effort was actually 
on the list, likely having created this electronic persona for spamming, 
but might not go away if  we all simply joined again.
Still, I would rather dump and filter one source of spam then have such 
trouble following the flow on this list.

Speaking for myself of course,
Karen


On Mon, 24 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:


Hello, Hans and list! I'm Lars Bjørndal.

you wrote:


blinux-list is no longer sending 'From' addresses because of a spammer
abusing these addresses.


This new behaviour gets the list reading cumbersome and
inefficient, unfortunately. Previously it was possible to notice the
sender before opening the email, and, based on the sender and subject,
decide whether to open and read the message or not.


Therefore Kelly's proposal for adding a signature/alias at the end of a
posting is reasonable.


Obvisously. But, I'd like to ask you, as you are the maintainer, if
you can investigate and find which member on the list sends the spam
messages that was the reason for changing the From header, and switch
back to prevous behaviour?

Thank you and regards, Lars


On 23.04.2017 13:27, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Hi Kelly,

I am surprised that people actually don't sign there name anyway.

It is polite to do so and then we will know.

The previous thread seemed to be CJ but could be wrong.

We tend to learn people's writing styles.

Good suggestions.

Cheers

Rob Whyte



On 23/04/17 21:25, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I would like to make a suggestion:
As the list moderator has redacted senders, perhaps it would be
helpful if people were to put there name at the beginning or the end
of there posts.
I can usually tell who is posting because I am practiced at reading
headers, but it is time consuming and not everyone will wish to do that.
I hope this suggestion is helpful.
-- Kelly Prescott


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Windows users have had to learn and relearn basic functionality of their 
own precious OS for years now, as Microsoft itself periodically changes 
the way things work just for the sake of making a change. I see nothing 
new here, except that the benefits of Linux far outweigh any changes in 
key combinations in the screen reader. Just think of the poor Windows 
user who got an upgrade and lost the whole start menu. Is this not a 
major change? But they went right along with it, because they had no 
other choice. Now imagine instead having the ability to use more logical 
mnemonics to operate your screen reader, everything from telling the 
time to listing links in a far more logical and intuitive set of 
keybindings. Now imagine if you don't like the keybindings, being given 
the opportunity to change every single one until it suits your personal 
tastes. Then tell me that Orca somehow does things in a less logical way 
than NVDA , or heaven forbid, Jaws, the cream of the crap when it comes 
to any screen reader, and that orca somehow must change everything it 
does and the way it does it simply to comply with some whim that the 
likes of Freedom Scientific arbitrarily forced upon its users, and 
everyone else in the wonderful world of Windows decided they just had to 
follow like good little sheep.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

F12 is completely arbitrary and has no meaning outside of stupid Jaws. 
And to answer the question of people who speak different languages using 
different mnemonics, this is completely fair, but should be addressed by 
maybe having different default mnemonics for different languages, not by 
picking something completely arbitrary and illogical simply because 
someone else on an entirely different OS and screen reader has chosen to 
go down an illogical and counterintuitive path. Again, if you want to 
use an arbitrary illogical key combination to tell you the time, by all 
means do it, as there is nothing stopping you from making 
orca+control+alt+shift+escape do it if that's your thing. All I'm saying 
is to leave the logical mnemonic as the default, because most of us who 
use Orca regularly prefer it that way, as it's easier to remember and 
makes a lot more sense, and can be easily changed if we ever desire to 
do so.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

This is Luke Yelavich, reply below.

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 09:23:19PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
wrote:
> Screen readers cannot give boot messages anyways, with software speech.

Actually, with things set up correctly to allow the screen reader to come up 
as early as possible, yes they can.

Speakup can do this if working with a hardware speech synth from very very 
early on, which is why so many people like it, but there are ways and means 
to do siumilar with pure software, if you are willing to make your initramfs 
a little larger.

Luke

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unsubscribe

[Linux for blind general discussion]

 

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Re: list identification:

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hej,

On Mo, Apr 24, 2017 at 08:24:54 +0200, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>you wrote:
>
>> blinux-list is no longer sending 'From' addresses because of a spammer
>> abusing these addresses.
>
>This new behaviour gets the list reading cumbersome and
>inefficient, unfortunately. Previously it was possible to notice the
>sender before opening the email, and, based on the sender and subject,
>decide whether to open and read the message or not.

+1, fully agree!

>Obvisously. But, I'd like to ask you, as you are the maintainer, if
>you can investigate and find which member on the list sends the spam
>messages that was the reason for changing the From header, and switch
>back to prevous behaviour?

That really would be nice and should be possible. If it isn't possible, 
remove all members from the list and let people who want to be 
subscribed to this list join it again.

Regards from Munich,

  Christian

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

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Re: list identification:

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hello, Hans and list! I'm Lars Bjørndal.

you wrote:

> blinux-list is no longer sending 'From' addresses because of a spammer
> abusing these addresses.

This new behaviour gets the list reading cumbersome and
inefficient, unfortunately. Previously it was possible to notice the
sender before opening the email, and, based on the sender and subject,
decide whether to open and read the message or not.

> Therefore Kelly's proposal for adding a signature/alias at the end of a
> posting is reasonable.

Obvisously. But, I'd like to ask you, as you are the maintainer, if
you can investigate and find which member on the list sends the spam
messages that was the reason for changing the From header, and switch
back to prevous behaviour?

Thank you and regards, Lars

> On 23.04.2017 13:27, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> > Hi Kelly,
> > 
> > I am surprised that people actually don't sign there name anyway.
> > 
> > It is polite to do so and then we will know.
> > 
> > The previous thread seemed to be CJ but could be wrong.
> > 
> > We tend to learn people's writing styles.
> > 
> > Good suggestions.
> > 
> > Cheers
> > 
> > Rob Whyte
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On 23/04/17 21:25, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> > > I would like to make a suggestion:
> > > As the list moderator has redacted senders, perhaps it would be
> > > helpful if people were to put there name at the beginning or the end
> > > of there posts.
> > > I can usually tell who is posting because I am practiced at reading
> > > headers, but it is time consuming and not everyone will wish to do that.
> > > I hope this suggestion is helpful.
> > > -- Kelly Prescott
> > > 
> > > 
> > > ___
> > > Blinux-list mailing list
> > > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> > ___
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Regardless of the method used, I'm not sure boot messages are all that
important to the average user or even the average power user. The
functionality might be useful to some sysadmins, but I'm not convinced
the convenience kernel integration provides to these few is worth the
extra hassle involved in maintaining these and keeping software
upgrades easy for those who hear kernel and think popcorn.

Granted, I'm a bit turned off by Fenrir's dependance on python, and
most of the technical issues here are way above my weight class, but
at the moment, it's sounding like userland has more net pros than
kernel integration when it comes to terminal screen reading.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Well, the serial terminal is also built into the kernel.  you're just 
depending a a different set of maintainers. A serial terminal is no 
where near as usable as speakup is at boot time. You talk about a serial 
terminal needing only another machine like an RP but that's not entirely 
true. You need a null modem cable and you need a terminal emulator 
configured on the other machine. You need to make sure you have the 
right baud rate, etcetra. In an emergency, that's a hassle.



And speakup is not obsolete.  It's under active development.  I am going 
to say there has been over 100 messages on the speakup list from the 
developers in the month of April. There have been so many that I haven't 
even seen exactly what fixes they are making.



-- John Heim








On 04/24/2017 10:45 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
Boot messages can be sent out via a serial console, without the help 
of a screen reader locked into the kernel, where it is harder to fix 
bugs and harder to keep it updated, as the whole kernel has to be 
updated along with it. I know the serial console works, as I have a 
uart header on my computer with a cable that allows me to debug any 
problems I find in boot messages, and even in boot loader messages 
that are shown prior to "starting kernel ...", from any other machine 
that has a USB port. And there is yet another thing. I can use any 
computer with a USB port and fully interact with the machine where I 
need to see its boot messages, which is something I cannot do with 
Speakup on any kernel as of now, and I don't have to purchase a very 
expensive and quite obsolete hardware speech synthesizer to see my 
kernel and boot loader messages either, as if I have no other machine 
I can use to access boot messages, a $35 Raspberry Pi or even a $15 
Orange Pi will do quite nicely.


Frankly, everything that Speakup can possibly do can be done by any 
number of other applications and even any number of other kernels. 
Most users only use software speech for daily tasks, and Fenrir covers 
that. Others need to see boot messages occasionally, and a serial 
console is best for that. It would seem now that Speakup is pretty 
much obsolete, so even if it was to find its way into the stable 
kernel tree tomorrow, it would be far too little too late for me, as I 
have already found better solutions.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Okay, lets just make this perfectly clear. You don't care that a new 
user trying to switch from Windows to linux would be confused by having 
to learn all new shortcut keys, right? You are saying that in your 
opinion insert+t just makes so much more sense than F12 that it is more 
important than whether new users are confused by that shortcut key -- 
not to mention all the others. They can just tough it out, right? Is 
that fair to say?


PS: Technically, I am not arguing that F12 should be the standard. I am 
arguing that there should be a standard and whether it's insert+t or F12 
isn't really to the point. To be fair, I think it would be next to 
impossible to get Freedom Scientific to change to insert+t and therefore 
it would be next to impossible to get nvda to change.


-- John Heim


On 04/24/2017 10:29 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
No. F12 does not mean time in any language. F12 may be a Jaws thing, 
and it may even be an NVDA thing, but it's far from a standard. Last I 
checked, time wasn't spelled with an f anything. Therefore, f12 
telling me the time is stupid and illogical at best. I want my t damn 
it. T for time, t for tell, t for anything you like, but don't make me 
learn a completely stupid and illogical key combination simply because 
some proprietary power decided long ago that t for time was somehow 
insufficient. If you want f12 or even the page down key to tell you 
the time, by all means, please do configure Orca that way, for 
yourself. Those of us who have used Orca, and even those of us who 
came to Orca from somewhere else, fully appreciate the benefits of 
Orca's mnemonic keybindings over the stupid and illogical ones we had 
to learn in other screen readers just to get them to do basic things.

~Kyle

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Re: list identification:

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hi blinux-list members,

blinux-list is no longer sending 'From' addresses because of a spammer 
abusing these addresses.
Therefore Kelly's proposal for adding a signature/alias at the end of a 
posting is reasonable.


In addition, your signature is adding power to your posting.

Enjoy!
Hans
(maintainer blinux-list)

On 23.04.2017 13:27, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Hi Kelly,

I am surprised that people actually don't sign there name anyway.

It is polite to do so and then we will know.

The previous thread seemed to be CJ but could be wrong.

We tend to learn people's writing styles.

Good suggestions.

Cheers

Rob Whyte



On 23/04/17 21:25, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I would like to make a suggestion:
As the list moderator has redacted senders, perhaps it would be
helpful if people were to put there name at the beginning or the end
of there posts.
I can usually tell who is posting because I am practiced at reading
headers, but it is time consuming and not everyone will wish to do that.
I hope this suggestion is helpful.
-- Kelly Prescott


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Ok, I have been following this discussion and it is very interesting.  
Doug Smith here.  I have just had to change over to antergos.  It is 
really good, seems stable, and, though it is not what we might call a 
specialized distro, it works well with orca on gnome.



It is a modification of arch with an installer that makes it easier to 
install and that's all I can see that is different about it.  I would 
still call it a mainstream distro.



The really great story I am about to tell here happened Saturday night.  
I was looking for liblouisutdml.  I wanted to have it on here with the 
soon appearance of low-cost braille tech.  I emailed them at the contact 
address on their web site and asked for liblouisutdml to be included in 
the package repos.  I thought it would be included in the aur but was I 
wrong.



Dustin, his last name escapes me at the moment, said that he would be 
glad to put it in and to check the repo in a few hours. I did and it 
came right into my home and installed.  Talk about caring about 
accessibility, that's how it gets done.



Last year, a bunch of us on the orca list found this little gem and have 
been using it for a while.  Go and get it if you don't have it.



http://www.antergos.com


It is arch with an easy to use installer which is graphical for those 
who prefer guis and it works flawlessly with orca.  I have my favorite 
terminal programs on here as well as my favorites from the graphical 
world and it all seems to work fine.



Another story is bug fixes.  One of the last versions last year had a 
minor pulseaudio problem which wouldn't work with my usb headset, but 
now it is working fine.





Hope this helps.




Doug Smith





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Re: document conversion utilities was Re: the Sonar thread

[Linux for blind general discussion]

calibre's ebook-convert does pdf and epub to some extent as well as some 
of those propriatory formats, as long as there is no drm on them.

HTH, Willem


On Mon, 24 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:


Linux for blind general discussion  writes:


the following command line utilities are all useful:

catdoc for .doc and I believe .rtf(and I believe catdoc also includes
commands to handle xls and ppt).

*snip*

Granted, I know of no command line tools for dealing with ePub or
Kindle


Most of the formats mentioned in this message, including epub, are
covered by pandoc.  Nope, it doesn't do Kindle.  It also will not read
PDF files, but it can write them.  It's really the most useful and
universal document-converting tool out there, and I highly recommend it.
It can even go the other way and convert Markdown to various word
processor formats, and that's really useful.

-- Chris

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--

This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard. 
The full disclaimer details can be found at http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html. 

Please consider the environment before printing this email. 


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document conversion utilities was Re: the Sonar thread

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> the following command line utilities are all useful:
>
> catdoc for .doc and I believe .rtf(and I believe catdoc also includes
> commands to handle xls and ppt).
*snip*
> Granted, I know of no command line tools for dealing with ePub or
> Kindle

Most of the formats mentioned in this message, including epub, are
covered by pandoc.  Nope, it doesn't do Kindle.  It also will not read
PDF files, but it can write them.  It's really the most useful and
universal document-converting tool out there, and I highly recommend it.
It can even go the other way and convert Markdown to various word
processor formats, and that's really useful.

-- Chris

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Re: blinux list Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I wouldn't mind moving to a new list.
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> It's not true that Red Hat did what they could do as quickly as they
> could do it. The spam problem went on for months before some of us
> finally started to make an issue of it. Even then it tooke a couple of
> weeks before anything was done. Secondly, they should have removed the
> spammer from the list instead of changing the list settings.  I got
> all kinds of pushback on my assertion that it was clearly a spam bot
> subscribed to the list. But, of course, that's been proven to have
> been true. I am sure now I'll get pushback on my assertion that you
> can figure out who the spammer was. Heck, it might be as easy as
> checking the list of subscribers.
>
>
> Like I said when this first came up, I vote for taking it to
> iavit.org. I feel we all have a vested interested in promoting IAVIT.
> I am the Presidet of IAVIT but I'm just trying to provide a service
> for the blind community as a whole.
>
>
> -- John Heim
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 04/24/2017 06:14 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> Tony,
>> First of all, as far as I've been able to deduce over the years,
>> everyone *cares* about accessibility. The problem is that no one
>> *knows how* to best address any issues with it. Red Hat certainly
>> does care. If they didn't care, they wouldn't ship Orca, or they
>> wouldn't implement the alt+super+s shortcut to turn on Orca in
>> GNOME. Defaults you say, maybe. But still, if they didn't care, why
>> would they do so much work to get their installer working with Orca?
>> I don't think all that work was an accident.
>>
>> With regard to yet another list, it's not necessary at all. We do
>> still have this list, and we can just put our names into our
>> messages. Kyle here  In any case, if we don't want that, the FSF
>> does have an accessibility list as well.
>> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
>> No sense making yet another Linux/free software accessibility list.
>> Either use this one, that one or both. In any case, we can't be
>> blaming Red Hat for the current state of this list. They did what
>> they could do as quickly as they could do it. Instead, if there is
>> any blame to throw around, we should be blaming the spammers that
>> got us here.
>> ~Kyle
>>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I use Emacs, with Boodler, as a Talking Clock. There is a sound scape
that speaks time every 15 minutes.
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> For reading, if I can't read it in Firefox, I usually convert it to
> plain text and read it in nano.
>
> Gmail's view as HTML function works for most attached documents, and
> the following command line utilities are all useful:
>
> catdoc for .doc and I believe .rtf(and I believe catdoc also includes
> commands to handle xls and ppt).
> odt2txt works for OpenDocument Format, which is the most notable
> format Gmail can't convert to html.
> html2text handles whatever I get from Gmail's conversion or web pages
> I save for offline reference.
> pdftotext which is part of poppler-utils does fairly well, though
> formatting sometimes causes converted files having text out of order.
> pdfimages could be used to extract images from a PDF for feeding to an
> OCR program.
>
> Granted, I know of no command line tools for dealing with ePub or
> Kindle formats, and while my talking eReader can handle most formats,
> it doesn't do Kindle.
>
> Personally, I wish more eBook services offered plain text versions of
> their content.
>
> And for what it's worth, as someone who doesn't use braille, I'd
> rather there was a version of Orca that was only a screen reader
> instead of being forced to install braille support I don't use, and I
> suspect there are at least a few braille users with no interest in
> speech who would like the option of installing braille support with
> having to install a screen reader or speech synth.
>
> As for the which keystroke should my screen reader's talking clock be
> attached to:
> 1. I didn't even know that was a feature in some screen readers,
> though apparently it doesn't work with either combination mentioned on
> my install of Orca(granted, I'm running the most bare bones of
> xservers I can instead of a proper desktop environment).
> 2. I think we might be getting too caught up in trivial details.
> Besides, I have trouble imagining someone giving Linux a try and being
> tripped up by something so small. Trying Linux isn't something the
> non-Power user is likely to do without much prodding from a power
> user, and I would think anyone who could be scared off by this would
> either be scared off much sooner, or wouldn't make the attempt.
> 3. My bedroom has four devices with talking clock functionality, and
> in the unlikely event that I'm at my keyboard without having at least
> one of them within arm's reach, I can always google time. Now, maybe
> I'm not representative of screen reader users, but it seems likely
> that most screen reader users own at least one talking clock, and
> quite frankly, no matter which key binding is used, this seems like
> the kind of thing most wouldn't even know exists(I've been using Orca
> daily for over 4 years, and this is the first time I've heard of this
> feature period), and it certainly is the kind of functionality one is
> likely to stumble upon by accident(who even thinks to try hotkey
> combinations involving the insert key?).

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

My God! No one is /making/ you use it! It, is, a, choice, damn it! Just
because one person wants it one way doesn’t mean it’s how it
/has/ to be!
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> No. F12 does not mean time in any language. F12 may be a Jaws thing,
> and it may even be an NVDA thing, but it's far from a standard. Last I
> checked, time wasn't spelled with an f anything. Therefore, f12
> telling me the time is stupid and illogical at best. I want my t damn
> it. T for time, t for tell, t for anything you like, but don't make me
> learn a completely stupid and illogical key combination simply because
> some proprietary power decided long ago that t for time was somehow
> insufficient. If you want f12 or even the page down key to tell you
> the time, by all means, please do configure Orca that way, for
> yourself. Those of us who have used Orca, and even those of us who
> came to Orca from somewhere else, fully appreciate the benefits of
> Orca's mnemonic keybindings over the stupid and illogical ones we had
> to learn in other screen readers just to get them to do basic things.
> ~Kyle
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Screen readers cannot give boot messages anyways, with software speech.
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> Boot messages can be sent out via a serial console, without the help
> of a screen reader locked into the kernel, where it is harder to fix
> bugs and harder to keep it updated, as the whole kernel has to be
> updated along with it. I know the serial console works, as I have a
> uart header on my computer with a cable that allows me to debug any
> problems I find in boot messages, and even in boot loader messages
> that are shown prior to "starting kernel ...", from any other machine
> that has a USB port. And there is yet another thing. I can use any
> computer with a USB port and fully interact with the machine where I
> need to see its boot messages, which is something I cannot do with
> Speakup on any kernel as of now, and I don't have to purchase a very
> expensive and quite obsolete hardware speech synthesizer to see my
> kernel and boot loader messages either, as if I have no other machine
> I can use to access boot messages, a $35 Raspberry Pi or even a $15
> Orange Pi will do quite nicely.
>
> Frankly, everything that Speakup can possibly do can be done by any
> number of other applications and even any number of other kernels.
> Most users only use software speech for daily tasks, and Fenrir covers
> that. Others need to see boot messages occasionally, and a serial
> console is best for that. It would seem now that Speakup is pretty
> much obsolete, so even if it was to find its way into the stable
> kernel tree tomorrow, it would be far too little too late for me, as I
> have already found better solutions.
> ~Kyle
>
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Re: switching lists

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm not really bothered by the anonymity the list now has, nor was I
bothered by the spam that lead to the anonymity, but would you mind
providing instructions on how to join these other lists?

I'm already on both this list and the Raspberry Vi list(which focuses
specifically on accessibility on the Raspberry Pi and other single
board computers), but given how almost no one ever talks about
accessibility in more mainstream Linux discussions, it can't hurt to
be listening in to as many accessibility specific lists as possible.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

For reading, if I can't read it in Firefox, I usually convert it to
plain text and read it in nano.

Gmail's view as HTML function works for most attached documents, and
the following command line utilities are all useful:

catdoc for .doc and I believe .rtf(and I believe catdoc also includes
commands to handle xls and ppt).
odt2txt works for OpenDocument Format, which is the most notable
format Gmail can't convert to html.
html2text handles whatever I get from Gmail's conversion or web pages
I save for offline reference.
pdftotext which is part of poppler-utils does fairly well, though
formatting sometimes causes converted files having text out of order.
pdfimages could be used to extract images from a PDF for feeding to an
OCR program.

Granted, I know of no command line tools for dealing with ePub or
Kindle formats, and while my talking eReader can handle most formats,
it doesn't do Kindle.

Personally, I wish more eBook services offered plain text versions of
their content.

And for what it's worth, as someone who doesn't use braille, I'd
rather there was a version of Orca that was only a screen reader
instead of being forced to install braille support I don't use, and I
suspect there are at least a few braille users with no interest in
speech who would like the option of installing braille support with
having to install a screen reader or speech synth.

As for the which keystroke should my screen reader's talking clock be
attached to:
1. I didn't even know that was a feature in some screen readers,
though apparently it doesn't work with either combination mentioned on
my install of Orca(granted, I'm running the most bare bones of
xservers I can instead of a proper desktop environment).
2. I think we might be getting too caught up in trivial details.
Besides, I have trouble imagining someone giving Linux a try and being
tripped up by something so small. Trying Linux isn't something the
non-Power user is likely to do without much prodding from a power
user, and I would think anyone who could be scared off by this would
either be scared off much sooner, or wouldn't make the attempt.
3. My bedroom has four devices with talking clock functionality, and
in the unlikely event that I'm at my keyboard without having at least
one of them within arm's reach, I can always google time. Now, maybe
I'm not representative of screen reader users, but it seems likely
that most screen reader users own at least one talking clock, and
quite frankly, no matter which key binding is used, this seems like
the kind of thing most wouldn't even know exists(I've been using Orca
daily for over 4 years, and this is the first time I've heard of this
feature period), and it certainly is the kind of functionality one is
likely to stumble upon by accident(who even thinks to try hotkey
combinations involving the insert key?).

-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

F12 isn't stupid. It's a perfectly reasonable choice. Someone else might 
argue that orca+t is stupid because to them, t means table. Or tab. Or 
maybe they speak swahili and their word for time starts with a q or an x.



-- John Heim



On 04/24/2017 05:49 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
No. Long-time Jaws and NVDA users can figure out that t stands for 
time and use that instead, just like all the rest of us who used 
something else before we got to Orca. And if they really want 
something as stupid as f12, they can configure it in Orca's 
keybindings tab.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Boot messages can be sent out via a serial console, without the help of 
a screen reader locked into the kernel, where it is harder to fix bugs 
and harder to keep it updated, as the whole kernel has to be updated 
along with it. I know the serial console works, as I have a uart header 
on my computer with a cable that allows me to debug any problems I find 
in boot messages, and even in boot loader messages that are shown prior 
to "starting kernel ...", from any other machine that has a USB port. 
And there is yet another thing. I can use any computer with a USB port 
and fully interact with the machine where I need to see its boot 
messages, which is something I cannot do with Speakup on any kernel as 
of now, and I don't have to purchase a very expensive and quite obsolete 
hardware speech synthesizer to see my kernel and boot loader messages 
either, as if I have no other machine I can use to access boot messages, 
a $35 Raspberry Pi or even a $15 Orange Pi will do quite nicely.


Frankly, everything that Speakup can possibly do can be done by any 
number of other applications and even any number of other kernels. Most 
users only use software speech for daily tasks, and Fenrir covers that. 
Others need to see boot messages occasionally, and a serial console is 
best for that. It would seem now that Speakup is pretty much obsolete, 
so even if it was to find its way into the stable kernel tree tomorrow, 
it would be far too little too late for me, as I have already found 
better solutions.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

No. F12 does not mean time in any language. F12 may be a Jaws thing, and 
it may even be an NVDA thing, but it's far from a standard. Last I 
checked, time wasn't spelled with an f anything. Therefore, f12 telling 
me the time is stupid and illogical at best. I want my t damn it. T for 
time, t for tell, t for anything you like, but don't make me learn a 
completely stupid and illogical key combination simply because some 
proprietary power decided long ago that t for time was somehow 
insufficient. If you want f12 or even the page down key to tell you the 
time, by all means, please do configure Orca that way, for yourself. 
Those of us who have used Orca, and even those of us who came to Orca 
from somewhere else, fully appreciate the benefits of Orca's mnemonic 
keybindings over the stupid and illogical ones we had to learn in other 
screen readers just to get them to do basic things.

~Kyle

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switching lists

[Linux for blind general discussion]

John, I am subscribed to both lists.  I think the main problem with 
switching is what Karen said a few messages back.

People are not comfortable with change.
Maybe we should just take some threads over there.
This list is almost useless when you search the archives as there are not 
individual authors anymore.

This is due to the way it has been reconfigured.
I am on this list, the accessibility list for GNU, and the iavit list.
kp


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Re: IAVIT - Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Email me off list at j...@iavit.org. Our server is more of a meeting 
place than a development environment. We can save you the cost of 
hosting and a domain name. We can give you space to host your downloads, 
the email list, plus a blog or a wiki for documentation.





On 04/24/2017 05:34 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
I would be interested in your offer. I would need a decent build 
environment for kernel images with the Speakup patches. My existing 
server is eventually going away. I would need decent hardware with 
enough memory. I don't think it would be hard to automate the kernel 
building process. I would also need hosting for the .deb packages. 
While I'm at it, I would want space for my rescue CD. An announce 
mailing list would be a nice bonus but not necessary. I can give you 
exact space requirements if interested. I know kernel images take a 
lot of space to build, especially in a clean chroot environment. The 
distro doesn't matter as everything would be done in 32-bit and 64-bit 
chroots.


Baechler Access Technology Services, bats at batsupport dot com

On 4/23/2017 4:20 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

This is the kind of thing we created the International Association Of
Visually Impaired Technologists for. It has donated server space and is
incorporated legally as a nonprofit (501C3) in the USA.  The 
infrastructure

is available if you care to put it to use.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Kelly Prescott here.
It takes a lot of effort to make a boot environment talk...  I know, 
because that is what I am working on.

I am not speaking of Linux, I am speaking of a boot loader.
When I finish my boot loader, then it might be realistic to have a normal 
arch cd with some boot options.
Until that happens, I agree with Chris.  I don't like to boot and guess 
what to type and when.




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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I am karen lewellen.
Just a couple of points before I go back  into the corner.  Now that the 
stuff is technical.
1 out of every 8 computers in the world still uses windows xp...many fear 
changing what they understand for what they do not.
As for accessibility, its implementation and otherwise,  the w3c creates 
those rules and they in turn become public policy.  The challenges come in 
though where a few decide this means creating access for themselves, 
instead of following the general rules here, creating an open door for 
everyone.

www.w3c.org/wai
Karen


On Mon, 24 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:


I'm Tony Baechler. See below.

On 4/23/2017 4:13 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

 I'd be interested in knowing the number of blind people using GNU/Linux
 in the world, for daily life (so with browser, GUI, etc).


I'm still mostly on Windows XP, but I use Linux on an almost daily basis, 
mostly on servers. I ssh into various machines from Cygwin. I have Debian 
testing installed in my second partition but without a desktop. I find Linux 
copies to USB storage much faster than Windows. When I want to try a console 
program, I boot into my Debian testing. I had Ubuntu installed, but it 
crashed when trying to upgrade and I didn't feel like reinstalling.





 I just hope the max devs will be common/cross-distros, and benefit for
 everyone. I hope also that non-regression tests will come in free
 software. And that distros will have a11y features, in a modular mode,
 to be universal and avoid specialization. I don't forget the topic is
 "blind vs mainstream", while my purpose is a fully accessibility beyond
 vision impairment, but also from a level of knowledge point of view,
 low-vision impaired people, and other kind of disabilities. But it was
 useful to have this debate on the mailing list.



I agree. It should be about universal accessibility for everyone. Since this 
is the blinux list and since this was from the Sonar and Vinux thread, I 
changed the subject. I'm not familiar with other groups using Linux, but I 
would say that generally accessibility is lacking for them as well.


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blinux list Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

It's not true that Red Hat did what they could do as quickly as they 
could do it. The spam problem went on for months before some of us 
finally started to make an issue of it. Even then it tooke a couple of 
weeks before anything was done. Secondly, they should have removed the 
spammer from the list instead of changing the list settings.  I got all 
kinds of pushback on my assertion that it was clearly a spam bot 
subscribed to the list. But, of course, that's been proven to have been 
true. I am sure now I'll get pushback on my assertion that you can 
figure out who the spammer was. Heck, it might be as easy as checking 
the list of subscribers.



Like I said when this first came up, I vote for taking it to iavit.org. 
I feel we all have a vested interested in promoting IAVIT. I am the 
Presidet of IAVIT but I'm just trying to provide a service for the blind 
community as a whole.



-- John Heim







On 04/24/2017 06:14 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Tony,
First of all, as far as I've been able to deduce over the years, 
everyone *cares* about accessibility. The problem is that no one 
*knows how* to best address any issues with it. Red Hat certainly does 
care. If they didn't care, they wouldn't ship Orca, or they wouldn't 
implement the alt+super+s shortcut to turn on Orca in GNOME. Defaults 
you say, maybe. But still, if they didn't care, why would they do so 
much work to get their installer working with Orca? I don't think all 
that work was an accident.


With regard to yet another list, it's not necessary at all. We do 
still have this list, and we can just put our names into our messages. 
Kyle here  In any case, if we don't want that, the FSF does have 
an accessibility list as well.

https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
No sense making yet another Linux/free software accessibility list. 
Either use this one, that one or both. In any case, we can't be 
blaming Red Hat for the current state of this list. They did what they 
could do as quickly as they could do it. Instead, if there is any 
blame to throw around, we should be blaming the spammers that got us 
here.

~Kyle

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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

On a somewhat related note, it annoys me that Debian CD1's boot menu
just beeps and you have to know the right combination of buttons to
press to start the talking version of the installer(that the talking
installer removes the ability to navigate installer menus with arrow
keys is also annoying) Would it be that inconvenient to those who
don't need speech to make the disc's boot menu fully voiced or to make
the talking installer the first menu entry so the most you have to
remember is press enter at the beep?

I also find it annoying Knoppix hasn't had official images with
Adriane as the default boot setting since the CD version was
discontinued. Doubly so since, as far as I know, there isn't a command
line means of editing a single text file within an iso directly, and
mounting an image, copying it's contents to harddrive, making the
edit, and rebuilding the image is a lot of work to do a one-line edit
of a single text file.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The reason it is important for the screen reader to not be in user space 
is that you might need it to gett boot messages.



-- John Heim





On 04/24/2017 07:40 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Tony,
I said absolutely nothing of Red Hat hosting Orca. I said they ship it 
with the distribution, which they are not at all obligated to do, as 
proven by the fact that Linux Mint didn't come with Orca in the live 
environment for a very long time. As for Speakup, it has never been 
fully ready for prime time up to now, and there are very good reasons 
why it is still stuck in the staging tree. If you want to talk about 
too little too late, then I would talk of Speakup, which is only 
recently getting its act together enough to hopefully make it out of 
staging and into the stable kernel tree, maybe in the next couple of 
years if we're lucky. Meanwhile, we have a very nice package called 
Fenrir, which has taken the screen reader completely out of the 
kernel, putting it fully in userspace where it belongs. Perhaps this 
will address the issue of speech from a text only environment much 
better than Speakup ever could, as it can not only work on kernels 
without staging enabled, but it will also eventually be far more 
portable to things like FreeBSD, which has never had even a proof of 
concept kernel-based screen reader, and has up to now required ssh in 
order to get it to do anything for those of us who need speech output.


Regarding installer accessibility, I have used quite a few installers, 
and Red Hat was one of the first major vendors to ship an installer 
that while not accessible by direct methods e.g. via speech on the 
machine where the OS was to be installed, did come with a method of 
gaining access to the installation terminal via telnet, and also had 
kickstart files that could be used in place of the on-screen system. 
Of course Speakup had to be used via Speakup Modified, and before 
that, the kernel had to be patched, but I wouldn't call that not 
caring by any stretch. Once the graphical environment started becoming 
usable, Red Hat, now called Fedora, was already shipping Orca in its 
repositories, and they were one of the first to include the quite new 
at the time Espeak, which was far more responsive than Festival, and 
all the other distros soon followed. I'm not sure where in the world 
you have come to the conclusion that Red Hat simply doesn't care about 
accessibility. Is it because your beloved Speakup, which is stuck in 
the staging tree for more than 3 years now still isn't enabled in the 
Fedora kernel? Sorry, but it's way past time to look elsewhere for 
text mode screen reading to something that isn't locked into a kernel. 
No other screen reader is bound to a kernel, and there are excellent 
reasons that go far deeper than accessibility for disabling staging in 
a vendor kernel. Rather than complaining that a distro vendor doesn't 
enable a potentially insecure and/or unstable part of its kernel so 
that we can have a screen reader in text mode, those who use text mode 
on a regular basis and need a screen reader for it need to either 
learn how to muck about in the Linux kernel itself so that the screen 
reader can get out of staging and into the kernel proper, or better 
yet, contribute to Fenrir development, where everything goes on in 
userspace and the screen reader only relies on interfaces to stable 
and well-tested parts of the kernel that are never disabled in any 
distro or vendor kernel. If Red Hat decides not to accept a Fenrir 
package, then and only then can we begin to arrive at the conclusion 
that maybe perhaps they don't give a care for accessibility.

~Kyle

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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Kyle wrote:

> problem is that they already have a brltty package, but the
> brltty-minimal package is needed in order to make it work without
> pulling in lots of unneeded dependencies. This will always need to be
> in a separate repository unfortunately. Perhaps Chris, who maintained
> the iso before Kelly and I started maintaining it, can better explain
> why the unmute and prerecorded message aren't in the official image,

Chris Brannon here.

Yeah, brltty-minimal cuts out a lot of dependencies you don't want or
need on a console-only CD.

Sure, Arch Linux could add the prerecorded message and card picker to
their official media.  Nothing is stopping them from doing that.
However, without a console screen reader to go with it, there's no
reason to do it.  Yes, they could add espeakup and fold in the changes
to start Speakup into their official media.  In fact, that discussion
came up a long time ago, back when I started TalkingArch.  I had a long
discussion about adding accessibility to boot media on the
Arch Releng mailing list, way back in 2008.  Basically, the conclusion
was that it was better for TalkingArch to be a separate project, rather
than adding some accessibility boot option to the official media.

Frankly, my preference is not to have to type random incantations at a
boot prompt.  I call this "type and pray".  Power up the box, try to
guess when it boots, and then blindly mash some keys.  I'd rather have
the boot media try to start talking as early as it can, without
requiring human intervention from someone who is only able to make wild
guesses about the current state of the system.
That's why TalkingArch is a thing.

Maybe it would be nice if Arch could release an official "talking"
flavor of their boot media.  Maybe someone needs to have that discussion
sometime.  But I really don't see any problem with TalkingArch being a
third-party customization.

-- Chris

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Yes, hopefully Microsoft will help out the project, by giving us Linux
users the ability to type in Grade two. Still haven’t found a
way to read books in Linux though, especially Braille books, or
EPUB, although I could download the Braille from NLS or
Bookshare and read that way if I found a program that saves my
place in them. Yes, I tried Emacs, but BRLTTY doesn’t seem to
see capitalization in Emacs which is odd, but I’d probably
prefer a pager or something anyways unless there really is
something out there that console folks use for /reading/.
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> And now BrlTTY is being used in Windows Narrator.
>
> Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
> National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped,
> Library of Congress
> Washington, DC 20542   202-707-0535
> http://www.loc.gov/nls/
> The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those
> of the Library of Congress, NLS.
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: blinux-list-boun...@redhat.com
> [mailto:blinux-list-boun...@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Linux for blind
> general discussion
> Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 8:47 PM
> To: blinux-list@redhat.com
> Subject: Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux
>
> heh. yeah, right. "gold standard"? more like the 1 troy oz. of gold
> required to buy it!
>
> Now, as for which is better? Neither! each can do some things the
> other can't. However, NVDA is quickly catching up to the capabilities
> of JAWS (and already has a substantially greater user base).
> Now, as for the screen reader keystroke commonality among the various
> screen readers? not entirely sure that would be possible. NVDA and
> jaws are close. ORCA (for Linux) can be customized similarly, but its
> a lot of work. The nice thing I like about BrlTTY, ORCA, emacspeak or
> some of the other Linux based accessibility tools is that separate
> drivers don't have to be installed in order to make an external
> braille device work. They just work (same for apple, btw). Now, I have
> used both BrlTTY and ORCA since Ubuntu 10.04 and had very little
> issues with them. SOme things might get a bit quirky, but are
> reasonably stable. On windows, NVDA is getting better, but the issue
> there isn't the screen reader (either jaws or NVDA), its the OS (which
> is a FUBAR Kludge IMHO). So, in a lot of ways, we are better off with
> the Open Development environment, a greater access to some tools and
> the ability to share without having to let the evil overlord know what
> it is we want to do. Now, I do te!
>  nd to don
>  ate to those projects that are worthwhile and some of them are on
> Linux and only 1 is on windows. sure, its a couple of dollars a month,
> but its worth it.
>
> -eric
> ...
>
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RE: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

And now BrlTTY is being used in Windows Narrator.

Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of 
Congress
Washington, DC 20542   202-707-0535
http://www.loc.gov/nls/
The preceding opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the 
Library of Congress, NLS.


-Original Message-
From: blinux-list-boun...@redhat.com [mailto:blinux-list-boun...@redhat.com] On 
Behalf Of Linux for blind general discussion
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 8:47 PM
To: blinux-list@redhat.com
Subject: Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

heh. yeah, right. "gold standard"? more like the 1 troy oz. of gold required to 
buy it!

Now, as for which is better? Neither! each can do some things the other can't. 
However, NVDA is quickly catching up to the capabilities of JAWS (and already 
has a substantially greater user base). 
Now, as for the screen reader keystroke commonality among the various screen 
readers? not entirely sure that would be possible. NVDA and jaws are close. 
ORCA (for Linux) can be customized similarly, but its a lot of work. The nice 
thing I like about BrlTTY, ORCA, emacspeak or some of the other Linux based 
accessibility tools is that separate drivers don't have to be installed in 
order to make an external braille device work. They just work (same for apple, 
btw). Now, I have used both BrlTTY and ORCA since Ubuntu 10.04 and had very 
little issues with them. SOme things might get a bit quirky, but are reasonably 
stable. On windows, NVDA is getting better, but the issue there isn't the 
screen reader (either jaws or NVDA), its the OS (which is a FUBAR Kludge IMHO). 
So, in a lot of ways, we are better off with the Open Development environment, 
a greater access to some tools and the ability to share without having to let 
the evil overlord know what it is we want to do. Now, I do te!
 nd to don
 ate to those projects that are worthwhile and some of them are on Linux and 
only 1 is on windows. sure, its a couple of dollars a month, but its worth it.

-eric
...

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I haven't ever found the SBL source code, although I did want to try to 
package it for Arch at one point. That said, I'm not sure whether or not 
anyone is even still maintaining it now, and not having seen the source 
or the package dependencies, I'm not entirely sure it doesn't rely on a 
kernel module of its own. I do know that Fenrir has no such requirement 
at all, and the source is on Github.

https://github.com/chrys87/fenrir
At this point, it can run on any Linux distro, although Debian and 
Ubuntu LTS may have trouble with the newer python-evdev required in 
order to run it. But that's easily fixed with pip.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I haven't tried Fenrir and wouldn't know where to start with trying
it, but I've tried speakup both on x86 Debian(both 32- and 64-bit) and
on a Raspberry Pi(via piespeakup) and except for not needing screen
review to play classic infocom games under Frotz, found it vastly
inferior to SBL, the text mode screen reader Knoppix uses when in
Adriane mode. Sadly, as far as I know, Knoppix and Suse are the only
distros with packages for SBL.

And even if there is some advantage to a text-mode screen reader being
hooked directly into the kernel, I'd have to agree that it probably
doesn't outweigh the disadvantages of messing with the OS's core.

On 4/24/17, Linux for blind general discussion  wrote:
> Tony,
> I said absolutely nothing of Red Hat hosting Orca. I said they ship it
> with the distribution, which they are not at all obligated to do, as
> proven by the fact that Linux Mint didn't come with Orca in the live
> environment for a very long time. As for Speakup, it has never been
> fully ready for prime time up to now, and there are very good reasons
> why it is still stuck in the staging tree. If you want to talk about too
> little too late, then I would talk of Speakup, which is only recently
> getting its act together enough to hopefully make it out of staging and
> into the stable kernel tree, maybe in the next couple of years if we're
> lucky. Meanwhile, we have a very nice package called Fenrir, which has
> taken the screen reader completely out of the kernel, putting it fully
> in userspace where it belongs. Perhaps this will address the issue of
> speech from a text only environment much better than Speakup ever could,
> as it can not only work on kernels without staging enabled, but it will
> also eventually be far more portable to things like FreeBSD, which has
> never had even a proof of concept kernel-based screen reader, and has up
> to now required ssh in order to get it to do anything for those of us
> who need speech output.
>
> Regarding installer accessibility, I have used quite a few installers,
> and Red Hat was one of the first major vendors to ship an installer that
> while not accessible by direct methods e.g. via speech on the machine
> where the OS was to be installed, did come with a method of gaining
> access to the installation terminal via telnet, and also had kickstart
> files that could be used in place of the on-screen system. Of course
> Speakup had to be used via Speakup Modified, and before that, the kernel
> had to be patched, but I wouldn't call that not caring by any stretch.
> Once the graphical environment started becoming usable, Red Hat, now
> called Fedora, was already shipping Orca in its repositories, and they
> were one of the first to include the quite new at the time Espeak, which
> was far more responsive than Festival, and all the other distros soon
> followed. I'm not sure where in the world you have come to the
> conclusion that Red Hat simply doesn't care about accessibility. Is it
> because your beloved Speakup, which is stuck in the staging tree for
> more than 3 years now still isn't enabled in the Fedora kernel? Sorry,
> but it's way past time to look elsewhere for text mode screen reading to
> something that isn't locked into a kernel. No other screen reader is
> bound to a kernel, and there are excellent reasons that go far deeper
> than accessibility for disabling staging in a vendor kernel. Rather than
> complaining that a distro vendor doesn't enable a potentially insecure
> and/or unstable part of its kernel so that we can have a screen reader
> in text mode, those who use text mode on a regular basis and need a
> screen reader for it need to either learn how to muck about in the Linux
> kernel itself so that the screen reader can get out of staging and into
> the kernel proper, or better yet, contribute to Fenrir development,
> where everything goes on in userspace and the screen reader only relies
> on interfaces to stable and well-tested parts of the kernel that are
> never disabled in any distro or vendor kernel. If Red Hat decides not to
> accept a Fenrir package, then and only then can we begin to arrive at
> the conclusion that maybe perhaps they don't give a care for accessibility.
> ~Kyle
>
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-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony,
I said absolutely nothing of Red Hat hosting Orca. I said they ship it 
with the distribution, which they are not at all obligated to do, as 
proven by the fact that Linux Mint didn't come with Orca in the live 
environment for a very long time. As for Speakup, it has never been 
fully ready for prime time up to now, and there are very good reasons 
why it is still stuck in the staging tree. If you want to talk about too 
little too late, then I would talk of Speakup, which is only recently 
getting its act together enough to hopefully make it out of staging and 
into the stable kernel tree, maybe in the next couple of years if we're 
lucky. Meanwhile, we have a very nice package called Fenrir, which has 
taken the screen reader completely out of the kernel, putting it fully 
in userspace where it belongs. Perhaps this will address the issue of 
speech from a text only environment much better than Speakup ever could, 
as it can not only work on kernels without staging enabled, but it will 
also eventually be far more portable to things like FreeBSD, which has 
never had even a proof of concept kernel-based screen reader, and has up 
to now required ssh in order to get it to do anything for those of us 
who need speech output.


Regarding installer accessibility, I have used quite a few installers, 
and Red Hat was one of the first major vendors to ship an installer that 
while not accessible by direct methods e.g. via speech on the machine 
where the OS was to be installed, did come with a method of gaining 
access to the installation terminal via telnet, and also had kickstart 
files that could be used in place of the on-screen system. Of course 
Speakup had to be used via Speakup Modified, and before that, the kernel 
had to be patched, but I wouldn't call that not caring by any stretch. 
Once the graphical environment started becoming usable, Red Hat, now 
called Fedora, was already shipping Orca in its repositories, and they 
were one of the first to include the quite new at the time Espeak, which 
was far more responsive than Festival, and all the other distros soon 
followed. I'm not sure where in the world you have come to the 
conclusion that Red Hat simply doesn't care about accessibility. Is it 
because your beloved Speakup, which is stuck in the staging tree for 
more than 3 years now still isn't enabled in the Fedora kernel? Sorry, 
but it's way past time to look elsewhere for text mode screen reading to 
something that isn't locked into a kernel. No other screen reader is 
bound to a kernel, and there are excellent reasons that go far deeper 
than accessibility for disabling staging in a vendor kernel. Rather than 
complaining that a distro vendor doesn't enable a potentially insecure 
and/or unstable part of its kernel so that we can have a screen reader 
in text mode, those who use text mode on a regular basis and need a 
screen reader for it need to either learn how to muck about in the Linux 
kernel itself so that the screen reader can get out of staging and into 
the kernel proper, or better yet, contribute to Fenrir development, 
where everything goes on in userspace and the screen reader only relies 
on interfaces to stable and well-tested parts of the kernel that are 
never disabled in any distro or vendor kernel. If Red Hat decides not to 
accept a Fenrir package, then and only then can we begin to arrive at 
the conclusion that maybe perhaps they don't give a care for accessibility.

~Kyle

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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony, your dad sounds a few orders of magnitude more tech savvy than
my dad, though considering my dad is older than ENIAC, maybe it's a
bit unfair of me to use my dad as my reference model of a non-power
user. Still, my dad can turn the thing on, use a web browser, play
solitaire, turn it off, and that's about it. Back when I could see
well enough to assist him with computer problems, I spent more time
keeping his aging XP machine in working order than I spent dealing
with bugs running development versions of Ubuntu, and since my vision
got too poor to assist him, I've lost count of how many times he's put
his computer in the shop, and he's at least once bought an entirely
new tower because of software issues(I believe it was a forced update
to Win 10 borking a Win7 machine). Even setting everything up myself
including many of the cross-platform applications he was using under
Windows, I've never gotten a Linux configuration to a point he'd give
it a fair chance, and I'm pretty sure Win95 was his first exposure to
anything more sophisticated than Frogger on the Atari 2600.

As for talking Arch, it sounds like a smaller change to vanilla Arch
than Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or Lubuntu are to vanilla Ubuntu, and one
almost has to wonder why whoever is in charge of Arch doesn't make it
an official flavor.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Le 24/04/2017 à 02:29, Linux for blind general discussion a écrit :
> *Does quick test* At least on my system, using ctrl+left square
> bracket to go back a page in Firefox puts focus on the link that took
> me forward, though I'll admit behavior isn't always consistent.
> 
> As for key bindings, I'm not sure a unified default would have much
> benefit to the average user. Might make transitioning from Windows to
> Linux easier, but the specific combination of applications the user
> uses is likely to be a much more important factor regardless, and
> changing the default of one program to match another could trip up
> users used to the old default.

It's my experience anyway. Users are much more opened to switch is they
don't have to learn everything.

> Personally, I'm in favor of customizable keybindings, ideally using a
> plain-text config file that is human readable(making customization
> easy for CLI junkies), an accessible gui for editing the
> keybindings(to make customization easy for those who prefer GUIs), and
> a trivial means of restoring the defaults(to make life easier for
> those who screwed up trying to customize).

Yes, sure.

> Now, if the devs of NVDA and Orca, and perhaps other graphical screen
> readers could agree upon a unified keymap and fully implemented custom
> keybindings, it might be a good idea for them to include presets such
> as NVDA Classic, Orca Classic, JAWS, ZoomText, and Unified along side
> the option to customize(Note: the inclusion of JAWS and ZoomText in
> that list assumes IP law isn't crazy enough for proprietary screen
> readers to claim ownership of their keybindings).
> 
> And if other blind users want to improve their ability to use an
> interface that is designed with a mouse or touchscreen in mind, their
> welcome to it, but until some technology that allows for truely
> tactile interfaces becomes mainstream, I'm more interested in
> accessibility advances that will free me from the GUI entirely.
> 

-- 
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Photo Jean-Philippe MENGUAL *JEAN-PHILIPPE MENGUAL**
DIRECTEUR TECHNIQUE ET QUALITÉ*
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Le 24/04/2017 à 02:24, Linux for blind general discussion a écrit :
> Orca only *seems* slightly slower than NVDA to some because it works
> directly with the browser. I'll take that any day over a page taking
> twice as long to load because it first has to be loaded into the
> browser, and then it has to be loaded yet again into NVDA's virtual
> buffer. And forget dynamic content. I expect dynamic content to work,
> not to slow down the whole screen reader because that has to replace
> part of the virtual buffer, or to fail to work at all because the
> virtual buffer is immutable while a page is loaded.

The fact is when I visit websites sometimes, Orca behaves much less good
than NVDA, less reactive, freeze,  etc.

> And control+left arrow going to the link I clicked on last? Hell no!
> Give me control+left and right that read by words as expected, which is
> what Orca does. I don't want all that fancy blinky stuff they have on

Sure. I meant alt-left and right.

> Windows that doesn't half work. Give me something that at least mostly
> works, and which can be improved in the near future, which is what I
> feel like I have now. I once heard from Janina Sajka, a well respected
> member of the w3c and the Linux Accessibility Working Group, that
> Firefox + Orca is the best combination currently available. I flatly
> refuse to disagree with that acessment.

Officially, I agree. In she facts, I have to recognize that performance
is less good than NVDA in some cases, some websites.

Regards,

> ~Kyle
> 
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Kelly Prescott here.
This is only my $0.02 worth as a developer, but here I go.
I can program, in several languages in fact.
Here is the problem.
Most people that write for Linux and free software in general do it on 
there own time.
Yes, there are a small group of highly paid developers that work on core 
stuff, but for the most part even in major distributions, the people do it 
because we enjoy it!
The reason Windows has better accessibility, is that the government has 
largely funded it.  FS and all the other players get a large percentage of 
there 
purchases from VR dollars which is the good old tax payer!

So while a private company developes it, Uncle Sam really foots the bill!
I only say that to show how hard it is to get accessible software built 
and maintained.
I am working on a UEFI boot loader that talks from bootup.  I am going to 
release it as open source.

The thing is: I have to feed me and mine durring this effort.
This means that I work on borring normal projects most of the time, and my 
boot loader when I have spare time.
I think there are several developers me among them who would do this full 
time, but if there is no money in it, then we must continue to work on our 
normal jobs/projects until we either have time to work on it or we find 
some good funding to pay for it.
Unfortunately, I do not know of good ways to obtain lots of money for 
part-time developers.  There is only so much free time and free work to go 
around.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony,
TalkingArch won't die. It used to have a single developer before those 
of us who maintain it now took over. The transition ran quite smoothly, 
and it didn't die. Since we now have two people instead of one, it has 
even less of a chance of dying in the future. So TalkingArch is slightly 
specialized, but it's a specialized image, not a specialized distro. 
That's the difference. Gentoo is the same if it has a specialized iso 
image. It's a specialized image that allows installation of the pure 
distro from a talking environment. That said, Gentoo can probably be 
installed from Debian, just like Arch can be installed from Fedora. Yes, 
Fedora in fact does have everything needed to bootstrap pure Arch, 
Debian and I believe Ubuntu as well from what I've seen. So although an 
iso image does make life easier, it can be said that all you really need 
to install pure Arch is a Fedora Live Workstation iso and an open 
terminal. So even if TalkingArch were to die, it would not become 
impossible to install Arch Linux.


Regarding why the unmute and prerecorded message aren't in the official 
Arch iso, one could state as you have done that they simply don't care 
about accessibility. But this is far from true. The main problem is that 
they already have a brltty package, but the brltty-minimal package is 
needed in order to make it work without pulling in lots of unneeded 
dependencies. This will always need to be in a separate repository 
unfortunately. Perhaps Chris, who maintained the iso before Kelly and I 
started maintaining it, can better explain why the unmute and 
prerecorded message aren't in the official image, but I'm certain there 
is a technical reason why Arch hasn't yet adopted these things. Still, 
even if they did, it would save just a little time and effort, and to 
have Arch come up speaking and brailling upon starting the iso is 
definitely better left to the TalkingArch image itself than to force 
users to blindly run something to get it working, which is what would 
need to be done to get the official iso talking, or install something, 
which is what would be needed to get it brailling.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. Umm, Kyle, no. Anyone can host any project without caring 
about accessibility. As you surely know, anyone can dump files on a public 
server and anyone can host a git repo. No, RH doesn't host Orca. The Gnome 
Foundation (gnome.org) hosts Orca. Their server is in Sweden. Joanie doesn't 
work for RH. She works for a totally unrelated company, the name of which 
escapes me. I have no idea how much work they put into their installer, but 
I would say too little, too late. You didn't address the broken Speakup 
kernel. Ubuntu doesn't have console speech working out of the box either, 
(one can set it up within a terminal app) but at least the Speakup modules work.


I don't blame RH for the state of the list or the spam. I blame them for 
their business decisions which seem to preclude accessibility and generally 
looking (pun intended) the other way when approached over the years. I do 
think it would be a very good idea to get this list off of their 
infrastructure. As I posted elsewhere, I'm not sure that fsf.org or gnu.org 
are good choices.


On 4/24/2017 4:14 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Tony,
First of all, as far as I've been able to deduce over the years, everyone
*cares* about accessibility. The problem is that no one *knows how* to best
address any issues with it. Red Hat certainly does care. If they didn't
care, they wouldn't ship Orca, or they wouldn't implement the alt+super+s
shortcut to turn on Orca in GNOME. Defaults you say, maybe. But still, if
they didn't care, why would they do so much work to get their installer
working with Orca? I don't think all that work was an accident.

With regard to yet another list, it's not necessary at all. We do still have
this list, and we can just put our names into our messages. Kyle here 
In any case, if we don't want that, the FSF does have an accessibility list
as well.
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
No sense making yet another Linux/free software accessibility list. Either
use this one, that one or both. In any case, we can't be blaming Red Hat for
the current state of this list. They did what they could do as quickly as
they could do it. Instead, if there is any blame to throw around, we should
be blaming the spammers that got us here.
~Kyle


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony,
First of all, as far as I've been able to deduce over the years, 
everyone *cares* about accessibility. The problem is that no one *knows 
how* to best address any issues with it. Red Hat certainly does care. If 
they didn't care, they wouldn't ship Orca, or they wouldn't implement 
the alt+super+s shortcut to turn on Orca in GNOME. Defaults you say, 
maybe. But still, if they didn't care, why would they do so much work to 
get their installer working with Orca? I don't think all that work was 
an accident.


With regard to yet another list, it's not necessary at all. We do still 
have this list, and we can just put our names into our messages. Kyle 
here  In any case, if we don't want that, the FSF does have an 
accessibility list as well.

https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
No sense making yet another Linux/free software accessibility list. 
Either use this one, that one or both. In any case, we can't be blaming 
Red Hat for the current state of this list. They did what they could do 
as quickly as they could do it. Instead, if there is any blame to throw 
around, we should be blaming the spammers that got us here.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

No. Long-time Jaws and NVDA users can figure out that t stands for time 
and use that instead, just like all the rest of us who used something 
else before we got to Orca. And if they really want something as stupid 
as f12, they can configure it in Orca's keybindings tab.

~Kyle

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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. See below. I disagree from experience.

On 4/23/2017 4:53 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Honestly, there isn't any distro I could in good conscience recommend
to a new Linux user blind or otherwise without caveats. Debian Stable
is usually rock solid, but that comes at the price of using old
versions of many applications, and while I tend to think Debian
Testing strikes a good balance between stability and cutting edge, I'd
have to agree it isn't for the average joe. Many swear by Knoppix as a
live CD, and running in Adriane mode, it's easily the most blind
accessible OS I've tried, but it's installer leaves much to be
desired(the installer is accessible and easy to use, but it doesn't
even allow creating user accounts aside from the default, creating a
separate home partitiion, or setting a sudo password).


Well yeah, what do you expect for a live CD? My talking live rescue CD has 
the same limitations and it's only for the console. I don't recommend 
installing a live CD, whether mine or someone else's. The Debian live CD 
goes into a different mode when doing the install. Ubuntu has the option to 
try it or install, although you can run the installer from the live system. 
Both use debootstrap to install a clean system. I installed the grml live CD 
a long time ago. What a mess! My system constantly broke and I never got X 
working. My drive crashed which was just as well. Since installing Debian 
testing, I've rarely had breakage. It's kind of boring now. I upgrade 500 
packages and everything goes smoothly. I don't have to downgrade and repair 
my system by hand anymore.




And while many Linux distributions are easier to install than
ever(accessibility issues aside), I think it's fair to say that
Installing an OS is still a Power User task, and ideally, for the
average joe, you want something a power user can install for them when
they buy a new computer and then never need to ask the power user for
help again. Granted, I don't think any OS has come that far in the
"you don't need the assistence of a power user" department.



I disagree. My dad installed Ubuntu MATE several times on his own without 
help. He didn't tell me he did the install until after the fact. I only had 
to walk him through the first time and that was only to partition his drive.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. See below.

On 4/23/2017 4:13 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I'd be interested in knowing the number of blind people using GNU/Linux
in the world, for daily life (so with browser, GUI, etc).


I'm still mostly on Windows XP, but I use Linux on an almost daily basis, 
mostly on servers. I ssh into various machines from Cygwin. I have Debian 
testing installed in my second partition but without a desktop. I find Linux 
copies to USB storage much faster than Windows. When I want to try a console 
program, I boot into my Debian testing. I had Ubuntu installed, but it 
crashed when trying to upgrade and I didn't feel like reinstalling.





I just hope the max devs will be common/cross-distros, and benefit for
everyone. I hope also that non-regression tests will come in free
software. And that distros will have a11y features, in a modular mode,
to be universal and avoid specialization. I don't forget the topic is
"blind vs mainstream", while my purpose is a fully accessibility beyond
vision impairment, but also from a level of knowledge point of view,
low-vision impaired people, and other kind of disabilities. But it was
useful to have this debate on the mailing list.



I agree. It should be about universal accessibility for everyone. Since this 
is the blinux list and since this was from the Sonar and Vinux thread, I 
changed the subject. I'm not familiar with other groups using Linux, but I 
would say that generally accessibility is lacking for them as well.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. See below.

On 4/23/2017 3:49 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Granted, I could be wrong and the only reason there isn't a .deb for
NVDA or an install.exe for Orca is because no one's tried compiling
them outside their native environments, but if it was that simple, it
begs the question of why no one has tried compiling them.



Actually, there is an install.exe for Orca. It's part of Cygwin and there 
should be an official Gnome binary. You can run a full Gnome desktop on 
native Windows. I don't know if Orca actually works, but in theory it should 
as it's written in Python. In reality, I'm sure it doesn't because Windows 
doesn't provide the same components and libraries as Linux. I think I read 
it doesn't work on BSD either even though it's in the ports tree. It might 
be possible to build NVDA with MinGW on Linux, but probably not. NVDA is 
written in Python, so you can run the latest git checkout without compiling. 
I think it uses C for some functions, but I'm no programmer and I have no idea.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. Comments below.

On 4/23/2017 3:45 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Nor is it mine. Which is exactly why I prefer the likes of Fedora and
OpenSUSE over Debian or even Arch. I have installed both Fedora and OpenSUSE
for clients, and they never have any trouble. And I'm not sure exactly what
OpenSUSE is doing about the upgrade deal these days, but I have seen where
Fedora is making system upgrades much easier than they have ever been in the
past. OpenSUSE does have one important feature that I haven't seen in
Fedora, Debian or Arch though, and that is the YAST control panel. It offers
graphical configuration tools to do just about everything imaginable on the
system, so people who are not power users can also perform system
maintenance far more easily. I don't believe they intend to remove any of
these tools any time soon, making it perhaps even better for the average
basic user even than Fedora. And yes, most if not all these tools are fully
accessible to the screen reader, or at least they were about 2 years ago
when I installed it last, and that has most likely improved since then.


First, Debian has several graphical control panels, depending on your needs. 
I prefer the command line and can't comment on them. Ubuntu has them also. 
What you haven't addressed or I missed it is Red Hat the company. Doesn't it 
bother you that they have mostly ignored accessibility? I don't run it here 
and I wouldn't consider it because there is no console speech. Apparently 
Speakup is broken in the Fedora kernel. I still remember going to their ftp 
site and being excited to find an accessibility directory. In it was a 
README telling me to go to speakupmodified.org. So much for accessibility I 
guess. I wouldn't use Fedora just on principle. Before you tell me that you 
or a nonprofit can work with them to make it happen, let's recall that Red 
Hat is one of the oldest Linux companies and hasn't managed full 
accessibility yet.




Regarding upgrades requiring skill, I think Fedora has done the best job
thus far making each system upgrade as painless as possible for anyone to
achieve, and even allowing the user to skip if desired. So if Debian doesn't
provide such an option, or if the end user has to fiddle around in
/etc/apt/sources.list or to reinstall the OS even once every two years, then
the upgrade process is not for the average user and should be avoided.



Umm, where do you get this? I installed Debian testing in 2009 and haven't 
had to reinstall yet. The only time I change sources.list is when there is a 
new mirror or CDN like deb.debian.org or to add a repo like deb-multimedia. 
My dad came from Windows. He didn't like DOS and wants nothing to do with 
the command line. He has no problem upgrading his Ubuntu MATE system. He ran 
into problems with serious Ubuntu bugs, but once he did a fresh install of 
16.04 LTS, the problems went away. His machine has gone for months without a 
reboot. All you have to do is click to install updates. The only time you 
have to restart is for a new kernel. I can't comment on Fedora, but unless 
it updates automatically, it can't get much easier. I'm opposed to automatic 
updates on principle. You can skip a Ubuntu release if you want, or you run 
the LTS release with the accessibility PPA and get the latest Orca etc.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. I have a really dumb question.

On 4/23/2017 3:14 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Ubuntu is based off of Debian, but Fedora is not a derivative of another
Linux distribution and has a more direct relationship with many upstream
projects by using newer versions of their software.



OK, why not build off of Gentoo or Arch? Both of those fall into the same 
category. In theory, you could set up a container or virtual machine, 
install the desktop components, make it talk, publish it as an .iso and 
that's it. There are lots of easy GUI installers for installation to the 
hard drive. You could push out updates as often as you want. Since the end 
users are running Arch or Gentoo already, they could get timely security 
fixes. Just modify Talking Arch and put a desktop on top of it.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. See below.

On 4/23/2017 3:11 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Absolutely.  For a number of years now, I've thought it would be nice to
have an umbrella foundation to help accessibility related projects.  I
don't know where it would get its funding, and I don't know what
considerations it would need to make when allocating resources to
projects.  Honestly I don't know anything about this sort of thing, but
the Linux Access Foundation sounds like a really good idea, in theory.


Yes. I would much rather see Vinux and Sonar resources used in this way. We 
really need an umbrella organization. How about VIBLUG? Visually Impaired 
and Blind Linux Users Group. I guess it isn't technically a LUG, but you get 
the idea. As to funding, as I've said before, it needs to be US-based. No, 
I'm not being US-centric, I'm being realistic. There are lots of companies 
who already support Linux development. Google and HP come to mind. Due to 
the sheer size of the population, I think a US nonprofit could get a lot 
more funding. Beyond that, social media is the next frontier. I can't stand 
Facebook, tumblr etc, but that's how you get the message out. Have a look at 
. It's an open source social network. Be warned that it 
isn't that accessible. Since it isn't centralized, anyone can run their own 
pod. The nonprofit could and should run one and could modify the software to 
make it accessible. Remember the teens and young adults of today are the 
potential donors and coders of tomorrow.




Yes. FSF could also do it now a11y makes part of priorities.



Really? From what I've seen, they're focused on too many other projects. I 
think a dedicated organization would be better. If we're part of the FSF, we 
play by their rules. If the FSF decides they don't like Fedora because it 
isn't free enough, they pull funding and support. Getting FSF support would 
be a very good idea and I support working with them, but I think we need to 
be independent.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm Tony Baechler. Probably others will comment, but having looked at the 
NVDA git repo and following the Orca list, I would like to clarify some things.


On 4/23/2017 2:54 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

And even if the NV association had any interest in branching out, I
suspect they'd be more interested in porting NVDA than improving other
projects, and depending on how much NVDA depends on Windows specific
APIs, that might just lead to slower development on the Windows side
without providing a decent Orca alternative under Linux.


Yes, this is correct. Actually, NVDA is written in Python and borrows code 
from Orca. Look at the credits some time. However, as you say, it's very 
specific to Windows and would be impossible to port to any other OS without 
a rewrite. It hooks directly into app accessibility like Orca and unlike 
other Windows screen readers. That's why in my opinion I get a much better 
Firefox experience than with Window-Eyes. It's very much closer to how Orca 
works. Pages are buffered and read much faster. It has an equivalent of 
forms or browse mode, but switches in and out automatically as you come to a 
form field, such as an edit box. While I think it would be good for the 
projects to work together, as Kyle said, I don't see it happening. NVDA, for 
example, uses custom Braille drivers and a modified ESpeak.



understand it, Orca doesn't wrok well at all in desktop enviornments
other than Gnome and Mate).



This is partially true, but because those other desktops don't have built-in 
accessibility. In Windows, a screen reader tries to make every app 
accessible, whether that's a browser, media player, calculator, etc. That's 
why you learn a set of keyboard commands for your screen reader and expect 
them to work everywhere. This mostly works, but not always. NVDA and Orca 
use the opposite approach. Rely on the apps themselves to provide 
accessibility hooks. QT works much better in NVDA than Window-Eyes, even 
though WE claims to have QT support. KDE doesn't have accessibility hooks 
like Gnome, MATE and Unity do, so no, Orca won't work. I read that XFCE has 
some accessibility support. LibreOffice in Linux works much better than in 
Windows, at least last time I tried.


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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

You're replying to me. I'm Tony Baechler.

On 4/23/2017 10:38 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I'm not sure who I'm replying to, but I just have a few points. Vinux 4 and
Vinux 5 were based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 respectively, which I
think were the high points in Ubuntu accessibility, but maybe that's just
with Unity.


I don't use anything other than MATE so I can't comment. I don't remember 
what Vinux I tried, but I think it was 3 or 4.




I've never had a problem with the Vinux installer crashing in a stable
version of vinux, and I've installed all vinuxes going back to Vinux 3 and
maybe even Vinux 2. I also don't find the Vinux installer to be particularly
unfriendly. It gets a bit complicated if you have to go into GPartEd, but
I'm not sure how much simpler you can make repartitioning your hard drive.


All I know is I ran remastersys (now dead) and it crashed. I never actually 
installed it, but I got complaints that it was hard to use. They probably 
fixed this in version 5.




I'll go ahead and move my signature above the quoted text.


Well, your signature got lost.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

My name is Tony Baechler. Since names aren't showing up, it makes it very 
hard to track discussions. If no one objects, I think I'll create a new list 
very soon. I've looked at groups.io and they look good enough. Besides, as I 
stated before, Red Hat has shown many times that they don't care about 
accessibility, so just on principle, I think it's time to move on. Sorry for 
my rant. See below.


On 4/23/2017 10:00 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

differing arches all have the same source in common. So, maintaining for them 
is actually easier than you might think. All that would really be required to 
make an arch specific package is the proper scripts that patch and package for 
that arch. Otherwise, the source code, itself, is pretty common across all 
arches.


Yes, this is true. Just do the usual ./configure;make;make install. However, 
we run into problems with testing and cross-compiling. I know ARM binaries 
can be compiled on x86_64, but it requires either an ARM toolchain or a 
virtual machine. Without having real hardware, it's impossible to know for 
sure that your binaries work. Case in point, ESpeak crashes on the Pi due to 
some sound card bug. There is some workaround, but I don't have a Pi and I 
haven't followed it.


That said, if you're only compiling for one or two distros, like Debian and 
Fedora, it might work and one person might be able to keep up. Just have 
Debian stable, testing, and oldstable containers. Then we have the issue of 
what distros do we support? Do we support Arch because it's bleeding edge or 
do we let the Arch Linux developers do that themselves? Do we support all 
supported versions of Ubuntu or only LTS? Do we support Debian Squeeze 
because it was the last version to work with serial ports, even though 
Debian doesn't support it anymore? What about security? How do we get the 
latest fix for the libespeak libraries out if the only person doing the 
compiling is sick?




Now, I have done this in the past. Used a source tar ball and compiled on a 
debian based system and also compiled on a RedHat based system and in both 
cases, the utility that I compiled functioned the same and required the same 
libraries and development tools.


Yes, but you're missing the point. You compiled that tool for systems that 
you use, presumably on those systems. Did you run the Debian binary on a Red 
Hat system? If you only need glibc, you might get lucky, but sooner or 
later, you're bound to run into shared library conflicts. The reason why you 
can't just switch your /etc/apt/sources.list on a Debian system to Ubuntu is 
due to this. Ubuntu often ships different library versions. Let's take a 
realistic example. Debian Stretch should be released very soon. Ubuntu 17.04 
has just been released. In six months, Ubuntu 17.10 will come out. Debian 
won't have another stable release for about 24 months. Well, if your binary 
is compiled on Ubuntu 17.10 or 18.04, it most certainly won't run on Debian 
Stretch, even though it's still supported. Likewise, while usually older 
glibc versions work, if Ubuntu switches to eglibc, it's likely your binary 
will break. Really, the only way you could do this is to compile everything 
statically which isn't usually a good idea. Even so, Orca is written in 
Python and depends very much on the latest Gnome, so you would still have 
breakage.



THere is also the use of a ports tree (As seen in the BSD ecology). I have been 
able to compile some linux tools over there, but the ports tree is a bit 
limited and still depends on developer support. So, in that case, it could be 
problematic.


Yes, I thought of that and that has a decent chance of working. You can 
build pkgsrc ports from the NetBSD tree on Linux. It's a lot like Arch and 
Gentoo in that you can have the bleeding edge if you want and it's compiled 
on your hardware for your system. I would very much support an accessibility 
ports system like this. The problem is most users don't know how to install 
a ports tree, don't want to install a bunch of overhead tools, don't have 
the space for a bunch of source packages and, unless I'm mistaken, it's 
impossible to build ports in a GUI. That brings us back to a specialized 
distro based on Gentoo or Arch. Talking Arch already fills this need. I 
personally don't mind compiling the latest code from scratch. I even set 
aside an extra partition for testing Orca. However, I'm in the minority. 
Even I get tired of it after a while, especially since Orca is updated 
almost daily in git.




Someone else pointed out that we may need an organization fronting some 
development as a means to get patches and packages reviewed faster. Perhaps we 
need to take a look at the guys at the NV Association (the makers of NVDA, the 
free windows screen reader). THey have a fairly sizable fundraising network and 
do a lot of work with some paid developers. Also, the guys running the 
organization are a pair of blind programers. Now, if we 

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm not saying you would want it, but long-time NVDA and Jaws users would.
-- 
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Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> Why do I want insert+f12 to tell me the time when insert+t, (t for
> time), can do that for me just fine and more intuitively? How is f12
> better than t, which stands for time? No, that's simply not a logical
> keybinding, and I don't want it in Orca. BTDubs, holding in the insert
> Orca key and double tapping t for time does tell me the date. So again
> I ask what the hell does f12 mean and why is it needed to do the same
> thing that t already does?
> ~Kyle
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Why do I want insert+f12 to tell me the time when insert+t, (t for 
time), can do that for me just fine and more intuitively? How is f12 
better than t, which stands for time? No, that's simply not a logical 
keybinding, and I don't want it in Orca. BTDubs, holding in the insert 
Orca key and double tapping t for time does tell me the date. So again I 
ask what the hell does f12 mean and why is it needed to do the same 
thing that t already does?

~Kyle

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Re: Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The biggest problem with all this "stability" stuff is that all
operating systems will have their bugs. Windows has bugs, Mac
has huge cockroaches, and Linux has ants. So it really is a
problem of if a user wants more accessibility, or less bugs, and
it’s not always Orca’s fault.
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Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> Hi,
>
>
>> Additionally, Fedora is nearly dead center between the Arch philosophy
>> of the rolling release, having the latest and greatest at all costs, and
>> the Debian philosophy, in which older is better, so the latest changes
>> to Orca that make it work better on the web for example, which have been
>> available for some time, may not make it into the OS for as long as two
>
> It is not the Debian philosophy. Debian does not say "older is better",
> but "stable is better", as known and we know how to deal with a
> situation. And an update is possible is if it sure it will not break
> anything in stable.
>
> For persons who want to get benefit from an Orca improvement in Debian
> stable, installing backport is possible. It mainly works fine, without
> problems for the OS stability. But Orca updates may create lots of bugs.
> For example, so far, we hoped we would update from 3.16 to 3.22, but
> 3.22 introduced bugs on the Web and LibreOffice. Ok it's more reactive,
> it has improvements, but also regressions. And "basic" users hate
> regressions, and upgrading permanently has regressions risks. Except if
> we do non-reg tests, as I plan. But it's not done yet.
>
>
>> years. The 6-month release cycle is perfect, as nothing gets too old,
>> and upstream is imported fully and directly at first, with a chance for
>> instability and breakage to settle down before a full release, during
>> which time, new upstream versions can be integrated into the released
>> system if and only if nothing breaks. Meanwhile, any necessary patches
>
> This 6-months cycle is perfect for power-users. Not for elderly persons,
> new blind people, etc. which may be disturbed by so frequent changes and
> regressions. I don't forget that LibreOffice has not been accessible
> since 4.2.6, Firefox introduces many a11y bugs frequently, denounced by
> Joanie, and the a11y stack in GNOME has sometimes bugs if release of
> each lib is not exactly the same. A11y stack is ser1ral programs (about
> 15-20). Very difficult, in a short cycle, to ensure they stay without
> regressions. And upgrading each 6 months requires some skills,
> standalone, and not all users have it. And opposing power users of free
> shftware with beginners with Apple or Microsoft programs is not my
> dream, even today.
>
>> are, in theory at least, sent back directly upstream to the application
>> developers, similar to the way Arch works. And this is not at all the
>> endgame. The ultimate goal is to be able to do away with Vinux
>> completely, as upstream applications themselves will be perfected so
>> that they work with the available accessibility stack, and this will
>> eventually filter down into everything from Arch all the way down to
>> Debian Stable and CentOS, and even into the various derivatives and
>> forks such as Manjaro and Ubuntu. Yes, any chaining is mostly not really
>
> I can agree this point. I just am sure we'd be stronger everybody on a
> single workspace, but we probably can do with our respective distros.
>
> Regards,
>
>> a good thing, but we're much closer to the top of the chain now than we
>> ever have been, and the endgame is to work at the top of the chain in
>> all things.
>> Sent from the range
>> 
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Well, I'd love for this resource to be used. I would if I knew anything
about how all that works. There was a guy on the Orca list, the
creator of Liblouis, which asked if anything needed to be done
with Orca development. We told him Braille support, but so far,
nothing has happened in that space for a long while. As a
braille display user, I’d love to have support to rival that in
screen readers for Windows GUI’s, and with inexpensive display
tech on the way, Braille support will be very important for
Linux to have, lest we become the laughing stock of the blind
community.
"Oh wow. That Linux thing? Yeah, shows the power of the people
so well. They can’t even make good Braille support, with all
these $400 displays out! Lol, give me NVDA any day. At least it
supports showing formatting info and word wrap, and none of the
display programs on Linux even support typing in grade 2
Braille!"
So really, speech in Linux is pretty darn good, but Braille
needs plenty of work.
-- 
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Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> This is the kind of thing we created the International Association Of
> Visually Impaired Technologists for. It has donated server space and
> is incorporated legally as a nonprofit (501C3) in the USA.  The
> infrastructure is available if you care to put it to use.
>
>
> --
>
> John Heim
>
>
>
>
>
> On 04/23/2017 12:00 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> ok,
>>
>> differing arches all have the same source in common. So, maintaining for 
>> them is actually easier than you might think. All that would really be 
>> required to make an arch specific package is the proper scripts that patch 
>> and package for that arch. Otherwise, the source code, itself, is pretty 
>> common across all arches.
>>
>> Now, I have done this in the past. Used a source tar ball and compiled on a 
>> debian based system and also compiled on a RedHat based system and in both 
>> cases, the utility that I compiled functioned the same and required the same 
>> libraries and development tools.
>>
>> THere is also the use of a ports tree (As seen in the BSD ecology). I have 
>> been able to compile some linux tools over there, but the ports tree is a 
>> bit limited and still depends on developer support. So, in that case, it 
>> could be problematic.
>>
>> Someone else pointed out that we may need an organization fronting some 
>> development as a means to get patches and packages reviewed faster. Perhaps 
>> we need to take a look at the guys at the NV Association (the makers of 
>> NVDA, the free windows screen reader). THey have a fairly sizable 
>> fundraising network and do a lot of work with some paid developers. Also, 
>> the guys running the organization are a pair of blind programers. Now, if we 
>> could get them involved, it might help to enhance operations in creating a 
>> standardized accessibility package set that can be arch independent.
>>
>> Now, mind you, I am not a coder. I can operate a compiler, even make some 
>> simple changes to get a compile working, but thats about as far as my 
>> developer skills go. My forte is security, intrusion detection, firewall 
>> scripting and auditing as well as advanced system administration. And yes, 
>> my preferred OS in a secure environment is in the BSD ecology. However, as a 
>> recent exchange with Theo DeRaadt demonstrates, there are just some folks 
>> who won't even consider supporting the idea of making an OS accessible. In 
>> fact (as that recent exchange demonstrated), they might just go out of their 
>> way to impede progress in this area.
>>
>> anyway, given all that we are striving for, some good help can be had out 
>> there (like the aforementioned NV association). It's just a matter of 
>> getting them onboard.
>>
>> -eric
>>
>> On Apr 23, 2017, at 4:13 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/18/2017 8:23 AM, Eric Oyen wrote:
 here is one thing that might be distro independent: create an 
 accessibility package set. This would include the required libs, scripts, 
 binaries and config files needed to make any distro accessible. It would 
 include emacspeak, BrlTTY, ORCA, the appropriate audio drivers and 
 libraries and even access to the kernel modules required to make it all 
 work.
>>>
>>> While great in principle, it's impossible and wouldn't work. First, how do 
>>> you maintain binaries for the different arches? The Raspberry Pi runs on 
>>> ARM, I'm running amd64, some old machines are 32-bit x86, etc. Again, 
>>> speaking of very limited resources, it would be impossible to maintain the 
>>> latest versions of all of these packages and build binaries for all of the 
>>> arches. Also, what about memory? A small ARMEL system