Re: emacspeak finally running

[Christopher Chaltain]

Another tip that was posted to this list a while ago, that I'll try next 
time I update Emacspeak, unless I switch to the method Tim recommends, 
is the following:


Try running
touch servers/linux-outloud/atcleci.so
from the root of the emacspeak source tree.
make will be fooled into installing a dummy atcleci.so.  That's fine,
since you don't have outloud on that machine.

Chris posted this.

On 02/03/17 18:01, Jude DaShiell wrote:

Thanks Christopher, I'll find that and adjust and can probably have
emacspeak living under builds without so much major surgery that way.
On Thu, 2 Mar 2017, Christopher Chaltain wrote:


Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 18:45:57
From: Christopher Chaltain <chalt...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@redhat.com>
To: Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: emacspeak finally running

To get around the Makefile trying to compile the server for Outloud, I
just commented out the following line in the Makefile:

# $(INSTALL)  -m 755 ${OUTLOUD}  $(libdir)/servers/linux-outloud

On 02/03/17 15:25, Jude DaShiell wrote:

What a mess!
I had to do a whole lot of things way outside documentation to get this
application running.
First, since outloud kept on insisting on compiling I did major surgery
on the emacspeak/servers directory and erased anything that wasn't
linux-espeak.  I think emacspeak was getting confused in that directory.
After make config and make emacspeak and copying the directory and all
subdirectories that had emacspeak-setup.el to /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
and adding an (add-list "load-path statement above emacspeak-setup.el
line as suggested in the info page, I had to start emacs which
complained it couldn't find emacspeak-setup.el after being loaded and
then I did a load-library  emacspeak-setup.el  and heard
emacspeak finally do something close to its normal startup including the
organ music.
Now I'm going to have to investigate to find out why the
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/lisp/lisp/ path wasn't liked by emacs.
I think the Make file in the emacspeak directory inadvertently had its
exit statements stripped out if exit is even a valid Makefile command
because the stanza just below emacspeak: was you guessed it outloud:.
My reading of Makefile code isn't all that professional but all I found
was a blank line between the end of the emacspeak stanza and the
outloud: stanza and unless that's a valid form of exit it's entirely
understandable why outloud kept building even though viavoice wasn't on
the machine at the time.  Let's not even talk about searching for
existing server software before building anything, that will add too
much complexity to the Makefile most likely.
Now I'm going to go study Makefile syntax and see if I can learn enough
to figure out some valid fixes for this one.



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Re: emacspeak finally running

[Christopher Chaltain]

To get around the Makefile trying to compile the server for Outloud, I 
just commented out the following line in the Makefile:


#   $(INSTALL)  -m 755 ${OUTLOUD}  $(libdir)/servers/linux-outloud

On 02/03/17 15:25, Jude DaShiell wrote:

What a mess!
I had to do a whole lot of things way outside documentation to get this
application running.
First, since outloud kept on insisting on compiling I did major surgery
on the emacspeak/servers directory and erased anything that wasn't
linux-espeak.  I think emacspeak was getting confused in that directory.
After make config and make emacspeak and copying the directory and all
subdirectories that had emacspeak-setup.el to /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
and adding an (add-list "load-path statement above emacspeak-setup.el
line as suggested in the info page, I had to start emacs which
complained it couldn't find emacspeak-setup.el after being loaded and
then I did a load-library  emacspeak-setup.el  and heard
emacspeak finally do something close to its normal startup including the
organ music.
Now I'm going to have to investigate to find out why the
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/lisp/lisp/ path wasn't liked by emacs.
I think the Make file in the emacspeak directory inadvertently had its
exit statements stripped out if exit is even a valid Makefile command
because the stanza just below emacspeak: was you guessed it outloud:.
My reading of Makefile code isn't all that professional but all I found
was a blank line between the end of the emacspeak stanza and the
outloud: stanza and unless that's a valid form of exit it's entirely
understandable why outloud kept building even though viavoice wasn't on
the machine at the time.  Let's not even talk about searching for
existing server software before building anything, that will add too
much complexity to the Makefile most likely.
Now I'm going to go study Makefile syntax and see if I can learn enough
to figure out some valid fixes for this one.



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Re: Orca & tbird issues

[Christopher Chaltain]

Thunderbird has control+r for reply to sender, control+shift+r for reply 
to all and control+shift+l for reply to list.


On 10/11/16 08:36, Janina Sajka wrote:

I just don't see any good reason for running a client like mutt in a gui
terminal with Orca. Yes, from the "let's get everything working like it
should" perspective, we need good performance and good behavior in gui
terminals, but mutt just runs so well in a console terminal (think
screen) with Speakup, that I just don't worry my poor little head over
the gui terminal.

It's rather interesting, though, that similar issues can sometimes crop
up in the console environment. I've recently been running Fedora 25
pre-release mutt v. 1.7.1 as my client, and I occasionally run into
focus problems, meaning that what Speakup's Keypad 8 will say is one off
from the actual selection. Usually the screen Ctrl+l "redraw the screen"
command fixes that.

Until the last mutt update there was a more annoying issue for me where
Home and End didn't work to take you to the top or bottom of the index
list. It was a bug, and I'm so glad it's now squashed.

As for replying to the wrong person, that just happens if one isn't
careful to observe the header data before sending. You don't need to be
blind and using a screen reader to exhibit that behavior. I see the very
same thing every so often from the very smart teckies on my various W3C
lists, most of who are perfectly able bodied.

Mutt does have one command I absolutely love, and I wonder whether the
gui clients have something similar. There's the usual 'r' for reply to
the sender, and 'g' for reply to all, but I particularly appreciate
Shift+L for "reply only to the lists, and not the individuals."

I must confess, though, that I'm impressed that people have found a
browser interface to email fully usable. To me this suggests that
familiarity with the particular environment is still the most important
factor for success with whatever one chooses to use.

Janina

Tim Chase writes:

On November  9, 2016, Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:

Personally, I've never seen the point of e-mail clients and have
always used a web browser to check my e-mail.


I think the big advantage is off-line usage.  If you are connected
all the time and have dual-mode access for redundancy (say, a home
internet/wifi connection, and a 4G aircard), and don't roam much,
then a web-based mail client solves a lot of problems.  But when
internet access is spotty or unreliable, it's nice to have full
access to your email offline.  Fortunately, there are lots of
options, both within the GUI with varying degrees of accessibility
(Thunderbird, Kmail, Claws Mail, and Evolution come to mind) and
within the terminal (mutt and alpine being the dominant players, but
"alot" and mailx/heirloom mailx also come to mind as well as several
available within emacs).

-tim


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Re: iPhone Debate.

[Christopher Chaltain]

Quite a few people can discuss this rationally. I've had both iPhones 
and Android devices for a few years now. I recently switched my every 
day smart phone from an iPhone to an Android phone. I still use an 
iPhone at the office. I see quite a few people on the Android and the 
iPhone lists I'm on who have experience with both platforms and who 
recognize each platform's strengths and weaknesses.


Unfortunately there are a lot of fan boys on each side, and a lot of 
dated or misinformation out there, but that doesn't mean there aren't 
rational people out there too.


On 13/11/16 18:33, John G. Heim wrote:

A few years ago on the web site of the International Association of
Visually Impaired Technologists, www.iavit.org, I set up a page to
compare screen readers. I thought I'd collect data and put up a fair,
head-to-head comparison. My collaborators at iavit had an intervention
with me and got me to take the page down.  They're like, "You don't want
to open that can of worms." I swear I am the only person on this planet
able to discuss this stuff rationally.

I have an ancient ipod touch and an iphone. The reason I got the itouch
was that back then, all my research indicated that the screen reader for
android was no where near as good as voiceover for IOS. As President of
IAVIT and an employee at the University of Wisconsin, I have
considerable expertise at hand.  I also read reviews on-line and asked
around on the internet. Voiceover was the clear winner at that time. I
did the same research the last time I bought a phone about a year and a
half ago. all my research indicated that things had tightened up
considerably but that voiceover for IOS was still ahead. Almost
everybody I talked to said one thing that bothered me. They said you
could get a lot out of an android phone but you'd have to work at it. An
iphone just works.

I am happy with both my ipod touch and my iphone. I certainly don't
think you're making a mistake to buy an iphone. It sounds to me that if
you are willing to work at it, you might be able to get more bang for
your buck from android. I don't know though, I don't have an android phone.

PS: Since when do worms come in a can?

On 11/13/2016 05:58 PM, Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:

Back when I used an Android device, I don't remember much pressure to
use Google services, but that was back in the Android 2.3 days, so
it's entirely possible Google has gotten pushier since then.

Closest things to a Smartphone I have these days are a Raspberry
Pi(running Rasbian, giving me the freedom of Linux) and a Blaze ET,
which I think might be running a custom Android and doesn't really
have much beyond Text-to-speech of eBooks and media playback going for
it, but does those really well(Plays most audio and video formats(MKV
being the most notable exclusion) and reads most text formats(Kindle
being the most notable exclusion) all in a smartphone-like form
factor, a fully voiced interface with physical buttons and a
full-sized SD slot.



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Re: spammer on list

[Christopher Chaltain]

I figured the original intent of these signatures was just free 
advertising. I first noticed them when I'd see signatures like "This 
email message was scanned for viruses by some anti-virus application." I 
personally don't feel any more secure seeing a message like this since 
it would be trivial for a virus to insert this line itself. I do see 
some value in letting people know you're sending a message from a device 
where you may not be comfortable with text input.


On 13/11/16 12:26, Tim Chase wrote:

On November 13, 2016, Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:

Honestly, I've never understood the "sent from x" meme. Like anyone
really gives a damn whether you were on your smartphone, or home
computer, or a school computer when you typed a message.


The original intent of the "sent from my iPhone/Blackberry/Palm/whatever"
was to convey "I'm typing this on a device where input is difficult,
so please forgive spelling & grammar errors and please excuse the
terseness of the reply."

It sorta morphed into a bragging about the technologically
advanced device you had, and then has since adopted a bit of a jokey
feel about it.  So I've seen jokes about old hardware such as "Sent
from my PDP-11" or "Sent from my Apple II".  There are also jokey
ones about Internet of Things devices such as "Sent from my
toaster/refrigerator".

But yeah, at this point in history, nobody really cares from which
device you send email.  They all do it. (grins)

-tim


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Re: Accessible redhat?

[Christopher Chaltain]

Fedora is an accessible desktop Linux distribution, and I assume it 
still has some ties to Redhat. Before it was spun off as a community 
sponsored distribution it used to be called something like Redhat 
Desktop. I'm not sure if this is what you're asking or not.


On 09/11/16 11:50, Mark Peveto wrote:

I noticed this list is hosted on redhat.com, but does redhat have
accessibility components?  I've never heard.


Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Everything happens after coffee!

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Re: Internationalizing Screen readers.

[Christopher Chaltain]

Can't you do this from the Voice page of the Orca settings? 

On 03/11/16 23:29, Jeffery Mewtamer wrote:

How do I check what synthesizers are available on my system, which one
Orca is using, and how would I change which is being used?



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Re: Emacspeak and eSpeak

[Christopher Chaltain]

Voice-lock gives you a different voice when the font changes, such as 
when you're reading a comment in your code or you come across a link in 
your browser.


The default is a UK English voice. I was able to change this in the 
past, but when I tried to change it recently the same steps didn't work. 
It's not that big a deal for me, so I haven't put the time into it to 
figure it out.


On 08/10/16 11:52, Fernando Botelho wrote:



On 10/08/2016 12:11 AM, Devin Prater wrote:

For now, eSpeak cannot use the voice-lock features of Emacspeak.
That's my
main problem with it's maintenance now, and that I can't change the voice
to the En-us language.



This sounds bad. What is voice-lock used for?

Also, if you cannot use US English, what do you use?  Somehow I thought
US English would be the default.

Fernando

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Re: Enabling Console Speech Inside Vinux?

[Christopher Chaltain]

Sorry, I didn't see the rest of your questions. I asume you're talking 
about Vinux.


I don't run Windows myself, but I'm pretty sure the wiki points people 
to some various options to build a bootable USB stick under Windows.


Vinux comes up with Orca enabled, and I'm not sure what other screen 
reader options exist for Linux, so I'm not sure why Vinux would have to 
provide information on the wiki on how to enable Orca.


You can purchase Voxin through the Vinux pages, but I use eSpeak myself.

On 16/09/16 22:21, Hart Larry wrote:

Well, I tried posting a similar inquiree in the Speakup list, but it
never went through.
Also, I tried joining the Vinux list, but they require you to sign in to
google.
So here are comments-and-questions?
#1 It would be much simpler if they also were to provide a windows
executable, as dealing with an iso is not always convenient.
#2 I was pleasantly surprised that installing Vinux along side windows
vista did not nuke a JAWS10 authorization.
#3 The Vinux WIKI hardly mentions screen-readers-and-how to enable them.
I did purchase Voxen, as I would never wanna hear e-speak for anything.
#4 Ideally, can some1 please inform what to edit so it will boot in
console with either Speakup or YASR? I don't mind having access to a
graphical, but I would rather boot in a TCSH shell.
I can certainly use Notepad in windows to edit any configs, unless, a
duel boot won't see the windows side of the house?
#5 And yes I would want great sounding speech in both
console-and-graphical on a 64bit image on a laptop.
Thanks so much in advance for guidance
Hart

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Joining the Vinux list [was {Re: Enabling Console Speech Inside Vinux?"]

[Christopher Chaltain]

I'm not sure why you think you need to sign into Google to join the 
Vinux mailing list. Try emailing vinux-support+subscr...@googlegroups.com


On 16/09/16 22:21, Hart Larry wrote:

Well, I tried posting a similar inquiree in the Speakup list, but it
never went through.
Also, I tried joining the Vinux list, but they require you to sign in to
google.
So here are comments-and-questions?
#1 It would be much simpler if they also were to provide a windows
executable, as dealing with an iso is not always convenient.
#2 I was pleasantly surprised that installing Vinux along side windows
vista did not nuke a JAWS10 authorization.
#3 The Vinux WIKI hardly mentions screen-readers-and-how to enable them.
I did purchase Voxen, as I would never wanna hear e-speak for anything.
#4 Ideally, can some1 please inform what to edit so it will boot in
console with either Speakup or YASR? I don't mind having access to a
graphical, but I would rather boot in a TCSH shell.
I can certainly use Notepad in windows to edit any configs, unless, a
duel boot won't see the windows side of the house?
#5 And yes I would want great sounding speech in both
console-and-graphical on a 64bit image on a laptop.
Thanks so much in advance for guidance
Hart

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Re: How did people here learn GUIs

[Christopher Chaltain]

Will apt-get really work in Windows? Adding bash support is a long way 
from adding Debian's packaging system. This would be great if it were 
true, but I'm a bit skeptical.


On 19/07/16 13:08, Janina Sajka wrote:

John, you're correct about most people, but not about most computer
professionals, especially not about computer programmers.

My evidence is how Microsoft is now adding bash from Ubuntu to Windows
10.
All the programmers I know who use Windows are seriously jazzed about
this new upgrade to Windows. Just imagine using apt-get to add some
package ton the Windows command line environment.

This has been an interesting thread. I'm looking forward to reading
more.

My own personal experience predates accessible Unix shell access. I say
Unix, because Linux had not yet been invented. The only way to access a
Unix shell in the 1980's was to have an account at some company or
university, or to buy monthly access at some service like The Well, or
eventually at netcom. Where I lived, that also meant paying for the
modem call by the minute, because the calls from San Francisco to the
Well, or to Netcom were intra latta calls, and were charged pretty hefty
fees.

But, this background is important, I think, because we didn't exactly
have command line access at services like Compuserve, the Source, or
Delphi Internet services. What we had was a menu of options. Sometimes
the menu would be something you could arrow or tab through, sometimes it
was just printed on screen and you had to type the command you wanted at
the prompt.

How is that like gui desktops? More primitive, yes, but it's object
oriented. You select an object and activate it. Then, you do that again
on the next screen. So, early gui was no problem from the conceptual
point of view, because it was just a menu of options presented in
hieroglyphs rather than words. Of course, those hieroglyphs--we learned
to call them icons--weren't accessible because we didn't have a way to
associate them with words. We had to do some serious advocacy to get the
operating environment retrofitted in a way that would allow words to be
associated with those icons.

In the early days of gui accessibility several books in braille appeared
designed to teach us this graphical environment. I remember a title from
the U.K. called "Windows Explained" that came with wonderful graphic
representations of various screens on Windows computers. If titles like
that aren't available today, somebody should start writing. From the
discussion here it's clear to me that a good, conceptual overview of how
the gui works, along with some good braille graphics, would likely prove
highly valuable. It would be even more valuable if it showed Microsoft,
Apple, Chrome and Linux -- but I'm probably dreaming to ask for that
much! 

PS: I got my first real cli when Netcom created a pop in San Francisco.
The day I hear about that I signed up. I expected to find menus when I
logged in, but no, I just got a shell prompt. I was flummoxed. I called
for tech support, because the docs they sent in the mail were only in
print. The owner of the company was doing his own tech support back
then. When he realizaed I was blind, he showed me how to read usenet
news groups and man pages. He promissed to help me if I got stuck, but
with usenet and man in my skillset, I never had to call him again. This
is a true story, but you were all asking about gui, not cli.

Janina


John J. Boyer writes:

My experience is that most blind people like a GUI with a screen reader
better than the command line. Those who have teouble with GUIs, like me,
seem to be decidedly in the minority.

John

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 12:29:39AM +0200, Anders Holmberg wrote:

Hi!
Thats intresting.
I am the total oposit guy.
I had and have no problems learning gui’s but for me the command line is to 
hard.
Although i began with a debian command line system 16 years ago and gave that 
up for windows a couple of years.
Now i am back to vinux and a mac with osx.
I whish i was patient enough to learn command line.
Maybe i am to dum or maybe i am lazy.
/A

On 17 Jul 2016, at 22:57, Sam Hartman  wrote:


"John" == John J Boyer  writes:


   John> I';ve been trying to get a feel for GUIs for years. Sighted
   John> colleagues are no help. They only tell me how they use the
   John> mouse. They won't use a keyboard shourcut even when it is much
   John> simpler. For example, they will scroll down a long document
   John> instead of using ctrl+f to find something.  i've tried
   John> unsuccessfully tpo find a Jaws trainer. After I reinstalled
   John> Windows 7 recently Jaws wouldn't install. I'm now using NVDA
   John> and I don't think I'll go back to Jaws.

This is really interesting, because now I'm realizing that I don't know
how to teach someone GUIs on modern equipment at all.
I don't know  if I can find a solution, but I'll see if I can toss the
question around.

I hear your frustration 

Re: latest ubuntu

[Christopher Chaltain]

What version of Ubuntu have you tried, and how did you try to bring up 
speech? Did you try alt+super+s for example?


Also, Vinux is based on Ubuntu, and it comes up talking.

On 07/07/16 06:17, Kristoffer Gustafsson wrote:

Hi.
Since I got problems with latest testing version of debian(it refuses
to run orca) I have decided to try ubuntu instead.
but when trying there is no braille or speech at all.
can I install ubuntu in some way?
I tried the network install, but when I did ubuntu didn't find my
harddrive. just the usb stick.
/Kristoffer



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Re: Sharing files between Linux and Windows

[Christopher Chaltain]

It's been a while, but I don't think you need to install a Samba server 
on Windows. I've never had to install anything on Windows to share a 
folder or access folders from other Windows boxes or Linux boxes running 
a Samba server. You just need to set up a home group in Windows.


On 06/07/16 13:39, John J. Boyer wrote:

I tried to install a samba server on Windows. However, the Geek Squad
agent who was helping said he didn't know enough to proceed. If I go to
the Samba website, what should I do?

Thanks,
John

On Wed, Jul 06, 2016 at 01:22:27PM -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:

Ditto. I've also only every used Samba for this.

Note, however, that once you have Samba set up, you can perfectly access
the Windows folder from the Linux command line. Look at the man pages
for the following:

smbclient
smbget

Good luck!

Janina

John G Heim writes:

I have always done this with samba.  I never found it particularly
difficult. You do have to read/follow the instructions.



On 07/05/2016 01:36 PM, Mark Peveto wrote:

I'll be interested in the answer to that question myself.  I've had some tell 
me I need to use samba to do that...I've never been able to make it work.

Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from F123 Visual using alpine 2.20.13


On Tue, 5 Jul 2016, John J. Boyer wrote:


I'm going to set up a folder called c:\share on my Windows machine. I
want to set up a device on my Linux machine which is connected with this
folder over my LAN. I know that this can be done, because I had
something similar at one time. However, i'm not certain how to do it
again. If I remember, it just took an entry in fstab and an entry in
/dev. Thanks.

John

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Re: how do I find out what's hanging me up?

[Christopher Chaltain]

For those who don't already know, the KNFB Reader app is 33% off in the 
App Store and 80% off in the Play Store.


On 04/07/16 11:26, Mark Peveto wrote:

It's not perfect by any means, but brother when you don't have a pair of eyes 
handy it's better than nothin.  I haven't bought knfb yet, although my
fiance, Alicia, has it.

Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13


On Mon, 4 Jul 2016, John G. Heim wrote:


If you can configure a serial console, you would be able to read those
messages. But I still say it's a process in an uninterrruptable sleep which
means the kernel can't kill it during a normal shutdown. That, in turn,
implies that it is a kernel bug in a device driver. In fact, I will wager it's
the driver for your sound card and the process that is in an uninterruptable
sleep is pulse. That's just a guess though.
If the machine is kind of old, it is very likely to have a serial port. Then
you need another computer and a null modem cable to configure a serial
console.  There is a really good serial console howto on the web. No point in
me reiterating all that. If you have never configured a serial console before,
you are not likely to have a null modem cable lying around. But setting up a
serial console is a valuable skill for a blind linux sysadmin to have. You can
even do a serial console install of VMware ESXI.

PS: Thanks for the tip on tap tap see. I'd never heard of it before. I am
going to try it today. When I need to have a screen read to me by my phone, I
have been using the knfbReader app.

On 07/03/2016 01:08 PM, Mark Peveto wrote:

I've been working on this more today, pulling out all the tools I've got.
To the point i'm using tap tap see to try and get an idea of what's on my
screen when reboot hangs.  The most i can
get  is a message about bus socket display, and a command prompt.
Not real helpful, but I guess it's a start.

Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13


On Sat, 2 Jul 2016, Tony Baechler wrote:


On 7/2/2016 1:54 AM, Mark Peveto wrote:

The short version of a long story.  I've just installed sonar on a dell
pc.
I've also got it installed on a compaq/hp machine, where the followig
problem doesn't exist.  On the dell, sudo reboot seems to hang.  Sudo
shutdown works fine.  I've tried sudo shutdown -r now, sudo systemctl
reboot, and
other options.  How, without sighted help, can I find out what's causing
this machine to hang when I reboot.  What's strange is this...why does
it
shut
down just fine, but not reboot?

I'm not familiar with Sonar, so consider these random guesses. First, have
you
looked in /var/log/syslog and kern.log? There might be a process not
shutting
down properly. If you halt the system, all processes are killed and all
filesystems are unmounted. A reboot only resets the system, so I suppose
it's
possible that a process is behaving badly or the kernel can't unmount a
filesystem. I see this sometimes with slow USB devices, like if I copy a
ton
of files to my SD card. A more likely explanation is an ACPI or power
management issue. You didn't say how old the machines are, but it could be
a
BIOS bug. Recent kernels should work around this. Without knowing the age
of
the machine and the kernel version, I can only guess.

Also, the machine isn't a laptop, right? Laptops usually have power
management
issues. On Debian, there is a package called acpi-tools. Try installing it
if
it isn't there or purging it if it's there. I have better luck without it
installed. I would bet syslog and kern.log would have clues to your
problem. I
would check those first. Make note of the time you reboot the machine and
look
at those files with less. You could try booting a live CD to avoid adding
all
of the boot messages to the logs. You didn't say if that happens on a live
CD,
booting from the hard drive, other distros, etc. I''ve noticed most live
CDs
have strange shutdown problems. You might have to pass a parameter on the
kernel command line. Both HP and Dell have issues with Linux.

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Phone: 1-619-746-8310  SMS text: 1-619-375-2545

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Re: selecting desktop in vinux

[Christopher Chaltain]

Here are some instructions I got from another list on setting up wifi in 
either Mate or Gnome:


MATE:
Sonar Mate is Wi-Fi ready, but it cannot automatically connect to your local
network because it has to be set up. To do this
1.  Press Ctrl+Alt+Tab to navigate to the bottom panel
2.  Press Shift+Tab until you hear "No Network Connection" and press Enter
3.  Select the network you want to connect to. You'll hear helpful
percentages which tell you how strong the signal strength is, and whether
it's secured or not
4.  If the network requires a password, you'll get a prompt to enter it,
type your password and press enterThat's it. From now on Mate will auto
connect to that network when it's in range.

GNOME:
Sonar Gnome is Wi-Fi ready, but it cannot automatically connect to your
local network because it has to be set up. To do this
1.  Press Ctrl+Alt+Tab to get to the top bar
2.  Tab down to system, and press the right arrow to go into the System list
3.  Press the Down Arrow to "Wi-Fi Not Connected" Press right arrow, and
press Enter on Select Network
5.  Pick the network you want to connect and press Enter (Unlike Mate's
applet, gnome's won't tell you either the signal strength or whether it is
secure
6.  If the network requires a password, you'll get a prompt to enter it,
type your password and press enter
That's it, from now on Gnome will auto connect to that network when it's in
range.

Note that I consider Vinux to be real Ubuntu, it's just that someone 
else already installed three desktops for me to try out, a bunch of 
accessible applications, Speakup working in a console, Orca coming up 
talking on the install media and a bunch of other things that I'd just 
end up doing myself anyway.


On 03/06/16 08:04, Kristoffer Gustafsson wrote:

Hi.
I found this out some time ago, but have forgotten.
vinux comes with mate integrated in the latest release.
how do I switch desktops?
Also, can you tell me step by step how I can connect to my wireless network?
Is it easy to install a normal ubuntu if  I want the real ubuntu, and not vinux?
/Kristoffer




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Re: What is the tool for this?

[Christopher Chaltain]

Tim was just asking if you were talking about a file ending in .ppt or 
one ending in .pptx. You can just tell by the extension of the file name 
and you don't really need to know when it was created. The .pptx 
extension indicates that it's a newer file format being used by 
Microsoft, which is why Tim called it a newer .pptx file.


I too appreciate the information Tim provided, and if this lead me to 
files that had a better format and were easier to work with then I'd do 
whatever it would take to get them. I can always make things more 
efficient with scripting if I need to perform a task multiple times, but 
ending up with a more accurate file will end up saving time in the long 
run.



On 02/06/16 22:03, Karen Lewellen wrote:

Oh my goodness!
Well fortunately for me it was a simple matter  of Ken the administrator
at shellworld to install unoconv
  I ran the program first creating a listener channel as instructed,
then ran   unoconv on the file which created its pdf.
I have no idea weather it was new or old ppt, I did not create the thing.
Anyway once in pdf format a simple pdftotext produced  the text file.
once I found a rather terrific page on running the unoconv program the
process
  likely took me all of 2 minutes.
I love that I could have chosen a different  format for the output, but
between pdftotext when the file is a baby hippopotamus  as it was in
this case, or robobraille for when the file is more reasonable in size I
got the job done.
I truly honor the dedication of some, but speaking only for myself
having to  do all those steps would keep me in another operating system
for sure...my professional deadlines alone require swift solutions.
My thanks too goes to the person who gave me the name of the front end
tool.  Seems very shell service friendly much like antiword and unrtf.
cheers,
Kare


On Thu, 2 Jun 2016, Tim Chase wrote:


On June  1, 2016, Karen Lewellen wrote:

My Linux experience is rooted at shellworld which is now using
Ubuntu. I just got a PowerPoint file for a meeting, and because of
its size,  I cannot use the back door method I normally tap into
for converting it into something else.
Is there a program like antiword or unrtf to convert PowerPoint at
the command line?


Is it an old .ppt or a new .pptx file?  There was a "ppthtml" tool
around that could convert the older .ppt files to HTML in a fashion.
The site hosting the source code no longer seems to be available
though.  If it's a newer .pptx file, it's really just a .zip file
with a different extension.  So you can

  mkdir prez
  mv presentation.pptx prez/presentation.pptx.zip
  cd prez
  unzip presentation.pptx.zip
  cd ppt/slides/

There are bunch of slide*.xml files in here which you can either edit:

  $EDITOR slide*.xml

or strip out the XML tags:

  for i in {1..20} ; do sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' slide${i}.xml ; done |
  cat -s > output.txt

where "20" is the number of slides in the presentation (which you
should be able to get from the output of "ls slide*.xml | wc -l"

The reason for using the "for" loop with the numbers is because the
slides aren't zero-padded, meaning when it sorts the names, you'd get
slide1.xml, slide10.xml, slide11.xml, slide2.xml, slide3.xml, etc.
Known as lexicographical sorting, this will be hard to read.  So by
iterating over them in numerical order, they should make more sense.

Alternatively, if you have LibreOffice installed, it should
theoretically be able to do conversions.  Based on my
experimentation, you have to convert the .ppt[x] to PDF first:

 libreoffice --headless -convert-to pdf presentation.pptx

and then convert that to something else.  The "poppler-utils" package
(at least that's what it's called in Debian) has both a pdftotext and
pdftohtml utility.  I recommend either plain-text:

 pdftotext presentation.pdf presentation.txt
 ${EDITOR:-vi} presentation.txt

or HTML:

 pdftohtml presentation.pdf presentation.html
 lynx presentation.html

I snagged a couple random PPT files off the web and tried the
libreoffice method and they all came out much better than I expected
(and much, much, MUCH better than the hackish attempts to extract the
text as given at the top of this message).

So if you have libreoffice + poppler-utils installed and can use
those, that's your best bet.  If you don't have them and can't get
them installed, then using some of the extraction hacks above might
at least get some form of the content out.

Hopefully these give you some options to get at the content in the
presentations.

-tim
(an avowed despiser of PPT files)




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Re: console speech

[Christopher Chaltain]

I'm not sure I'd say Pulse is not compatible with SpeakUp. I use Pulse 
and SpeakUp all of the time. I'm running Vinux, and I just execute sudo 
speechd-up before logging into a console, and this gives me speech in 
the console. This tells me there's something else at play here besides 
just Pulse and SpeakUp.


On 02/06/16 13:33, Alonzo Cuellar wrote:

Hi Janina

Yes... Pulse is not compatible with speakup. I do miss the console
environment. However, I've learned   to life with the desktop
environment. Since I've not tried using a pure alsa system in ages...
I'm not sure how stable it is. Pulse has been very stable in my
experiences using the desktop.


Alonzo


On 06/01/2016 08:58 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:

Alonzo:

If you're satisfied with working on the desktop alone, then you have
pulse support in Speech-Dispatcher and Orca. But this thread was about
console speech. I believe most of us who value the console environment
have not found pulse compatible with Speakup--which is what most use on
the console for a screen reader.

Janina

Alonzo Cuellar writes:

hello,

My thoughts. Pulse Audio has more functionality then Alsa. Alsa is
great for
a low level system meaning only command line access. If you run a
graphical
environment you will not be able to get discovery of sound automatically
unless of course you write some sort of scripts for Alsa.

I happen to think though that when Pulse Audio was beginning to be
upon the
Linux community most of us who used Espeakup relied on Alsa heaviely.
Now
its a bit of a problem for a user who wants the desktop experience.

Thats just what I see.


alonzo


On 05/26/2016 09:32 AM, Jude DaShiell wrote:

Once pulseaudio is purged, try powering off the system then start the
system up again and find out what happens.  If everything works, the
system will reconfigure to account for the absence of pulseaudio and
you
should have speech back again once that happens.

On Thu, 26 May 2016, Mark Peveto wrote:


Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 03:32:44
From: Mark Peveto 
Reply-To: Linux for blind general discussion 
To: Linux for blind general discussion 
Subject: Re: console speech

Tried, but it totally jacked up my sound after that.  I'm having to
reinstall again.

On 05/25/2016 01:58 PM, Jude DaShiell wrote:

Mark has to get rid of pulseaudio and all of its dependencies.

On Wed, 25 May 2016, Willem van der Walt wrote:


Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 14:10:06
From: Willem van der Walt 
Reply-To: Linux for blind general discussion

To: Linux for blind general discussion 
Subject: Re: console speech

Get rid of pulseaudio.
You should be able to google how to do that on your distro.
HTH, Willem


On Wed, 25 May 2016, Mark Peveto wrote:


I'm at my witt's end!  I'm working with f123, a manjaro
based distro, and have had really good luck, until it
comes to console speech using espeakup.
It'll speak for about 30 seconds, then I get a
pulseaudio error that looks like this.
assirtion 'p' failed at pulse/simple.c:273, function
pa_simple_write(). Aborting.
It's shot me down on every manjaro based distro I've
tried. Others have seemed to get speech in console, but
I can't seem to make it happen. Vinux has
it, and if i have to i'll put vinux on both machines,
but that seems a little nuts.  I like vinux, and am
using it now, but would also like the
opportunity to work with these other distros.  I've been
able to install my favorite programs, but trying to use
them from a terminal just doesn't read
well, so I need the console.
Oh, and before someone says google it, I've done that
for a week. Nothing helps.  LOL!
Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from vinux using alpine 2.20.10

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Re: vinux questions

[Christopher Chaltain]

Vinux comes up talking when you boot it off of CD or USB stick, so it's 
easy to install using Orca and eSpeak right out of the box. Depending on 
how much you want to repartition your disk during the install, the 
install with Vinux is quite easy.


On 20/05/16 02:24, Rob Harris wrote:

Good, that'll do.  How easy is it to install directly by a speech-needy
user?  I know XP is long past it's sellbye date.
- Original Message -
From: "Christopher Chaltain" <chalt...@gmail.com>
To: "Linux for blind general discussion" <blinux-list@redhat.com>
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2016 12:40 AM
Subject: Re: vinux questions


Well, by default,you'll get Orca and a software speech synthesizer
called eSpeak.

On 19/05/16 08:15, Rob Harris wrote:

For a former user of many years absence, what is used to make speech in
these distros? I had an external Apollo synth at that time, but not now,
nor
ports to connect it to.

Many thanks, BobH.
- Original Message -
From: "Jude DaShiell" <jdash...@panix.com>
To: "Linux for blind general discussion" <blinux-list@redhat.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: vinux questions


Language selection should have been done as part of the installation
itself.  Vinux is a poor choice for text-based anything since it
abandoned its text-based branch abck around version 3.x which was 2 or
3 years ago.  A better bet for text-based installations is the iso at
http://talkingarch.tk/.  Although it talks, brltty comes on the iso so
you can start that up in the usual way if braille is more effective than
speech for you.  It may be possible to enable speech and braille, I
don't know since I never had the funds to purchase my own braille
display and use it with any of these Linux distros.

On Thu, 19 May 2016, Kristoffer Gustafsson wrote:


Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 08:19:38
From: Kristoffer Gustafsson <kg.kristof...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@redhat.com>
To: blinux-list@redhat.com
Subject: vinux questions

Hi.
Finally I got the vinux live image working on my computer.
I've got some questions before I decide to use this or debian.
1. can I select the language I want?
I'm using swedish.
2. how do I do if I want to update packages?
In debian I'm using apt-get for this.
3. can I compile new kernels, and install whatever I want just like in
debian?
4. can I do a text based install of vinux with my braille display?
I like text based things more than graphical.
/Kristoffer

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Re: vinux questions

[Christopher Chaltain]

Well, by default,you'll get Orca and a software speech synthesizer 
called eSpeak.


On 19/05/16 08:15, Rob Harris wrote:

For a former user of many years absence, what is used to make speech in
these distros? I had an external Apollo synth at that time, but not now, nor
ports to connect it to.

Many thanks, BobH.
- Original Message -
From: "Jude DaShiell" 
To: "Linux for blind general discussion" 
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: vinux questions


Language selection should have been done as part of the installation
itself.  Vinux is a poor choice for text-based anything since it
abandoned its text-based branch abck around version 3.x which was 2 or
3 years ago.  A better bet for text-based installations is the iso at
http://talkingarch.tk/.  Although it talks, brltty comes on the iso so
you can start that up in the usual way if braille is more effective than
speech for you.  It may be possible to enable speech and braille, I
don't know since I never had the funds to purchase my own braille
display and use it with any of these Linux distros.

On Thu, 19 May 2016, Kristoffer Gustafsson wrote:


Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 08:19:38
From: Kristoffer Gustafsson 
Reply-To: Linux for blind general discussion 
To: blinux-list@redhat.com
Subject: vinux questions

Hi.
Finally I got the vinux live image working on my computer.
I've got some questions before I decide to use this or debian.
1. can I select the language I want?
I'm using swedish.
2. how do I do if I want to update packages?
In debian I'm using apt-get for this.
3. can I compile new kernels, and install whatever I want just like in
debian?
4. can I do a text based install of vinux with my braille display?
I like text based things more than graphical.
/Kristoffer

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