Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Christian here, reply inline,

On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 08:07:59 +1000, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Luke Yelavich here, reply inline.
> 
> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 11:18:22PM AEST, Linux for blind general 
> discussion wrote:
>> BTW.: During this discussion many things have been said about commercial 
>> and specialized distros, but IMHO things like systemd or pulseaudio are 
>> much more problematic for people who are using screen readers on linux. 
>> For example getting sbl working with speech-dispatcher is a pain on 
>> Debian...
> 
> That is more to do with permissions than anything else. The problem right 
> now, is that the software we use to help with reading the screen and/or 
> speech synthesis is running as root. This on its own is not really 
> acceptable, but right now it has to run as root to work with the various 
> kernel interfaces provided to do its job. Fortunately this is 
> fixable, thanks 
> to systemd's logind and a bit of udev rules work.

Fully agree. It is not aceptable and the screen readers, which need root 
permissions now, should be fixed to run also with a unpriviliged user. But the 
work has to be done and as far I know from the developper of sbl it isn't easy.

Does anyone know, if brltty is able to run without root permissions?

> The problem then becomes working with audio, because again, permissions. By 
> default, distros configure things such that audio is only accessible to the 
> currently logged in user, whether it be on a text console, or in a 
> graphical 
> environment. Sure, you can add users wanting audio to the audio group, but 
> this is actually not considered secure, and can break functionality 
> of other 
> things relating to audio. Can't think of anything specific right now, but I 
> think I've heard of such in the past.

Also agree, audio is the other big problem. I run pulseaudio in the unsupported 
and insecure system mode, that solves those permission problems, but it is not 
easy to setup and configure, especialy for new Linux users.

> Running everything needed by the user as a user when logged in is of course 
> not a problem, assuming permissions are properly set for the various device 
> nodes.

I am not sure, if it isn't a problem at all. sbl has an automatic profile 
switching mode and AFAIK this kind of feature also needs root permissions.

> What needs to happen, is for work to be done on logind, to allow 
> software to 
> run as a non-privileged user, such that it can work with audio output and 
> required device nodes. This non-privileged user and special session, would 
> only have access when the current focus is on a terminal with nobody logged 
> in.
> 
> I implemented a solution back in the Vinux 4.0 days, when ConsoleKit was 
> being used, but didn't send it upstream due to the impending change to 
> logind. I have not yet taken the time to look into how the same could 
> be done 
> with logind.

It would be cool to work on those kind of things in future, because in my eyes 
that are causing the biggest problems for linux newbies and even for 
expirienced linux users.

Who on this list has a talking orca environment running at the same time with a 
talking screen reader in the textconsole?

Cheers,

  Christian


-- 
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hello, this is Samuel again, last time for today, sorry I'm answering
all of this at once, I was in vacation last week while you were all
discussing furiously :)

Eric Oyen, on mar. 18 avril 2017 08:23:34 -0700, wrote:
> This would include the [...] config files needed to make any distro 
> accessible.

Linux for blind general discussion, on dim. 23 avril 2017 04:13:32 -0700, wrote:
> to create a list of as many config files as possible for as many
> programs as possible, roughly divided into console and GUI. My thought
> would be, for example, special configs for Lynx the cat, Links the
> chain and whatever other console programs people have customized.

That's actually similar to what I had started to build on 

http://brl.thefreecat.org/wiki/CategoryCategory

i.e. tips&tricks about various programs, to disable the ruler in vim,
to enable beep in grub, etc.  The wiki never really took of outside a
few relatives, but it could probably take of much more by putting that
onto a github project.  We can then push the result to distributions as
a package that interested people can install to tune their system (and
even make it installed by default when using braille or speech during
installation).

Samuel

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hello, this is Samuel,

Eric Oyen, on mar. 18 avril 2017 08:23:34 -0700, wrote:
> here is one thing that might be distro independent: create an
> accessibility package set.

As mentioned by others in the thread, doing it as a distribution of
binaries will lead to a lot of problems.  Having it as a documentation,
however, makes a lot of sense to me.  It was a bit the idea of 

http://brl.thefreecat.org/wiki/Installer

but also of http://blends.alioth.debian.org/accessibility/tasks/ , which
gathers the lists of packages available in Debian.  The meta-data behind
that webpage can make the distinction between hard requirements (e.g.
brltty for braille support) and soft requirements (e.g. bmc for braille
music conversion), so we could work out from it a list of packages that
distributions out to have to be at least minimally accessible.

Samuel

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hello, this is Samuel,

Tony, on mer. 26 avril 2017 03:26:56 -0700, wrote:
> As I understand it, it isn't the fault of Speakup that it took so long to
> get to staging and is still there. The kernel developers were absolutely
> opposed to including it and wouldn't help at all.

That's not exactly right.  The kernel developers were opposed to
including it as it *was*, i.e. a driver that aggressively *steals* i/o
ports from another driver, doesn't respect the coding style, etc.

Now, for the help, kernel developers never contributed things towards
making speakup behave correctly.  But they never opposed to it either,
it's just that nobody found the time to work on it.  It's a pity that I
myself never found the time to actually work on it, and it's great that
Okash eventually found the time to do it, and it's making good progress.
Probably the integrated-board drivers will have to stay in staging due
to the port-stealing method, but once we get external-device drivers are
migrated to using tty/serio ops, there's good chance speakup can get out
of staging.

Samuel

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Mark Peveto here.

Luke,

In Vinux 5.1 the best way to get console logins to speak is to indeed add your 
user to the audio group.  The next time you reboot and start speechd-up, switch 
to a console, it'll read you your login prompt.  Ok, so it isn't the most 
preferred way, but it does indeed work.


Luke Yelavich here, reply inline.

> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 11:18:22PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
> wrote:
> BTW.: During this discussion many things have been said about commercial 
> and specialized distros, but IMHO things like systemd or pulseaudio are 
> much more problematic for people who are using screen readers on linux. 
> For example getting sbl working with speech-dispatcher is a pain on 
> Debian...

That is more to do with permissions than anything else. The problem right 
now, is that the software we use to help with reading the screen and/or 
speech synthesis is running as root. This on its own is not really 
acceptable, but right now it has to run as root to work with the various 
kernel interfaces provided to do its job. Fortunately this is fixable, thanks 
to systemd's logind and a bit of udev rules work.

The problem then becomes working with audio, because again, permissions. By 
default, distros configure things such that audio is only accessible to the 
currently logged in user, whether it be on a text console, or in a graphical 
environment. Sure, you can add users wanting audio to the audio group, but 
this is actually not considered secure, and can break functionality of other 
things relating to audio. Can't think of anything specific right now, but I 
think I've heard of such in the past.

Running everything needed by the user as a user when logged in is of course 
not a problem, assuming permissions are properly set for the various device 
nodes. The next problem needing solving is how to get screen reading with 
speech at a text login. Graphical login is not a problem, because the 
graphical login is running as a separate non-privileged user, so things are 
fine there. The text login runs as root.

What needs to happen, is for work to be done on logind, to allow software to 
run as a non-privileged user, such that it can work with audio output and 
required device nodes. This non-privileged user and special session, would 
only have access when the current focus is on a terminal with nobody logged 
in.

I implemented a solution back in the Vinux 4.0 days, when ConsoleKit was 
being used, but didn't send it upstream due to the impending change to 
logind. I have not yet taken the time to look into how the same could be done 
with logind.

Luke

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Luke Yelavich here, reply is inline.

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 09:23:20PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
wrote:
> If you do, I would be interested in testing it. I thought of another problem
> though. What about unmuting the sound? I'm using the snd_emu10k1 module.
> Without poking at amixer, I get no sound. That means some ALSA components
> would also have to be included. If you can give instructions to build a
> custom initrd with your build of SD and anything else necessary, I would be
> happy to try it and report my results.

In the case that no sound settings are saved, then alsa would initialize the 
mixer settings from its defaults. If the default means your hardware doesn't 
work, then it would be a matter of working with alsa upstrea and your distro 
to make sure it does work. If mixer settings have been saved, then they would 
be copied into the initramfs.

As for speech-dispatcher for the initramfs, I have thought about that more 
and think there would need to be some re-architecting in the code to allow 
for a cut down build for use in an initramfs. It is certainly worth thinking 
about going forward though.

Luke

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

On 4/29/2017 3:26 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Having thought about this though, it may be worth putting together a special
build of speech-dispatcher that is usable in an initramfs. I may end up doing
this anyway just for kicks.


If you do, I would be interested in testing it. I thought of another problem 
though. What about unmuting the sound? I'm using the snd_emu10k1 module. 
Without poking at amixer, I get no sound. That means some ALSA components 
would also have to be included. If you can give instructions to build a 
custom initrd with your build of SD and anything else necessary, I would be 
happy to try it and report my results.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

To be fair, unless Tumblr has seriously changed since I last used it 
before migrating to WordPress, it is totally accessible if used 
correctly. It is a blogging platform, similar in many ways to WordPress 
or even Blogger by Google, it's just a different underlying back-end 
system handling things on the server, and also does include some social 
features that aren't as easy to find in the core of other similar 
platforms. The main thing that makes Tumblr less than accessible is not 
Tumblr itself, but the fact that it is primarily used to publish photos, 
even more than text, videos, music or anything else that we would be 
better able to parse with a screen reader or our ears, and the users who 
publish these photos don't bother to put captions on them in many cases. 
WordPress can be just as inaccessible if it is used to publish a site 
that has nothing but pictures on it. There is the fact that Tumblr last 
I knew didn't try to recognize images by telling us what objects it can 
find, but that sometimes doesn't help either when the software that does 
that just says "No automatic alt text available" or "image may contain: 
two people smiling, outdoor, nature." These do give other social 
networks a slight advantage when used by people who publish photos with 
no captions, but the automatic recognition can unfortunately be nearly 
as uninformative as Tumblr's photo publishers.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Luke Yelavich here, reply inline.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 09:04:56PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
wrote:
> Am I correct in saying that while in theory it could be done, isn't it
> impractical? Taking a standard initramfs on a standard Debian-based system,
> how would you know what sound drivers to include? I'm sure initramfs-tools
> doesn't do this, even if you include all modules. That would add a huge
> amount of bloat, possibly running you out of memory. You would need at least
> libespeak and espeakup, right?

Well at initramfs build time, you could detect the driver needed for any 
present sound hardware, firstly by looking at /proc/modules, and then also 
using lspci to look up require kernel modules for any audio cards present. As 
for other components, yes libespeak and espeakup, and of course 
speech-dispatcher if you use another synth, but that requires a little more 
work.

Having thought about this though, it may be worth putting together a special 
build of speech-dispatcher that is usable in an initramfs. I may end up doing 
this anyway just for kicks.

> The only way I could see this being done is if you build your own custom
> initramfs for your system and sound card with your sound card drivers. I
> remember there was a lot of debate about this with D-I. The smaller D-I
> images would be too big with the sound card drivers. The kernel can
> autodetect and load the right module, but again, almost all sound modules
> would have to be included, right?

As above, no, all sound modules would not need to be included. When checking 
loaded modules, you could certainly create a file that a script in the 
initramfs could use to load the modules that were present on the installed 
system, such that any sound modules that are not easily auto-detectable get 
loaded.

Luke

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I'm not as old fashioned as some, but I'll take a forum dedicated to a
specific subject over the mega social sites anyday, and I'll leave
promotion on the megasocial sites as an exercise for those who enjoy
that environment.

Outside of these blind-specific lists, I haven't run into very many
blind people online, and outside a doctors office or my attendance at
the Governor Morehead School for the Blind for most of my k-12
education, I'm not sure I've ever met a fellow blind person. I've met
plenty of people who wear glasses, but actual blind individuals seem
pretty disperse outside of specific blind gatherings.

-- 
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]

Mostly Facebook, Whatsapp, the Audiogames forum, and teamtalk
occasional, on and Skype too.
-- 
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:

> Tony Baechler here.
>
> On 4/28/2017 6:42 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> @Tony: Maybe I've just been lucky, but in my experience, most sighted
>> people on the Internet are more than willing to try and explain
>> graphical content to me if I ask nicely. Granted, I also avoid places
>> like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr like the plague and have done so
>> since before I went blind as they seem to attract the dregs of human
>> culture.
>
>
> Well, to each his own I guess. I personally don't like social media
> and avoided it for years. However, that's where teens hang out. If you
> want to attract them to Linux, you have to go to them. One of the
> nicest people I ran into was on Facebook. They don't do email anymore.
> I've found ways to text in an accessible way (I'm the only one without
> a smartphone). As I've said before, I especially don't like tumblr,
> but that and snapchat seem to be where they hang out. I'm sure blind
> teens hang out in other places since tumblr is especially
> inaccessible, but I don't know where and haven't looked too much. I
> leave that to others who are younger and more experienced.
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

On 4/28/2017 6:42 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

@Tony: Maybe I've just been lucky, but in my experience, most sighted
people on the Internet are more than willing to try and explain
graphical content to me if I ask nicely. Granted, I also avoid places
like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr like the plague and have done so
since before I went blind as they seem to attract the dregs of human
culture.



Well, to each his own I guess. I personally don't like social media and 
avoided it for years. However, that's where teens hang out. If you want to 
attract them to Linux, you have to go to them. One of the nicest people I 
ran into was on Facebook. They don't do email anymore. I've found ways to 
text in an accessible way (I'm the only one without a smartphone). As I've 
said before, I especially don't like tumblr, but that and snapchat seem to 
be where they hang out. I'm sure blind teens hang out in other places since 
tumblr is especially inaccessible, but I don't know where and haven't looked 
too much. I leave that to others who are younger and more experienced.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Luke Yelavich here, reply inline.

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 11:18:22PM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
wrote:
> BTW.: During this discussion many things have been said about commercial 
> and specialized distros, but IMHO things like systemd or pulseaudio are 
> much more problematic for people who are using screen readers on linux. 
> For example getting sbl working with speech-dispatcher is a pain on 
> Debian...

That is more to do with permissions than anything else. The problem right 
now, is that the software we use to help with reading the screen and/or 
speech synthesis is running as root. This on its own is not really 
acceptable, but right now it has to run as root to work with the various 
kernel interfaces provided to do its job. Fortunately this is fixable, thanks 
to systemd's logind and a bit of udev rules work.

The problem then becomes working with audio, because again, permissions. By 
default, distros configure things such that audio is only accessible to the 
currently logged in user, whether it be on a text console, or in a graphical 
environment. Sure, you can add users wanting audio to the audio group, but 
this is actually not considered secure, and can break functionality of other 
things relating to audio. Can't think of anything specific right now, but I 
think I've heard of such in the past.

Running everything needed by the user as a user when logged in is of course 
not a problem, assuming permissions are properly set for the various device 
nodes. The next problem needing solving is how to get screen reading with 
speech at a text login. Graphical login is not a problem, because the 
graphical login is running as a separate non-privileged user, so things are 
fine there. The text login runs as root.

What needs to happen, is for work to be done on logind, to allow software to 
run as a non-privileged user, such that it can work with audio output and 
required device nodes. This non-privileged user and special session, would 
only have access when the current focus is on a terminal with nobody logged 
in.

I implemented a solution back in the Vinux 4.0 days, when ConsoleKit was 
being used, but didn't send it upstream due to the impending change to 
logind. I have not yet taken the time to look into how the same could be done 
with logind.

Luke

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

@Tony: Maybe I've just been lucky, but in my experience, most sighted
people on the Internet are more than willing to try and explain
graphical content to me if I ask nicely. Granted, I also avoid places
like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr like the plague and have done so
since before I went blind as they seem to attract the dregs of human
culture.

@Chris: Knoppix, which is based on Debian and sources most of it's
packages from the Debian repositories has SBL as it's default
text-mode screen reader. Granted, I don't know if there's an easy way
to drop down to the terminal and start SBL if Knoppix is booted in
Desktop mode, and it's been years since there was an official Knoppix
image that booted into Adriane(Knoppix's accessibility suite) by
default. However, as Knoppix is designed to be run as a Live
environment first and foremost and has only partial 64-bit support,
the only .deb of SBL available from Knoppix is i386. So, a .deb exists
for SBL, but it's fairly limited in it's usage. If you have any tips
in setting it up under vanilla Debian, I'd love to hear them.

-- 
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]

Hi,

On Do, Apr 27, 2017 at 12:16:36 +, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>Thank you for additional information on SBl and the link.

Your wellcome :-).

>I have no idea how old the version of SBL I'm using is, but as far as
>I'm concerned, it has yet to show it's age, and if I had a bug to
>report, it would be that it isn't available precompiled for more
>distributions.

Your right. AFAIK it is not compiled for any system that uses apt and 
for rpm based systems it might be available for SUSE only. So compiling 
it from source is necessary on most systems.

>I don't have much experience compiling things from
>source, but now that I have SBL's source, I think I might try getting
>it running on a clean install of Debian 64-bit.

That is no problem, I also use the newest Debian with sbl. The only 
thing which is not working are the start-stop-scripts for the systemd 
crap.

BTW.: During this discussion many things have been said about commercial 
and specialized distros, but IMHO things like systemd or pulseaudio are 
much more problematic for people who are using screen readers on linux. 
For example getting sbl working with speech-dispatcher is a pain on 
Debian...

Regards,

  Christian

-- 
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

No, I'm talking about attracting as many new users as possible, blind or 
sighted with a focus on teens and young adults. I'm being very generalized 
here, but if a blind teen gets really interested in what Linux can do but 
sees the glaring limitations, they might be willing to develop better 
solutions, or at least file bugs and work with upstream developers. In the 
sighted world, if a teen who is interested in coding sees that their blind 
friend has a lot of limitations because the desktop doesn't talk, they might 
be willing to help and go into accessibility development. I know of people 
who got involved in accessibility because they knew a blind person and saw 
that there was a desperate need.


On 4/27/2017 2:35 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

But we're talking about attracting blind users, right? Shells and
terminals are more natural for us than GUIs. Instructing the computer
is far more intuitive than pretending that it's a two-dimensional
surface with pictures on it.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Yes, Unicode would allow access to math content, I think, not sure
exactly what MathML renders as, but still, I want Linux to at
least look good when I start advertising it. I /know/ we can do
what Apple has done with the Mac, and better. On the surface,
the Mac looks cool and collected, but underneath, it’s just a
cobbled together bunch of "hope this works" kind of things for
Voiceover at least. We, however, with freedom, can not only hope
it works, but know it works. We have the ability to create a
strong foundation, something Apple, Google, and Microsoft have
not done. Or, we can go the Jaws rout, and script for every
eventuality. Whichever way we choose, if I am to bring success
for the young who choose Linux, I need to be able to give them
reasons why they should choose Linux, besides the fact that
they’ll be out of Microsoft’s reach, which has already brought
some to Linux, on [[http://www.forum.audiogames.net][Audio games
forum]] but Facebook is booming, and, besides the ability to
access Emoji and such, if the blind youth can access math
symbols and all, we could even see blind people bringing their
laptops running Linux to school, showing it off, impressing
people with, if not high quality speech, then high quality
accessibility and such. It’ll just take people who are willing
to work on this, program this, make it look good and be good at
the same time!
-- 
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:

> Tony Baechler here.
>
> You're right. I hadn't thought of that. My ancient DECtalk Express
> doesn't do Unicode. Windows screen readers do Unicode. Even Android
> does Unicode. I would think there might be a way to borrow from
> Google. They developed a screen reader for Android which is based on
> Linux. Oh yes, they would definitely notice if Unicode is missing. I
> don't really see them using emacs. There are lots of other practical
> reasons to support Unicode, even though I don't like it. I agree that
> Speech Dispatcher is probably the better place to start. That not only
> gives Orca Unicode support but Speakup and anything else which uses
> it.
>
> On 4/27/2017 5:36 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> Then we'd better get eSpeak supporting Unicode pronunciation before I
>>  can confidently recommend anything besides Emacspeak to younger
>>  generations. Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
>>  which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly. I know, I’m not
>>  a developer so it probably won’t happen until Reece gets to the
>>  bottom of the to do list and gets the strings translated to all
>>  102 languages, but really, it needs doing. I have several ways
>>  to get the word out, but if we are to be successful, we can’t
>>  have this glaring emission to tell teens/Young adults about, and
>>  believe me, they’ll notice. Facebook, Twitter, even chatting
>>  programs like Skype, are full of Unicode characters, and its
>>  about time our synthesizers, or synthesizer managers, get with
>>  the times.
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

I would say you're not worrying enough. The sighted expect to be understood. 
They expect the blind to be able to read what they're saying. I know I've 
missed things because they aren't read. I can usually figure out from the 
person and context what they mean, but not always. If you get a bunch of 
blind kids hanging out together, they understand and don't care, but if they 
try chatting to their sighted friends, they run into problems. Not to single 
out any group, but teen girls in particular seem to be more emotional and 
use less text, especially if they're into art.


I've studied them extensively for an unrelated project. It's how they 
communicate now, even with adults, although not as much. A lot of them hang 
out on tumblr; talk about an accessibility nightmare! Nothing is more 
annoying than hearing "variation selector x16" and having no idea what 
that's supposed to mean. Facebook is better about this, but not great. At 
least I hear things like "heavy red heart," but with no explanation of what 
emotion it's supposed to convey. Then again, I'm still on XP which doesn't 
do Unicode. I really need to get an X installation working again.


On 4/27/2017 9:34 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Sure, but if eSpeak cannot read Emoji and such, and we want new users to
use the web, they’ll quickly see that as "just another thing to
file a bug about and hope some one will fix it." Although,
people on the audio games forum are getting into Linux, and
don’t seem to care too much about emoji, so maybe I’m just
worrying about the "popular" blind kid crowd too much.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here. I did this with my DECtalk Express and grub quite a long 
time ago. Download this file and put it in /etc/default/ on Debian-based 
systems. Run update-grub and reboot. It should come up talking at the boot 
prompt before Linux starts.


http://batsupport.com/unsupported/grub

On 4/27/2017 7:17 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Saying a serial console is not kernel dependent is inaccurate and
misleading. The part that displays the kernel boot messages is absolutely
kernel dependent. I think you mean that you can get messages even earlier
by, as a seperate step,  configuring a serial console in the boot loader,
right? And that is a good point. Although, you can also configure those
messages to go to a serial synth and hear them as well. I don't know if that
works with all serial synths but I know it works with a doubletalk LT and a
tripletalk.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

You're right. I hadn't thought of that. My ancient DECtalk Express doesn't 
do Unicode. Windows screen readers do Unicode. Even Android does Unicode. I 
would think there might be a way to borrow from Google. They developed a 
screen reader for Android which is based on Linux. Oh yes, they would 
definitely notice if Unicode is missing. I don't really see them using 
emacs. There are lots of other practical reasons to support Unicode, even 
though I don't like it. I agree that Speech Dispatcher is probably the 
better place to start. That not only gives Orca Unicode support but Speakup 
and anything else which uses it.


On 4/27/2017 5:36 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Then we'd better get eSpeak supporting Unicode pronunciation before I
can confidently recommend anything besides Emacspeak to younger
generations. Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly. I know, I’m not
a developer so it probably won’t happen until Reece gets to the
bottom of the to do list and gets the strings translated to all
102 languages, but really, it needs doing. I have several ways
to get the word out, but if we are to be successful, we can’t
have this glaring emission to tell teens/Young adults about, and
believe me, they’ll notice. Facebook, Twitter, even chatting
programs like Skype, are full of Unicode characters, and its
about time our synthesizers, or synthesizer managers, get with
the times.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here. Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. You're still missing the point. You 
seem to think I'm in love with a kernel-based screen reader and my mind is 
closed to alternatives. OK, let me try again.


On 4/26/2017 2:52 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I myself am completely opposed to a screen reader being locked into a
kernel, and have been for many years, for very good, technical,
non-political reasons.Text mode is exactly this: text mode. The layout of
the entire screen is available as plain text and some other character codes
that affect colors and other things, all of which are easy to interpret by a
userspace screen reader. This is the nature of the beast on all operating
systems, no matter the kernel. The screen reader *must* be fully in
userspace, and must be modular enough to handle slightly different
input/output interfaces, because that makes it portable to things like BSD,
GNU/Herd or any other new OS that may come alon, and all with at most the
help of a small module that knows how to read the text that is to be output
to the screen, which can then be sent out to a speech synthesizer, whether
hardware or software, in an equally modular way.


OK, fine. I would much rather see one screen reader to rule them all as long 
as it's open source. It would be great to not need to develop a standard for 
what keys announce the time because the same screen reader runs on any OS. 
Obviously, that isn't going to happen. As you just said, there still needs 
to be a module. That could be a kernel module or whatever, but it isn't 
going to ever fully run in user space. You failed to address how, say, 
Fenrir runs at the login screen. Do you enable it for all users? What if 
sighted people use the machine and don't want speech? OK, do you enable it 
only on the first console? That's fine until someone switches consoles. Does 
it run as root? If not, how does it read the login screen? OK, let's put 
that aside for the moment and say it starts in your startup shell scripts. 
How does someone enter their login and password without speech? None of this 
deals with a graphical login prompt, like if you're running X. When I was 
running X, all I had to do is switch to a text console and there was good 
old Speakup, ready to go. You tell me how to do that with any other screen 
reader and I'll gladly shut up and try it.


Additionally, having a

screen reader in userspace and not bound to the kernel means that no one has
to patch the kernel to accept the screen reader, and screen reader
developers don't have to answer to kernel developers, kernel coding
conventions or kernel release cycles in order to continue development of the
screen reader.


Kyle, this is just plain nonsense. What if it's anything else other than a 
screen reader? Let's take XFS which is a filesystem driver. Yep, it's a 
kernel module with userspace utilities, actively developed by SGI. Somehow 
they all get along and new releases of the module make it into new releases 
of the kernel. OK, let's take any number of USB devices. There are lots of 
modules for all kinds of odd hardware. All of these are in the main kernel 
source, not in staging. The only difference is that we're talking about a 
screen reader.


Best of all, though a single bug that goes uncaught in a

kernel-bound screen reader has the potential to crash the entire kernel, a
userspace screen reader's bugs only affect that application, and in the
worst cases, the screen reader may need to be restarted. No bug in a
userspace screen reader will cause the report you've put valuable hours into
to get lost in cyberspace because a previously hidden bug in the screen
reader crashed the kernel before the report could be saved.


I agree with your point on this, but again, let's replace "screen reader" 
with "filesystem driver." It really doesn't matter what the kernel module 
does. That's why there is lots of aggressive testing and why there is a 
staging tree. This again comes back to not enough blind users to really test 
new code and get the bugs out. They don't even have to be blind. The sighted 
can load the speakup_dummy module. Anyone running Linux can do that.


I did also mention the serial console as an alternative to a kernel-bound
screen reader. The whole reason I mentioned this at all is not just because
I can make a Raspberry Pi or even a less expensive computer act as a screen
reader, but because I not only receive kernel boot and shutdown messages,
but I receive boot loader messages as well, which the kernel is unable to
provide. This allows me to debug things that happen when the kernel fails to
boot. This can be caused by any number of kernel related problems, but can
also be caused by filesystem corruption and other things that the boot
loader can detect and report more easily than the kernel that is failing to
boot. The only time I would have a problem using the serial console method
is if the boot loader itself is either corrupt or has no serial i/o, and
t

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

First, regarding SBL, yes, the .de email would be correct. Here is a generic 
command to figure out which binaries a Debian (.deb) package installs:


dpkg -L sbl | grep bin

Regarding boot messages, I usually don't want to hear them either. I silence 
Speakup as soon as it starts talking and play a beep at the login prompt. 
However, when something goes wrong, it helps to know what happened. If I 
wait a while and don't hear the beep, I know something happened. It's like 
insurance. Hopefully you won't need it, but it's good to have it. Yes, you 
can use dmesg to hear boot messages from the console, but if the machine 
won't boot, that doesn't help.


On 4/26/2017 5:46 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Regarding boot messages, even back when I could see, assuming
whichever distro I was using didn't cover them with a splash screen, I
can't say they were ever all that useful when things went wrong to the
point of things not booting. In most cases, I usually used such
breakage as an excuse to do a clean install. Nowadays, I'm using a
distro that isn't quick to take from clean install to customized to my
liking, so I tend to use booting from a LiveDVD to try system rescue,
and if that doesn't work, use the live system to restore a backup of
my root partition. The efforts I've made to remove stuff I don't use
means the restore takes only a few minutes and in most cases, getting
back to where I was before the problem is simply a matter of
reinstalling software upgrades since I last made a backup. Probably
don't make backups as often as I should(I made one earlier this week,
but my second most recent backup is date in February, but the method I
use requires that the partition being backed up be unmounted, so
creating a backup requires booting from the liveDVD). On a related
note, when things go wrong on my Raspbery Pi, I usually just reimage
the SD card as anything important I was using onthe Pi was copied from
my desktop or on external storage.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

According to Amanda:
# But we're talking about attracting blind users, right? Shells and
# terminals are more natural for us than GUIs. Instructing the computer
# is far more intuitive than pretending that it's a two-dimensional
# surface with pictures on it.

Yes and no. First and foremost, I personally deal mostly with the 
general public at large, so it's more important that I have the 
accessibility I need to work with them most effectively than what I want 
for myself, even if the shell is what I want. That said, I personally 
find the keyboard input and menu-driven aspects of most graphical 
environments to be more intuitive than the cryptic commands the shell 
many times requires. If I was able to simply tell the computer something 
like: "Read my e-mail" and it would know exactly what parts of what 
messages I want to read without me having to give a full command to 
delete one, go to the next one, read that, whatever, then I may feel 
differently. But all e-mail programs require some form of menu-based or 
similar system, and I do prefer the presentation of Seamonkey or 
Thunderbird over that of the text-based applications, especially since I 
don't have to worry about where in the message my screen ends or how to 
get out of a quote from one of those ever-popular bottom posters, as 
Orca gives me a quick and easy escape. I do prefer the shell to move 
files and such, but renaming is actually easier from a graphical file 
manager, as it pops up a text box that I can edit, copy, paste, whatever 
in order to change part of the name without having to change most of it, 
add things quickly and easily, etc. For the most part, the graphical 
environment is quite intuitive, since what I see is the text menus, the 
text below icons, tab order if applicable, various spoken controls, a 
dynamically read e-mail that I can see my choice of line by line or all 
at once, press enter once I get to a link to activate it, etc. I don't 
see the two-dimentional surface or the pictures, so I only have to deal 
with what is presented to me. I also don't have to figure out what 
command to type next to get where I need to go or how to properly edit 
the configuration file for a specific application, as the controls, when 
spoken to me or presented in the menu system, do all that for me.


If you feel that a terminal or a shell is more useful to you, then by 
all means use it. I'm only saying that the graphical environment cannot 
and should not be neglected nor thought of as second-class access if we 
want to attract users, blind or otherwise, who aren't at all used to a 
terminal, especially in the days of mobile devices that don't just have 
phone buttons on them, where many people, blind or not, have become used 
to graphical layouts, and expect first-class access to same.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Yes, that's true, and it's why some like the Emacspeak "audio desktop"
with its ability of playing media and presenting structured and
formatted text which no other interface has come close to yet.
Sure, Audacious is nice, and Emacs has no way of dealing with
Youtube besides Youtube-dl, but it sure can do just about
anything else, well, almost anything of course.
-- 
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:

> But we're talking about attracting blind users, right? Shells and
> terminals are more natural for us than GUIs. Instructing the computer
> is far more intuitive than pretending that it's a two-dimensional
> surface with pictures on it.
>
> Amanda
>
> On 4/27/17, Linux for blind general discussion  wrote:
>> According to r.d.t.prater:
>> # Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
>> #which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly.
>> Not quite. I happen to know that Android and Google's speech synthesizer
>> can speak emojis as well, and has had such capability for some time. On
>> my Android devices, I do still use Google's speech synthesizer because
>> it's the only one so far that speaks them, so I am able to emoji with
>> the best, or the worst of them as it were. At this point, I still run
>> the older Android Espeak on my devices, as there has been no espeak-ng
>> update as of now. But I use Google mostly, because I feel like I'm
>> missing something because the newer version isn't yet available, and
>> even it doesn't fully support unicode yet. Does that mean that I will
>> give up on Espeak ever getting full unicode support, especially for
>> emojis? Hell no. And Emacs is far too convoluted for me to try to learn
>> now, especially since it hasn't changed much since the first time I
>> tried it many years ago, and now just getting Emacspeak to build is more
>> trouble than it's worth. Seriously, it's all this talk of terminals and
>> shells and Emacs and Vim that will drive new users away from Linux more
>> than the lack of emoji support in Espeak. There is this perception in
>> the wider world that Linux is all about these terminals and shells and
>> editors that try to be so much more than just editors, and that it's
>> only good for geeky types and server administrators. This glaring
>> misconception has indeed been fed by the likes of Microsoft and other
>> major marketing firms, who long ago relegated Linux to the data center
>> and continue to tell the general public that it's just not for them. But
>> many of us who use Linux every day also help to spread this false
>> perception when we can't have a user friendly discussion of desktop
>> Linux, because even when we install it for others, we can't seem to get
>> past the terminal, the shell, the editor that tries to be and do too
>> much, etc. Sorry, trying to get the general public at large to use Emacs
>> will never fly, as it just feeds that geek perception of Linux and does
>> nothing to make it more productive for the end user. Of course I'm not
>> saying that you shouldn't use Emacspeak if you got it to build and it
>> works for you. But I am saying that in order to debunk the myth that
>> Linux is somehow inferior or is only for the geekiest, we need to start
>> thinking more inclusively. This means thinking of the power user stuff
>> like the shells and terminals and supereditors as an extension of the
>> desktop, rather than thinking of the desktop as a necessary evil that we
>> need to use to browse the web.
>> ~Kyle
>>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

According to John Heim:
# Kyle, it is just your opinion that a screen reader should not be in the
# kernel. And your reasoning for saying that amounts to that it shouldn't
# be in the kernel.

I'm sorry you have such a hard time fully reading what I wrote. I did 
indeed give a fair number of reasons why a screen reader must be a 
userspace application and should never be bound to a kernel. The fact 
that you either did not read them or did not fully understand them 
changes nothing. I didn't just say that a screen reader shouldn't be 
bound to a kernel simply because it shouldn't be bound to a kernel. I 
clearly mentioned flexibility, portability, security/stability and 
ability to innovate without needing to know how to code for the kernel 
or answer to kernel developers as very specific and valid reasons for 
needing a screen reader to be a userspace application. There is also the 
fact that running a screen reader in a kernel is essentially running a 
user application inside of kernel address space, but that ties into the 
stability and security rationale. Would you run a phone application from 
the kernel? Would you run even a speech synthesizer itself from inside 
of the kernel? How about something like a print server? Of course not. 
Because the kernel is the direct means of communicating with the 
hardware, and should be little else. A screen reader is not truly a 
device. It is an application that communicates information between 
applications and the user via various i/o devices. Therefore, it should 
be interfaced to the kernel in the same way any other application that 
communicates between the end user and the devices the kernel exposes 
should do. In interfacing in this way, the screen reader becomes fully 
portable, as secure as any user application can be, and fully flexible, 
and also becomes capable of receiving contributions from a much larger 
community of developers, most of which know little to nothing about 
kernel code.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hi,


Terminals exclude blind people for the remaining of society. It
requieres real computing skills. Rejected by many users who use computer
just to work. Terminal is unable to make the user have benefit with
modern Web techno. Well, it's a geek interface, amazing but not for
everybody. Just for advanced users. And if users just learn this, they
will be excluded (never helped by anyone else in their family, out of
Web or Office last techno, unable to help a friend on his computer). And
will live a gap with any phone or other modern device.


Regards,



Le 27/04/2017 à 23:35, Linux for blind general discussion a écrit :
> But we're talking about attracting blind users, right? Shells and
> terminals are more natural for us than GUIs. Instructing the computer
> is far more intuitive than pretending that it's a two-dimensional
> surface with pictures on it.
>
> Amanda
>
> On 4/27/17, Linux for blind general discussion  wrote:
>> According to r.d.t.prater:
>> # Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
>> #which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly.
>> Not quite. I happen to know that Android and Google's speech synthesizer
>> can speak emojis as well, and has had such capability for some time. On
>> my Android devices, I do still use Google's speech synthesizer because
>> it's the only one so far that speaks them, so I am able to emoji with
>> the best, or the worst of them as it were. At this point, I still run
>> the older Android Espeak on my devices, as there has been no espeak-ng
>> update as of now. But I use Google mostly, because I feel like I'm
>> missing something because the newer version isn't yet available, and
>> even it doesn't fully support unicode yet. Does that mean that I will
>> give up on Espeak ever getting full unicode support, especially for
>> emojis? Hell no. And Emacs is far too convoluted for me to try to learn
>> now, especially since it hasn't changed much since the first time I
>> tried it many years ago, and now just getting Emacspeak to build is more
>> trouble than it's worth. Seriously, it's all this talk of terminals and
>> shells and Emacs and Vim that will drive new users away from Linux more
>> than the lack of emoji support in Espeak. There is this perception in
>> the wider world that Linux is all about these terminals and shells and
>> editors that try to be so much more than just editors, and that it's
>> only good for geeky types and server administrators. This glaring
>> misconception has indeed been fed by the likes of Microsoft and other
>> major marketing firms, who long ago relegated Linux to the data center
>> and continue to tell the general public that it's just not for them. But
>> many of us who use Linux every day also help to spread this false
>> perception when we can't have a user friendly discussion of desktop
>> Linux, because even when we install it for others, we can't seem to get
>> past the terminal, the shell, the editor that tries to be and do too
>> much, etc. Sorry, trying to get the general public at large to use Emacs
>> will never fly, as it just feeds that geek perception of Linux and does
>> nothing to make it more productive for the end user. Of course I'm not
>> saying that you shouldn't use Emacspeak if you got it to build and it
>> works for you. But I am saying that in order to debunk the myth that
>> Linux is somehow inferior or is only for the geekiest, we need to start
>> thinking more inclusively. This means thinking of the power user stuff
>> like the shells and terminals and supereditors as an extension of the
>> desktop, rather than thinking of the desktop as a necessary evil that we
>> need to use to browse the web.
>> ~Kyle
>>
>> ___
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

But we're talking about attracting blind users, right? Shells and
terminals are more natural for us than GUIs. Instructing the computer
is far more intuitive than pretending that it's a two-dimensional
surface with pictures on it.

Amanda

On 4/27/17, Linux for blind general discussion  wrote:
> According to r.d.t.prater:
> # Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
> # which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly.
> Not quite. I happen to know that Android and Google's speech synthesizer
> can speak emojis as well, and has had such capability for some time. On
> my Android devices, I do still use Google's speech synthesizer because
> it's the only one so far that speaks them, so I am able to emoji with
> the best, or the worst of them as it were. At this point, I still run
> the older Android Espeak on my devices, as there has been no espeak-ng
> update as of now. But I use Google mostly, because I feel like I'm
> missing something because the newer version isn't yet available, and
> even it doesn't fully support unicode yet. Does that mean that I will
> give up on Espeak ever getting full unicode support, especially for
> emojis? Hell no. And Emacs is far too convoluted for me to try to learn
> now, especially since it hasn't changed much since the first time I
> tried it many years ago, and now just getting Emacspeak to build is more
> trouble than it's worth. Seriously, it's all this talk of terminals and
> shells and Emacs and Vim that will drive new users away from Linux more
> than the lack of emoji support in Espeak. There is this perception in
> the wider world that Linux is all about these terminals and shells and
> editors that try to be so much more than just editors, and that it's
> only good for geeky types and server administrators. This glaring
> misconception has indeed been fed by the likes of Microsoft and other
> major marketing firms, who long ago relegated Linux to the data center
> and continue to tell the general public that it's just not for them. But
> many of us who use Linux every day also help to spread this false
> perception when we can't have a user friendly discussion of desktop
> Linux, because even when we install it for others, we can't seem to get
> past the terminal, the shell, the editor that tries to be and do too
> much, etc. Sorry, trying to get the general public at large to use Emacs
> will never fly, as it just feeds that geek perception of Linux and does
> nothing to make it more productive for the end user. Of course I'm not
> saying that you shouldn't use Emacspeak if you got it to build and it
> works for you. But I am saying that in order to debunk the myth that
> Linux is somehow inferior or is only for the geekiest, we need to start
> thinking more inclusively. This means thinking of the power user stuff
> like the shells and terminals and supereditors as an extension of the
> desktop, rather than thinking of the desktop as a necessary evil that we
> need to use to browse the web.
> ~Kyle
>
> ___
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Sure, but if eSpeak cannot read Emoji and such, and we want new users to
use the web, they’ll quickly see that as "just another thing to
file a bug about and hope some one will fix it." Although,
people on the audio games forum are getting into Linux, and
don’t seem to care too much about emoji, so maybe I’m just
worrying about the "popular" blind kid crowd too much.
-- 
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:

> According to r.d.t.prater:
> # Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
> # which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly.
> Not quite. I happen to know that Android and Google's speech
> synthesizer can speak emojis as well, and has had such capability for
> some time. On my Android devices, I do still use Google's speech
> synthesizer because it's the only one so far that speaks them, so I am
> able to emoji with the best, or the worst of them as it were. At this
> point, I still run the older Android Espeak on my devices, as there
> has been no espeak-ng update as of now. But I use Google mostly,
> because I feel like I'm missing something because the newer version
> isn't yet available, and even it doesn't fully support unicode yet.
> Does that mean that I will give up on Espeak ever getting full unicode
> support, especially for emojis? Hell no. And Emacs is far too
> convoluted for me to try to learn now, especially since it hasn't
> changed much since the first time I tried it many years ago, and now
> just getting Emacspeak to build is more trouble than it's worth.
> Seriously, it's all this talk of terminals and shells and Emacs and
> Vim that will drive new users away from Linux more than the lack of
> emoji support in Espeak. There is this perception in the wider world
> that Linux is all about these terminals and shells and editors that
> try to be so much more than just editors, and that it's only good for
> geeky types and server administrators. This glaring misconception has
> indeed been fed by the likes of Microsoft and other major marketing
> firms, who long ago relegated Linux to the data center and continue to
> tell the general public that it's just not for them. But many of us
> who use Linux every day also help to spread this false perception when
> we can't have a user friendly discussion of desktop Linux, because
> even when we install it for others, we can't seem to get past the
> terminal, the shell, the editor that tries to be and do too much, etc.
> Sorry, trying to get the general public at large to use Emacs will
> never fly, as it just feeds that geek perception of Linux and does
> nothing to make it more productive for the end user. Of course I'm not
> saying that you shouldn't use Emacspeak if you got it to build and it
> works for you. But I am saying that in order to debunk the myth that
> Linux is somehow inferior or is only for the geekiest, we need to
> start thinking more inclusively. This means thinking of the power user
> stuff like the shells and terminals and supereditors as an extension
> of the desktop, rather than thinking of the desktop as a necessary
> evil that we need to use to browse the web.
> ~Kyle
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Good. Any work with speech dispatcher will go a long way.
-- 
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Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 02:27:12AM AEST, Linux for blind general
> discussion wrote:
>> At this point, speech-dispatcher is not designed to be a text processor, as
>> correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it assumes that supported
>> synthesizers already have built in text processing capabilities.
>
> Thanks to work done by the folks at Hypra, there are plans to add better 
> punctuation processing to Speech Dispatcher. Admittedly this is because Hypra 
> want to support a synthesizer that doesn't do any such processing, but I 
> think this is worth  pursuing, because it does mean we can add support for 
> user exceptions, and also extend the code to provide consistant pronunciation 
> of individual characters. This extra support uses the punctuation symbol 
> files from NVDA, which so far as I know, does something similar.
>
> Luke
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

According to r.d.t.prater:
# Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
#   which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly.
Not quite. I happen to know that Android and Google's speech synthesizer 
can speak emojis as well, and has had such capability for some time. On 
my Android devices, I do still use Google's speech synthesizer because 
it's the only one so far that speaks them, so I am able to emoji with 
the best, or the worst of them as it were. At this point, I still run 
the older Android Espeak on my devices, as there has been no espeak-ng 
update as of now. But I use Google mostly, because I feel like I'm 
missing something because the newer version isn't yet available, and 
even it doesn't fully support unicode yet. Does that mean that I will 
give up on Espeak ever getting full unicode support, especially for 
emojis? Hell no. And Emacs is far too convoluted for me to try to learn 
now, especially since it hasn't changed much since the first time I 
tried it many years ago, and now just getting Emacspeak to build is more 
trouble than it's worth. Seriously, it's all this talk of terminals and 
shells and Emacs and Vim that will drive new users away from Linux more 
than the lack of emoji support in Espeak. There is this perception in 
the wider world that Linux is all about these terminals and shells and 
editors that try to be so much more than just editors, and that it's 
only good for geeky types and server administrators. This glaring 
misconception has indeed been fed by the likes of Microsoft and other 
major marketing firms, who long ago relegated Linux to the data center 
and continue to tell the general public that it's just not for them. But 
many of us who use Linux every day also help to spread this false 
perception when we can't have a user friendly discussion of desktop 
Linux, because even when we install it for others, we can't seem to get 
past the terminal, the shell, the editor that tries to be and do too 
much, etc. Sorry, trying to get the general public at large to use Emacs 
will never fly, as it just feeds that geek perception of Linux and does 
nothing to make it more productive for the end user. Of course I'm not 
saying that you shouldn't use Emacspeak if you got it to build and it 
works for you. But I am saying that in order to debunk the myth that 
Linux is somehow inferior or is only for the geekiest, we need to start 
thinking more inclusively. This means thinking of the power user stuff 
like the shells and terminals and supereditors as an extension of the 
desktop, rather than thinking of the desktop as a necessary evil that we 
need to use to browse the web.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

#+OPTIONS: latex:t toc:nil H:3
However way we do it, it sure needs doing if we want wide adoption of
Linux by the young blind, who /expect/ it to work.
-- 
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Email: r.d.t.pra...@gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> Linux for blind general discussion  writes:
>
>> Sure, let synthesizers handle ASCII text, but give synthesizers the
>>  textual pronunciation of Unicode characters, such as smiling face.
>
> Chris Brannon here.
> This works fine if you assume that everyone wants English and the
> English names for Unicode characters.  It blows up in the multilingual
> case.  If I'm reading some text in Spanish and I come across the "pile
> of poo" emoji (Unicode character U+1F4A9), I don't want to hear my
> synthesizer try to interpret the English description of it according
> to the phonetic rules for Spanish.  I want to hear the Spanish words
> corresponding to that character.  This blows up pretty quickly, because
> there are so many Unicode characters and so many languages.  It is best
> to get this right in the synthesizer, once, where it can be used by
> every application that needs to speak.  Then pass along the raw
> UTF-8 to the synth as-is.
>
> -- Chris
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 02:27:12AM AEST, Linux for blind general discussion 
wrote:
> At this point, speech-dispatcher is not designed to be a text processor, as
> correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it assumes that supported
> synthesizers already have built in text processing capabilities.

Thanks to work done by the folks at Hypra, there are plans to add better 
punctuation processing to Speech Dispatcher. Admittedly this is because Hypra 
want to support a synthesizer that doesn't do any such processing, but I 
think this is worth  pursuing, because it does mean we can add support for 
user exceptions, and also extend the code to provide consistant pronunciation 
of individual characters. This extra support uses the punctuation symbol 
files from NVDA, which so far as I know, does something similar.

Luke

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Linux for blind general discussion  writes:

> Sure, let synthesizers handle ASCII text, but give synthesizers the
>   textual pronunciation of Unicode characters, such as smiling face.

Chris Brannon here.
This works fine if you assume that everyone wants English and the
English names for Unicode characters.  It blows up in the multilingual
case.  If I'm reading some text in Spanish and I come across the "pile
of poo" emoji (Unicode character U+1F4A9), I don't want to hear my
synthesizer try to interpret the English description of it according
to the phonetic rules for Spanish.  I want to hear the Spanish words
corresponding to that character.  This blows up pretty quickly, because
there are so many Unicode characters and so many languages.  It is best
to get this right in the synthesizer, once, where it can be used by
every application that needs to speak.  Then pass along the raw
UTF-8 to the synth as-is.

-- Chris

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Kyle, it is just your opinion that a screen reader should not be in the 
kernel. And your reasoning for saying that amounts to that it shouldn't 
be in the kernel. You are making a meaningless distinction between a 
serial console and a screen reader. What difference does it make if 
there is a hardware speech synth attached to the serial port or a 
terminal emulator?


Well, clearly this is hopeless. Fortunately, it's not up to you anyway.

-- John Heim

On 04/27/2017 02:48 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

The boot messages I receive from my computer before the kernel starts
are piped out through a serial port automatically, and need no special
configuration to display them. I just hooked up a uart cable to the
header on one computer and the USB port on another and ran tinyserial's
com utility on the USB connected machine before booting the other, only
specifying /dev/ttyUSB0 as the serial device to listen to and 115200 as
the baud rate. But those things at least appear to be fairly standard,
and I can see no reason why having to run a single utility from a shell
would preclude its use by anyone who needs it. I guess the difference
may be that I run ARM computers here, although I was under the possibly
incorrect impression that most newer machines, if they have serial ports
at all, were supposed to make it that easy to pipe boot messages through
them. So although serial console support is indeed in the kernel, it's
in every kernel, and should be, as the serial console is an i/o device,
whereas a screen reader should only be using that device if needed, and
should not be locked into the kernel. The screen reader is an
intermediary between the user and the traditional i/o devices; it is
not, nor should it be, an i/o device. If someone does still need to be
able to hear boot messages from the kernel while the initial ram disk is
in use, said ram disk is perfect for running userspace applications
early in most cases. And since many minimal distros run their live
environments from RAM, adding sound drivers to the initial ram disk
shouldn't cause too much pain, except on extreme low-memory systems,
which in many cases won't have any sort of screen reader at all, as
usually they only have a programmer interface these days, which is
accessible via uart or some other means of connected communication.

Incidentally, of all the ARM computers I've used, only the Raspberry Pi
supports Speakup at all, and I have a strong preference for nearly any
other, as the Pi just feels sluggish, possibly due to the i/o
bottlenecks inherent in the design, and nearly all other computers even
remotely in the same price range have noticeably better specs.
Additionally, although I am able to install Arch in my sleep, and have
even quite easily gotten Fedora 25 working on one of my computers by
removing the installed Fedora kernel and copying over /boot from a
working Arch system, the thought of compiling a kernel, especially since
I would have to do it every time there is an update, is not at all
appealing. Will I give up on the inexpensive and quite capable computers
that I enjoy using or the distros I enjoy running on them? Absolutely
not. Will I whine and complain because the vendors and their kernel
developers "don't care about accessibility?" Most assuredly not, as I
have other more viable options for getting speech when and where I need
it. Or maybe I should whine and complain that Uthe uefi folks don't care
about accessibility if it isn't as easy to get serial boot loader
output. Again, no. Could I run a BSD on one of my ARM computers in the
future? I can hope, as I do want to play with it some. Therefore, what I
need most is a flexible and fully portable userspace screen reader that
has access to kernel device interfaces when needed, but can be installed
and will run on any machine, no matter the running kernel. Brltty almost
fits that bill, but its screen reading functionality is nowhere near the
quality of its braille feature set. Fenrir does have the dependency on
Python, which is a rather large runtime for an initial ram disk or
similar. So it may be that this SBL will be the best option, with a
fallback serial console if I must debug using boot messages that come
from the kernel, or from the boot loader, since I also see those quite
easily with Uboot.
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The boot messages I receive from my computer before the kernel starts 
are piped out through a serial port automatically, and need no special 
configuration to display them. I just hooked up a uart cable to the 
header on one computer and the USB port on another and ran tinyserial's 
com utility on the USB connected machine before booting the other, only 
specifying /dev/ttyUSB0 as the serial device to listen to and 115200 as 
the baud rate. But those things at least appear to be fairly standard, 
and I can see no reason why having to run a single utility from a shell 
would preclude its use by anyone who needs it. I guess the difference 
may be that I run ARM computers here, although I was under the possibly 
incorrect impression that most newer machines, if they have serial ports 
at all, were supposed to make it that easy to pipe boot messages through 
them. So although serial console support is indeed in the kernel, it's 
in every kernel, and should be, as the serial console is an i/o device, 
whereas a screen reader should only be using that device if needed, and 
should not be locked into the kernel. The screen reader is an 
intermediary between the user and the traditional i/o devices; it is 
not, nor should it be, an i/o device. If someone does still need to be 
able to hear boot messages from the kernel while the initial ram disk is 
in use, said ram disk is perfect for running userspace applications 
early in most cases. And since many minimal distros run their live 
environments from RAM, adding sound drivers to the initial ram disk 
shouldn't cause too much pain, except on extreme low-memory systems, 
which in many cases won't have any sort of screen reader at all, as 
usually they only have a programmer interface these days, which is 
accessible via uart or some other means of connected communication.


Incidentally, of all the ARM computers I've used, only the Raspberry Pi 
supports Speakup at all, and I have a strong preference for nearly any 
other, as the Pi just feels sluggish, possibly due to the i/o 
bottlenecks inherent in the design, and nearly all other computers even 
remotely in the same price range have noticeably better specs. 
Additionally, although I am able to install Arch in my sleep, and have 
even quite easily gotten Fedora 25 working on one of my computers by 
removing the installed Fedora kernel and copying over /boot from a 
working Arch system, the thought of compiling a kernel, especially since 
I would have to do it every time there is an update, is not at all 
appealing. Will I give up on the inexpensive and quite capable computers 
that I enjoy using or the distros I enjoy running on them? Absolutely 
not. Will I whine and complain because the vendors and their kernel 
developers "don't care about accessibility?" Most assuredly not, as I 
have other more viable options for getting speech when and where I need 
it. Or maybe I should whine and complain that Uthe uefi folks don't care 
about accessibility if it isn't as easy to get serial boot loader 
output. Again, no. Could I run a BSD on one of my ARM computers in the 
future? I can hope, as I do want to play with it some. Therefore, what I 
need most is a flexible and fully portable userspace screen reader that 
has access to kernel device interfaces when needed, but can be installed 
and will run on any machine, no matter the running kernel. Brltty almost 
fits that bill, but its screen reading functionality is nowhere near the 
quality of its braille feature set. Fenrir does have the dependency on 
Python, which is a rather large runtime for an initial ram disk or 
similar. So it may be that this SBL will be the best option, with a 
fallback serial console if I must debug using boot messages that come 
from the kernel, or from the boot loader, since I also see those quite 
easily with Uboot.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Then we'd better get eSpeak supporting Unicode pronunciation before I
can confidently recommend anything besides Emacspeak to younger
generations. Otherwise, they’ll turn back to iOS, and Voiceover,
which can speak Emoji and such, pretty quickly. I know, I’m not
a developer so it probably won’t happen until Reece gets to the
bottom of the to do list and gets the strings translated to all
102 languages, but really, it needs doing. I have several ways
to get the word out, but if we are to be successful, we can’t
have this glaring emission to tell teens/Young adults about, and
believe me, they’ll notice. Facebook, Twitter, even chatting
programs like Skype, are full of Unicode characters, and its
about time our synthesizers, or synthesizer managers, get with
the times.
-- 
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:

> At this point, speech-dispatcher is not designed to be a text
> processor, as correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it assumes
> that supported synthesizers already have built in text processing
> capabilities. Any pronunciation handling in either speech-dispatcher
> or a screen reader should handle user-defined exceptions only, until
> or unless speech-dispatcher becomes a text processing application that
> sends raw phonemes to most if not all supported speech synthesizers.
> Otherwise, we risk serious pronunciation errors similar to the Speakup
> error I noted earlier. Of course, if full text processing is indeed on
> the roadmap for speech-dispatcher, then this message may be
> disregarded in its entirety.
> ~kyle
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

At this point, speech-dispatcher is not designed to be a text processor, 
as correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it assumes that supported 
synthesizers already have built in text processing capabilities. Any 
pronunciation handling in either speech-dispatcher or a screen reader 
should handle user-defined exceptions only, until or unless 
speech-dispatcher becomes a text processing application that sends raw 
phonemes to most if not all supported speech synthesizers. Otherwise, we 
risk serious pronunciation errors similar to the Speakup error I noted 
earlier. Of course, if full text processing is indeed on the roadmap for 
speech-dispatcher, then this message may be disregarded in its entirety.

~kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

well, the fact is, Speech Dispatcher is what Orca currently uses, so
that Orca doesn’t have to keep up with changes to eSpeak’s
functions. After all, having many communications between
synthesizers is why Emacspeak’s eSpeak support is so bad in the
first place, because Raman uses Voxin, and no one else who knows
how to program cares about eSpeak NG, or, more likely, has a
speech server but hasn’t put it out there. So, Speech Dispatcher
is what we have to work with, whether we like it or not.
-- 
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:

> I don't understand the advantage an ASCII speech synthesizer has over
> a unicode speech synthesizer, or the advantage of having an
> intermediary between synthesizer and screen reader. Maybe I'm missing
> something, but I would think a hypothetical espeak-unicode that could
> work directly with Orca would work better than keeping espeak ignorant
> of unicode and requiring speech-dispatcher to translate unicode to
> something espeak understands. Honestly, the use of an intermediary and
> having the intermediary handle Unicode support sounds like the
> computer equivalent of telling someone they shouldn't learn a foreign
> language because they can just use Google Translate.
>
> Anyways, I personally think stringing Greak, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. into
> words instead of reading them as individual characters and actually
> being able to identify individual kanji and kana are more important as
> far as unicode support is concerned. Not that I know enough Hebrew or
> Arabic for their proper reading to tell me anything, but I stumble
> upon enough text in those alphabets that the slowdown to read
> letter-by-letter Orca does to be annoying, and it would be nice if I
> could make use of what little I remember from taking Japanese in high
> school.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Aall the money IAVIT has ever gotten has come from knowing someone. Most 
corporate foundations don't even take unsolicited grant applications. 
You have to get a sponsor in the company who can write the application 
for you. And you kind of have to allow them to drive the project. There 
may be exceptions, for example it's possible that Microsoft just gave 
the nvda project a lot of money. But I suspect it was the same kind of 
deal. I've had a small amount of success getting money from Lions Clubs 
andjust marching into a local business and asking for money or 
resources. At first I felt that was humiliating. But I realized it 
shouldn't be so I forced myself to get over it. I can now just pick up 
the phone and ask for money and it doesn't bother me at all. Actually, a 
talent like that shouldn't be wasted, I should run for Congress.


PS: Maybe we should take this discussion to t...@iavit.org. Anybody not 
on that list can subscribe by sending a message to talk-subscr...@iavit.org.


--John Heim



On 04/27/2017 06:15 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I agree with you, but when you say schools, you mean the government.
They provide the majority of funding schools use for that sort of thing.
I did not think of a grant writer.  That sounds like a good place to start.

--Kelly Prescott



On Thu, 27 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:


Tony Baechler here.

Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I
wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the
word gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can
and will happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues
grants. There are many private companies who put lots of funding into
Linux. Most major projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to
survive only on donors, they wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and
servers from HP Enterprise and many other companies. You're right that
the Windows guys get their money mostly from the government, but not
all. Schools are a lot of the market.

As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and
young people are and show them that there is another choice besides
Windows and the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are
potential users. One of the reasons why the Apple II became so
successful was because it was given to so many schools. How many of
you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There was a company
called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they had
no money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth reading
if you care about the history of technology for the blind. They hired
a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were able to fund
development of their software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a
program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the
PC. The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be that difficult,
especially with a good social media presence.

On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

 Kelly Prescott here.
 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 : Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hi, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL here.

Wouldn't we need a location to provide professionals in all blind institutes, 
all Facebook groups, etc, for knowing that next to Windows and Mac, they have:
- Vinux, to install a native accessible system on an existing computers 
- other projects you think relevant such as Talking arch
- Hypra, to get a pre-installed accessible Linux PC with remote suport 

regards

Jean-Philippe MENGUAL

HYPRA, progressons ensemble

Tél.: 01 84 73 06 61

Mail: cont...@hypra.fr

Site Web: http://www.hypra.fr

- Linux for blind general discussion  a écrit :
> Hmm. Facebook groups? Perhaps? I could handle that, if it please ya.
>   Linux for the blind. Grant stuff, though, I’ll probably have to
>   leave for those who know about petitioning and such. However,
>   NVDA got plenty of grant money from Mozilla and Adobe, so we
>   could start with them, as Orca works best with Firefox for web browsing.
> -- 
> 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:
> 
> > Tony Baechler here.
> >
> > Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I
> > wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the
> > word gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can
> > and will happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues
> > grants. There are many private companies who put lots of funding into
> > Linux. Most major projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to
> > survive only on donors, they wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and
> > servers from HP Enterprise and many other companies. You're right that
> > the Windows guys get their money mostly from the government, but not
> > all. Schools are a lot of the market.
> >
> > As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and
> > young people are and show them that there is another choice besides
> > Windows and the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are
> > potential users. One of the reasons why the Apple II became so
> > successful was because it was given to so many schools. How many of
> > you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There was a company
> > called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
> > programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they had
> > no money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth reading
> > if you care about the history of technology for the blind. They hired
> > a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were able to fund
> > development of their software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a
> > program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the
> > PC. The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be that difficult,
> > especially with a good social media presence.
> >
> > On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> >> Kelly Prescott here.
> >> 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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> > 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]

I don't understand the advantage an ASCII speech synthesizer has over
a unicode speech synthesizer, or the advantage of having an
intermediary between synthesizer and screen reader. Maybe I'm missing
something, but I would think a hypothetical espeak-unicode that could
work directly with Orca would work better than keeping espeak ignorant
of unicode and requiring speech-dispatcher to translate unicode to
something espeak understands. Honestly, the use of an intermediary and
having the intermediary handle Unicode support sounds like the
computer equivalent of telling someone they shouldn't learn a foreign
language because they can just use Google Translate.

Anyways, I personally think stringing Greak, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. into
words instead of reading them as individual characters and actually
being able to identify individual kanji and kana are more important as
far as unicode support is concerned. Not that I know enough Hebrew or
Arabic for their proper reading to tell me anything, but I stumble
upon enough text in those alphabets that the slowdown to read
letter-by-letter Orca does to be annoying, and it would be nice if I
could make use of what little I remember from taking Japanese in high
school.

-- 
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]

Saying a serial console is not kernel dependent is inaccurate and 
misleading. The part that displays the kernel boot messages is 
absolutely kernel dependent. I think you mean that you can get messages 
even earlier by, as a seperate step,  configuring a serial console in 
the boot loader, right? And that is a good point. Although, you can also 
configure those messages to go to a serial synth and hear them as well. 
I don't know if that works with all serial synths but I know it works 
with a doubletalk LT and a tripletalk.


-- John Heim

On 04/26/2017 08:58 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

I clearly recall stating that the serial console is *not* kernel
dependent. I clearly stated that I can get *boot loader* messages using
my computer's serial console, which are printed to the output device
long before the kernel starts. If my kernel fails to start for any
reason, I know it, and I am much more likely to be able to figure out
why, because I have serial output long before there is a loaded kernel.
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Sure, let synthesizers handle ASCII text, but give synthesizers the
textual pronunciation of Unicode characters, such as smiling face.
-- 
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:

> I would argue that the pronunciation of symbols should most certainly
> be handled by the synthesizer rather than any intermediate layer.
> Letting the intermediate layers handle symbol pronunciation will only
> cause lots of problems similar to the "tiflda" problem we have in
> Speakup to this day. Most synthesizers have no trouble pronouncing the
> ~ (tilde) character, but they all get it horribly wrong using Speakup,
> because the pronunciation is hard coded in Speakup itself, and is
> quite wrong for most speech synthesizers.
> ~Kyle
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I would argue that the pronunciation of symbols should most certainly be 
handled by the synthesizer rather than any intermediate layer. Letting 
the intermediate layers handle symbol pronunciation will only cause lots 
of problems similar to the "tiflda" problem we have in Speakup to this 
day. Most synthesizers have no trouble pronouncing the ~ (tilde) 
character, but they all get it horribly wrong using Speakup, because the 
pronunciation is hard coded in Speakup itself, and is quite wrong for 
most speech synthesizers.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

As of four years  ago the Carrol Center was teaching only windows. I
know this as a Friend came in as did many others from different
countries. The goal was to learn what to teach blind folks  in the
country they came from. Am I correct in thinking that Carrol center is
all funded from Washington ? Lee
On Thu, 27 Apr 2017, Linux for blind
general discussion wrote:

> Tony Baechler here.
>
> Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I
> wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the word
> gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can and will
> happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues grants. There
> are many private companies who put lots of funding into Linux. Most major
> projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors, they
> wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and many
> other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money mostly
> from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the market.
>
> As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and young
> people are and show them that there is another choice besides Windows and the
> Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are potential users. One of the
> reasons why the Apple II became so successful was because it was given to so
> many schools. How many of you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There
> was a company called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
> programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they had no
> money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth reading if you care
> about the history of technology for the blind. They hired a grant writer.
> After getting several grants, they were able to fund development of their
> software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a program to make AppleWorks
> accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the PC. The point is it can be done
> and it wouldn't be that difficult, especially with a good social media
> presence.
>
> On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> > Kelly Prescott here.
> > 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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>

-- 
quark:
The sound made by a well bred duck.

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

#+OPTIONS: latex:t toc:nil H:3
For me, in school, I started out with Windows XP, lol. Shows how young I
am, only 22, 23 on May 7. But the future is for the young,
mostly, although nowadays the old get older, lol. I’ve never
represented a group of users or people... Well I did yesterday
when I said that, because the IRS uses Jaws 16, we, the AT
department of Lions World, cannot upgrade to Jaws 18 to fix a
rather glaring bug in Jaws’s Braille handling where it cannot
display the minus (−) sign in braille.

One big problem we’ll have with converting teens and young adults, is
that Orca/Speech Dispatcher/Espeak cannot read Emoji, such as ⌣ or 😺 or
😸 or even 😍. This will be a problem, one which needs fixing, as young
people use Emoji extensively. Sad to say, Emacspeak, which most regard
as old or arcane, at least in IRC, can handle any Unicode character you
through at it, with its usage of Emacs’s Unicode support and knowledge
of all Unicode symbols. Failure of "new and improved ways of accessing
speech synthesizers," to read Unicode symbols will turn young people
away, mark my words. That’s why I love using Emacs, because I know that
I have access to each and every symbol in the buffer I’m using, and can
even insert Unicode symbols. If only Emacs worked better with modern web
pages, I’d never leave the thing because it does such a good job at
being an audio interface to things, with "aural highlighting," audio
icons, and so forth. But another thing is, we don’t have to argue about
my using emacs over "traditional" applications, because it’s all Linux,
right? Nah, who am I kidding. If you don’t use Orca or speakup, you
ain’t no Linux user. You’re an Emacs user, and that is blasphemous to
any "true" Linux user, right? Right?

So, basically, Speech dispatcher /needs/ the ability to read /any/
Unicode character out there, including Emoji. We should not put this on
Espeak, because if some one uses festival, for example, we’d have to put
in the same code for it, too. And the same for Voxin, and fLite, and
Pico, and any new TTS that comes out there. Speech Dispatcher should be
able to take better control over its synthesizers under it!
-- 
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:

> I agree with you, but when you say schools, you mean the government.
> They provide the majority of funding schools use for that sort of thing.
> I did not think of a grant writer.  That sounds like a good place to
> start.
>
> --Kelly Prescott
>
>
>
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>
>> Tony Baechler here.
>>
>> Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization.
>> I wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once
>> the word gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but
>> it can and will happen. What we need is a grant writer. The
>> government issues grants. There are many private companies who put
>> lots of funding into Linux. Most major projects have outside
>> funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors, they wouldn't.
>> Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and many
>> other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money
>> mostly from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the
>> market.
>>
>> As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and
>> young people are and show them that there is another choice besides
>> Windows and the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are
>> potential users. One of the reasons why the Apple II became so
>> successful was because it was given to so many schools. How many of
>> you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There was a company
>> called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
>> programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they
>> had no money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth
>> reading if you care about the history of technology for the blind.
>> They hired a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were
>> able to fund development of their software, like Braille Edit which
>> became Bex, a program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually
>> Mega Dots for the PC. The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be
>> that difficult, especially with a good social media presence.
>>
>> On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>>>  Kelly Prescott here.
>>>  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 loade

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Hmm. Facebook groups? Perhaps? I could handle that, if it please ya.
Linux for the blind. Grant stuff, though, I’ll probably have to
leave for those who know about petitioning and such. However,
NVDA got plenty of grant money from Mozilla and Adobe, so we
could start with them, as Orca works best with Firefox for web browsing.
-- 
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:

> Tony Baechler here.
>
> Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I
> wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the
> word gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can
> and will happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues
> grants. There are many private companies who put lots of funding into
> Linux. Most major projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to
> survive only on donors, they wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and
> servers from HP Enterprise and many other companies. You're right that
> the Windows guys get their money mostly from the government, but not
> all. Schools are a lot of the market.
>
> As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and
> young people are and show them that there is another choice besides
> Windows and the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are
> potential users. One of the reasons why the Apple II became so
> successful was because it was given to so many schools. How many of
> you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There was a company
> called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
> programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they had
> no money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth reading
> if you care about the history of technology for the blind. They hired
> a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were able to fund
> development of their software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a
> program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the
> PC. The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be that difficult,
> especially with a good social media presence.
>
> On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> Kelly Prescott here.
>> 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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I agree with you, but when you say schools, you mean the government.
They provide the majority of funding schools use for that sort of thing.
I did not think of a grant writer.  That sounds like a good place to 
start.


--Kelly Prescott



On Thu, 27 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:


Tony Baechler here.

Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I 
wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the word 
gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can and will 
happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues grants. There 
are many private companies who put lots of funding into Linux. Most major 
projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors, they 
wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and many 
other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money mostly 
from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the market.


As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and young 
people are and show them that there is another choice besides Windows and the 
Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are potential users. One of the 
reasons why the Apple II became so successful was because it was given to so 
many schools. How many of you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There 
was a company called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other 
programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they had no 
money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth reading if you care 
about the history of technology for the blind. They hired a grant writer. 
After getting several grants, they were able to fund development of their 
software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a program to make AppleWorks 
accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the PC. The point is it can be done 
and it wouldn't be that difficult, especially with a good social media 
presence.


On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

 Kelly Prescott here.
 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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization. I 
wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once the word 
gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but it can and will 
happen. What we need is a grant writer. The government issues grants. There 
are many private companies who put lots of funding into Linux. Most major 
projects have outside funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors, 
they wouldn't. Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and 
many other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money 
mostly from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the market.


As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and young 
people are and show them that there is another choice besides Windows and 
the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are potential users. One of 
the reasons why the Apple II became so successful was because it was given 
to so many schools. How many of you grew up on the Apple II in the 
classroom? There was a company called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and 
sold Bex and other programs. They were a commercial business. When they 
started, they had no money. All of their newsletters are online and well 
worth reading if you care about the history of technology for the blind. 
They hired a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were able to 
fund development of their software, like Braille Edit which became Bex, a 
program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually Mega Dots for the PC. 
The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be that difficult, especially 
with a good social media presence.


On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Kelly Prescott here.
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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Oh wow thanks for the link to the SBL source! I wasn't aware it still 
existed anywhere other than old OpenSUSE and Knoppix. Hopefully I can 
get this working on Arch and possibly Fedora as well. If it works, there 
should be no objections on technical grounds for getting it packaged for 
many distros.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I clearly recall stating that the serial console is *not* kernel 
dependent. I clearly stated that I can get *boot loader* messages using 
my computer's serial console, which are printed to the output device 
long before the kernel starts. If my kernel fails to start for any 
reason, I know it, and I am much more likely to be able to figure out 
why, because I have serial output long before there is a loaded kernel.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

But, again, Kyle, the serial console is also kernel dependent. You're 
simply depending on a different set of developers. You could switch to a 
user space screen reader once the host is done booting just as you 
switch to a getty once the boot is done.


-- John Heim
On 04/26/2017 04:52 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Tony and all,
I myself am completely opposed to a screen reader being locked into a 
kernel, and have been for many years, for very good, technical, 
non-political reasons. Text mode is exactly this: text mode. The 
layout of the entire screen is available as plain text and some other 
character codes that affect colors and other things, all of which are 
easy to interpret by a userspace screen reader. This is the nature of 
the beast on all operating systems, no matter the kernel. The screen 
reader *must* be fully in userspace, and must be modular enough to 
handle slightly different input/output interfaces, because that makes 
it portable to things like BSD, GNU/Herd or any other new OS that may 
come alon, and all with at most the help of a small module that knows 
how to read the text that is to be output to the screen, which can 
then be sent out to a speech synthesizer, whether hardware or 
software, in an equally modular way. Additionally, having a screen 
reader in userspace and not bound to the kernel means that no one has 
to patch the kernel to accept the screen reader, and screen reader 
developers don't have to answer to kernel developers, kernel coding 
conventions or kernel release cycles in order to continue development 
of the screen reader. Best of all, though a single bug that goes 
uncaught in a kernel-bound screen reader has the potential to crash 
the entire kernel, a userspace screen reader's bugs only affect that 
application, and in the worst cases, the screen reader may need to be 
restarted. No bug in a userspace screen reader will cause the report 
you've put valuable hours into to get lost in cyberspace because a 
previously hidden bug in the screen reader crashed the kernel before 
the report could be saved.


I did also mention the serial console as an alternative to a 
kernel-bound screen reader. The whole reason I mentioned this at all 
is not just because I can make a Raspberry Pi or even a less expensive 
computer act as a screen reader, but because I not only receive kernel 
boot and shutdown messages, but I receive boot loader messages as 
well, which the kernel is unable to provide. This allows me to debug 
things that happen when the kernel fails to boot. This can be caused 
by any number of kernel related problems, but can also be caused by 
filesystem corruption and other things that the boot loader can detect 
and report more easily than the kernel that is failing to boot. The 
only time I would have a problem using the serial console method is if 
the boot loader itself is either corrupt or has no serial i/o, and 
thankfully, most do.


You're absolutely right: YASR is not a viable userspace screen reader. 
In fact, it's not a screen reader. Rather, it's a shell reader. There 
was in fact a try at adding a separate program that could read the 
login screen, but the overall nature of YASR makes it less than ideal, 
as you still have to run a separate instance of YASR along with the 
shell in every terminal you want to read.


Finally, I will reiterate the fact that just because Speakup is not 
included in a vendor or distro kernel does not indicate in any way 
that the vendor or distro developers don't care about accessibility, 
any more than failing to include the alsa front-end utilities would 
mean that a distro's developers don't care about sound. Speakup is 
just one possible option, and because it for a long time required a 
patched kernel, and now still requires staging to be enabled in order 
for it to work, has technical limitations that force distro developers 
and vendors to make hard choices about whether or not to include such 
an unknown variable into the functionality of the kernel, which by 
definition is to be a direct interface to the hardware rather than a 
way to run userspace programs in kernel memory. Furthermore, there is 
a huge difference between not caring at all about accessibility and 
not knowing how best to handle it within the framework of an operating 
system, especially with such technical limitations as a kernel-bound 
screen reader presents. I have said this many times, and will continue 
to do so. Instead of complaining about how little you think a 
developer or a group of developers cares about accessibility, work 
toward fixing the inherent problems with the accessibility tools and 
the technical limitations they present. At least give distro 
developers enough information to try to help fix the problems rather 
than just pissing and moaning on lists like this one when something 
you like presents challenges to developers that they otherwise may not 
know the best way to take on.

~Kyle

_

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Eric Oyen here…

looks like some good points all around on this posting. For the most part, a 
kernel level speech interface can be a good thing, except when it isn't. What I 
wouldn't mind seeing is the addition of a speak up type module for EFI. The 
reason for this as that I might need to be able to troubleshoot some hardware 
issues and the current EFI standard doesn't include any kind of accessibility. 
Since EFI operates largely like a Linux-Lite environment, it shouldn't be that 
hard to compile a small utility for it, make sure the sound module is loaded 
and give us access to the text screen that is available there. This would make 
for a system that could be accessible to those of us with no light perception 
and would be terminated after exiting the EFI console.

THoughts?

-eric

On Apr 26, 2017, at 2:52 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

> Tony and all,
> I myself am completely opposed to a screen reader being locked into a kernel, 
> and have been for many years, for very good, technical, non-political 
> reasons. Text mode is exactly this: text mode. The layout of the entire 
> screen is available as plain text and some other character codes that affect 
> colors and other things, all of which are easy to interpret by a userspace 
> screen reader. This is the nature of the beast on all operating systems, no 
> matter the kernel. The screen reader *must* be fully in userspace, and must 
> be modular enough to handle slightly different input/output interfaces, 
> because that makes it portable to things like BSD, GNU/Herd or any other new 
> OS that may come alon, and all with at most the help of a small module that 
> knows how to read the text that is to be output to the screen, which can then 
> be sent out to a speech synthesizer, whether hardware or software, in an 
> equally modular way. Additionally, having a screen reader in userspace and 
> not bound to the kernel means that no one has to patch the kernel to accept 
> the screen reader, and screen reader developers don't have to answer to 
> kernel developers, kernel coding conventions or kernel release cycles in 
> order to continue development of the screen reader. Best of all, though a 
> single bug that goes uncaught in a kernel-bound screen reader has the 
> potential to crash the entire kernel, a userspace screen reader's bugs only 
> affect that application, and in the worst cases, the screen reader may need 
> to be restarted. No bug in a userspace screen reader will cause the report 
> you've put valuable hours into to get lost in cyberspace because a previously 
> hidden bug in the screen reader crashed the kernel before the report could be 
> saved.
> 
> I did also mention the serial console as an alternative to a kernel-bound 
> screen reader. The whole reason I mentioned this at all is not just because I 
> can make a Raspberry Pi or even a less expensive computer act as a screen 
> reader, but because I not only receive kernel boot and shutdown messages, but 
> I receive boot loader messages as well, which the kernel is unable to 
> provide. This allows me to debug things that happen when the kernel fails to 
> boot. This can be caused by any number of kernel related problems, but can 
> also be caused by filesystem corruption and other things that the boot loader 
> can detect and report more easily than the kernel that is failing to boot. 
> The only time I would have a problem using the serial console method is if 
> the boot loader itself is either corrupt or has no serial i/o, and 
> thankfully, most do.
> 
> You're absolutely right: YASR is not a viable userspace screen reader. In 
> fact, it's not a screen reader. Rather, it's a shell reader. There was in 
> fact a try at adding a separate program that could read the login screen, but 
> the overall nature of YASR makes it less than ideal, as you still have to run 
> a separate instance of YASR along with the shell in every terminal you want 
> to read.
> 
> Finally, I will reiterate the fact that just because Speakup is not included 
> in a vendor or distro kernel does not indicate in any way that the vendor or 
> distro developers don't care about accessibility, any more than failing to 
> include the alsa front-end utilities would mean that a distro's developers 
> don't care about sound. Speakup is just one possible option, and because it 
> for a long time required a patched kernel, and now still requires staging to 
> be enabled in order for it to work, has technical limitations that force 
> distro developers and vendors to make hard choices about whether or not to 
> include such an unknown variable into the functionality of the kernel, which 
> by definition is to be a direct interface to the hardware rather than a way 
> to run userspace programs in kernel memory. Furthermore, there is a huge 
> difference between not caring at all about accessibility and not knowing how 
> best to handle it within the framework of an operating system, especi

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Thank you for additional information on SBl and the link.

I have no idea how old the version of SBL I'm using is, but as far as
I'm concerned, it has yet to show it's age, and if I had a bug to
report, it would be that it isn't available precompiled for more
distributions. I don't have much experience compiling things from
source, but now that I have SBL's source, I think I might try getting
it running on a clean install of Debian 64-bit.

To each their own, but after using SBL for more than four years, I
just find speakup's default behavior irksome in most situations.

-- 
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]

Hi,

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 18:07:27 
>-0400, Linux for blind general > 
> In any case, I do recall SBL, formerly called SUSE Blinux, and 
> possibly SUSE Blind Linux before that, being at least in early 
> OpenSUSE. If it's not using any kernel modules or patches, it may be 
> usable in other operating systems if the source RPM can be found. 

I am a sbl user since one of the first releases and I still like this 
screenreader very much. Many features are also in brltty, but sbl has some nice 
features that brltty does still not have:

- automatic profile switching
- free configurable keyboard layout and other settings for every profile

sbl is not using a kernel module, it is running as a deamon process.


I 
> wouldn't hold out much hope if it's only available as a binary RPM 
> and the .deb in Knoppix though. 

You can get the sbl sources from 

http://openblinux.de.

And yes, you are right, that sbl is not maintained very much during the last 
years. This does not mean, that it is old and useless, I still can use sbl on 
actual linux distros. But sbl does not support that many braille devices then 
brltty does, which is the biggest disadvantage of sbl IMHO currently, all other 
features are still good and some should be ported to brltty :-).

Kind regards from Munich,

  Christian

-- 
Christian Schoepplein - ch...@schoeppi.net - http://www.schoeppi.net

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony,
If you found bash scripts, rather than sbl, you probably found the 
Adrienne[spelling] menu system. SBL is the screen reader that should be 
running as a daemon before the menu system starts, although I can't say 
I'm well versed on the subject, as I found the Adrienne menu system to 
be too oversimplified for my needs. I'm also not a huge fan of the mix 
of Debian packages in Knoppix, taken from I believe stable and testing. 
Because it didn't meet my needs and didn't offer either a GNOME or MATE 
desktop out of the box, I didn't run it long enough to know what 
problems such a mix may cause.


In any case, I do recall SBL, formerly called SUSE Blinux, and possibly 
SUSE Blind Linux before that, being at least in early OpenSUSE. If it's 
not using any kernel modules or patches, it may be usable in other 
operating systems if the source RPM can be found. I wouldn't hold out 
much hope if it's only available as a binary RPM and the .deb in Knoppix 
though. Still, the fact remains that as far as I know, SBL is indeed 
rather old, and may not be maintained, so in order for someone to pick 
up maintenance, proper source code would need to exist somewhere.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony and all,
I myself am completely opposed to a screen reader being locked into a 
kernel, and have been for many years, for very good, technical, 
non-political reasons. Text mode is exactly this: text mode. The layout 
of the entire screen is available as plain text and some other character 
codes that affect colors and other things, all of which are easy to 
interpret by a userspace screen reader. This is the nature of the beast 
on all operating systems, no matter the kernel. The screen reader *must* 
be fully in userspace, and must be modular enough to handle slightly 
different input/output interfaces, because that makes it portable to 
things like BSD, GNU/Herd or any other new OS that may come alon, and 
all with at most the help of a small module that knows how to read the 
text that is to be output to the screen, which can then be sent out to a 
speech synthesizer, whether hardware or software, in an equally modular 
way. Additionally, having a screen reader in userspace and not bound to 
the kernel means that no one has to patch the kernel to accept the 
screen reader, and screen reader developers don't have to answer to 
kernel developers, kernel coding conventions or kernel release cycles in 
order to continue development of the screen reader. Best of all, though 
a single bug that goes uncaught in a kernel-bound screen reader has the 
potential to crash the entire kernel, a userspace screen reader's bugs 
only affect that application, and in the worst cases, the screen reader 
may need to be restarted. No bug in a userspace screen reader will cause 
the report you've put valuable hours into to get lost in cyberspace 
because a previously hidden bug in the screen reader crashed the kernel 
before the report could be saved.


I did also mention the serial console as an alternative to a 
kernel-bound screen reader. The whole reason I mentioned this at all is 
not just because I can make a Raspberry Pi or even a less expensive 
computer act as a screen reader, but because I not only receive kernel 
boot and shutdown messages, but I receive boot loader messages as well, 
which the kernel is unable to provide. This allows me to debug things 
that happen when the kernel fails to boot. This can be caused by any 
number of kernel related problems, but can also be caused by filesystem 
corruption and other things that the boot loader can detect and report 
more easily than the kernel that is failing to boot. The only time I 
would have a problem using the serial console method is if the boot 
loader itself is either corrupt or has no serial i/o, and thankfully, 
most do.


You're absolutely right: YASR is not a viable userspace screen reader. 
In fact, it's not a screen reader. Rather, it's a shell reader. There 
was in fact a try at adding a separate program that could read the login 
screen, but the overall nature of YASR makes it less than ideal, as you 
still have to run a separate instance of YASR along with the shell in 
every terminal you want to read.


Finally, I will reiterate the fact that just because Speakup is not 
included in a vendor or distro kernel does not indicate in any way that 
the vendor or distro developers don't care about accessibility, any more 
than failing to include the alsa front-end utilities would mean that a 
distro's developers don't care about sound. Speakup is just one possible 
option, and because it for a long time required a patched kernel, and 
now still requires staging to be enabled in order for it to work, has 
technical limitations that force distro developers and vendors to make 
hard choices about whether or not to include such an unknown variable 
into the functionality of the kernel, which by definition is to be a 
direct interface to the hardware rather than a way to run userspace 
programs in kernel memory. Furthermore, there is a huge difference 
between not caring at all about accessibility and not knowing how best 
to handle it within the framework of an operating system, especially 
with such technical limitations as a kernel-bound screen reader 
presents. I have said this many times, and will continue to do so. 
Instead of complaining about how little you think a developer or a group 
of developers cares about accessibility, work toward fixing the inherent 
problems with the accessibility tools and the technical limitations they 
present. At least give distro developers enough information to try to 
help fix the problems rather than just pissing and moaning on lists like 
this one when something you like presents challenges to developers that 
they otherwise may not know the best way to take on.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

#+OPTIONS: latex:t toc:nil H:3
So, if Debian is all we have, pretty much, who cares about
accessibility, what is there for those who want a clean, but
up-to-date system other than Arch? As a user, of Emacs with
Emacspeak and Voxin mostly, I find Arch stable enough to
basically do a job. I "work" 3 hours a day with teaching clients
Assistive technology, with Emacs, atop Arch. Which reminds me, I
should set up an Outlook rule which forwards all incoming email
from that darn exchange server to my gmail address... Anyways,
I’m just a user speaking, I do not yet know a programming
language, besides a bit of lisp, how to successfully print in
Python, and a few HTML rules, enough to know that when I htmlize
some Org markup, it’ll look okay on Outlook in HTML message
mode. All this to say, I want up to date packages. I /know/
there will be bugs. There /always/ is bugs in any system. iOS’s
Braille input is sluggish, probably a memory leak, Android’s
Braille support just plain stinks, like Narrator on Win XP, and
the Mate notification system repeats itself. So really, I’ll
take a /few/ bugs for freedom and updated packages any day.. 
-- 
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:

> Tony Baechler here.
>
> Thanks for the Fenrir link. I'll go get it. I've looked at the SBL
> source, or what I could find of it. No, it doesn't need a kernel
> module. The problem is it's tied into Knoppix, so I think would be
> difficult to package. It's mostly bash scripts which I guess are a
> talking menu system. I didn't see a way to actually compile an
> executable, but I'm sure I wasn't finding the full sources even though
> I looked. It is or was somewhere on knoppix.org. I think it hasn't
> been maintained for a long time. If I recall correctly, the source was
> several years old. If it's in opensuse as you say, you should be able
> to get and extract the RPM package. If you find it and get it working,
> I would be interested.
>
> On 4/24/2017 6:05 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> 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]

Addendum to my previous post:

Regarding boot messages, even back when I could see, assuming
whichever distro I was using didn't cover them with a splash screen, I
can't say they were ever all that useful when things went wrong to the
point of things not booting. In most cases, I usually used such
breakage as an excuse to do a clean install. Nowadays, I'm using a
distro that isn't quick to take from clean install to customized to my
liking, so I tend to use booting from a LiveDVD to try system rescue,
and if that doesn't work, use the live system to restore a backup of
my root partition. The efforts I've made to remove stuff I don't use
means the restore takes only a few minutes and in most cases, getting
back to where I was before the problem is simply a matter of
reinstalling software upgrades since I last made a backup. Probably
don't make backups as often as I should(I made one earlier this week,
but my second most recent backup is date in February, but the method I
use requires that the partition being backed up be unmounted, so
creating a backup requires booting from the liveDVD). On a related
note, when things go wrong on my Raspbery Pi, I usually just reimage
the SD card as anything important I was using onthe Pi was copied from
my desktop or on external storage.

Also, you're forgetting the fourth group: Those who care, but reject
both advocacy groups as doing more harm than good. In analogy to US
politics, the NFB and ACB are the Democrats and Republican
parties(which is which doesn't matter), the apathetics are non-voters,
and the fourth group I just mentioned are the minor parties. As it
turns out, I'm in the fourth of these groups in both cases, or at
least, what has been said on this list in the last few days says
dealing with either the NFB or ACB is likely to be more trouble than
it's worth.

-- 
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 what it's worth, Aptitude lists libc6 and libusb as the only
dependencies for SBL, though I'll admit a kernel module would explain
why I've never had any luck switching from a knoppix custom kernel to
a stock Debian kernel when Knoppix is 90+% debian packages with a few
Knoppix specific things.

Also, a google search for SBL rpms brings up the following page:
https://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=sbl

Which indicates that it was in OpenSuse as recently as version
13.2(which if I'm reading the Wikipedia article on OpenSuse correctly,
was the third most recent release). That page lists the developer as
having a .de ee-mial address, and I'm fairly certain Klaus Knopper,
the man behind Knoppix is German, which might explain the shortage of
information on this particular screen reader on the English Internet.
also, if the 'git' in the version string is any indicator, presumably
a git repository existed at some point.

The .deb package from Knoppix for SBL installs fine on 32-bit x86
Debian, though I have no idea how to get it to run or how to stop
espeakup so they don't get in each other's way. From my testing,
adding the knoppix repository to either x86 Debian or Raspbian allows
installation of most Adriane packages, as best I can tell, Adriane is
mostly a bash generated menu system that serves as a front end to
several text-mode applications(for example, the web browser option
from the main Adriane menu launches elinks, the multimedia option is a
frontend to something in the mplayer family, and OCR uses tesseract.
The problems come in with parts of adriane that use knoppix-specific
binaries(for example Adriane-screenreader can only be installed on
32-bit x86 Debian because SBL only has 32-bit .debs available), and
with Adriane-x, as it depends on the knoppix-start-orca script, but it
doesn't have a package in the Knoppix repositories. From what little
testing I've done, most of the Adriane menues work fine withe
espeakup/piespeakup.

Also, figured out that, on my system, it's caps lock + t to get Orca
to speak the time, though I'm still surprised to learn that such is a
common feature in screen readers. That said, is it normal for Orca to
give the time in UTC instead of local time?

-- 
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 Baechler here.

On 4/24/2017 1:46 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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.



Am I correct in saying that while in theory it could be done, isn't it 
impractical? Taking a standard initramfs on a standard Debian-based system, 
how would you know what sound drivers to include? I'm sure initramfs-tools 
doesn't do this, even if you include all modules. That would add a huge 
amount of bloat, possibly running you out of memory. You would need at least 
libespeak and espeakup, right?


The only way I could see this being done is if you build your own custom 
initramfs for your system and sound card with your sound card drivers. I 
remember there was a lot of debate about this with D-I. The smaller D-I 
images would be too big with the sound card drivers. The kernel can 
autodetect and load the right module, but again, almost all sound modules 
would have to be included, right?


If I'm wrong, I would be interested in knowing how this can be done. As much 
as I like hardware speech, I would like to move away from it so I don't have 
to build a custom kernel with the Speakup patch periodically.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

On 4/24/2017 11:23 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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.



Well, you're very lucky. You've never had your system stop because fsck 
failed. You've never been stuck at a busybox prompt in your initramfs with 
no clue as to what went wrong. You've never had your RAID array fail. You've 
never had to fight with LVM to get your volumes mounted. By the way, fsck 
failed on my desktop, not a server. It seems that e2fsprogs upgraded my 
filesystem to ext4dev without telling me and I didn't have the ext4dev 
driver in my initramfs. When I was first learning Linux in 2000, shortly 
after Speakup development started, I kept getting a kernel panic. The only 
way I knew was because I got the boot messages. It turned out I was doing 
something wrong. Without Speakup, I would've given up on Linux. No, a serial 
console isn't the same thing and doesn't give you the same freedom. Yes, I'm 
fortunate to have hardware speech. Regardless of the effort, I want my boot 
messages!


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

Kyle, I find your rant amusing. Back in the good old days of DOS, I used 
Vocal-Eyes. Guess what the key for time was. No, not F12. Actually, it was 
undefined. Do you know what I picked on my own? Ctrl-F12. I was very happy 
with it. It's way out of the way and doesn't interfere with anything else, 
but it's easy to press when I want it. On those very rare times I'm in a DOS 
emulator, I still use it. It makes sense to me. The title of the app you're 
in is far more important than knowing the time. One annoying thing about 
Speakup is there is no time hotkey.


On 4/24/2017 8:29 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]

Tony Baechler here.

I totally agree about the blind community. You forgot the third group. We 
have the ACB, NFB and those who don't care and won't join either. I'm seeing 
more of those. However, no, F12 isn't the standard. Window-Eyes uses 
Insert+T. Should Insert+T read the title as with NVDA or say the time? 
Fortunately, that's why hotkeys can easily be modified. As I said, nothing 
is stopping you or anyone from developing an addon or plugin to customize 
hotkeys to act like another screen reader.


On 4/24/2017 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.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

Thanks for the Fenrir link. I'll go get it. I've looked at the SBL source, 
or what I could find of it. No, it doesn't need a kernel module. The problem 
is it's tied into Knoppix, so I think would be difficult to package. It's 
mostly bash scripts which I guess are a talking menu system. I didn't see a 
way to actually compile an executable, but I'm sure I wasn't finding the 
full sources even though I looked. It is or was somewhere on knoppix.org. I 
think it hasn't been maintained for a long time. If I recall correctly, the 
source was several years old. If it's in opensuse as you say, you should be 
able to get and extract the RPM package. If you find it and get it working, 
I would be interested.


On 4/24/2017 6:05 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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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another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of a righteous   man 
availeth much in its working. (ASV)


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

Kyle, first, from a different post, I have no feelings about Arch. I don't 
know if they care about accessibility or not. I would think if they do, they 
would make Talking Arch official, but there are probably technical issues. 
Why they can't do like Slackware, Debian and Ubuntu, I don't know. Even a 
total novice can press the letter "s" and Enter to start speech. As you say, 
RH, Ubuntu and probably others have Alt-Super-S. There is no reason why Arch 
can't do something similar. Better yet, adopt Talking Arch as an official 
flavor and produce monthly images automatically along with the regular Arch, 
eliminating the need for you to do it.


Second, you're right. I apologize. I was in a hurry. After rereading your 
post, no, you didn't say RH hosted Orca. I very much doubt that RH made that 
much effort to make their installer accessible, but I don't use it. They do 
say that Fedora is accessible now, but I haven't looked at it in years. At 
the time I went distro shopping last, Debian worked and Fedora didn't, so 
that was that. That was around 2007. Gentoo didn't have a special talking 
image either. It had Speakup built into the same kernel used by everyone 
else. All you did is pass the speakup.synth parameter. Gentoo wasn't for the 
novice and I wouldn't place it in the same category as Ubuntu. I have no 
idea of the state of Gentoo anymore.


Finally, no, Speakup isn't my beloved by any means. I tried yasr and I 
couldn't get it to work. Speakup with hardware speech is the only means of 
hearing every boot message. Nothing in user space can do that. Can you put 
Fenrir in the initrd? Oh, you can't? Well, no speech for you if your system 
crashes or doesn't boot. I can't tell you how many times Speakup saved my 
bacon when my system stopped at the initramfs prompt. Why can't you put 
Fenrir in the initrd? Simply because you need a boatload of drivers for your 
sound card, ESpeak, libespeak and who knows what else. That bloats the 
initrd and it won't fit into memory. Unless, of course, Fenrir supports 
serial synths. I've never heard of it, but I want to try it! I actually 
think user space generally makes good sense for everyday use and on 
desktops. For servers, you really need to know what's going on from boot to 
shutdown.


As I understand it, it isn't the fault of Speakup that it took so long to 
get to staging and is still there. The kernel developers were absolutely 
opposed to including it and wouldn't help at all. I've read a message from 
them saying as much. They were approached many times. Development died more 
or less because it couldn't go any further. Without support from the kernel 
upstream, it couldn't be part of the source and couldn't keep up with 
developments. It's a miracle that it finally landed in staging. As you 
rightly say, it took many years, far longer than it should have. I don't 
blame Kirk and the others. Again, this is another great example of why we 
need a nonprofit. I'm not really about the blind community getting together 
and demanding change in most cases, but nothing is going to get done 
otherwise. Speakup is a prime example. Without developer interest, it can 
never meet kernel upstream standards.


As an aside, the reason why I only focus on getting the blind to try Linux 
as opposed to everyone is for the above reasons. The more blind people we 
can get, even if they aren't power users or coders, the louder voice we 
have. As others have pointed out, stuff gets done with Windows companies. 
Apple has VoiceOver. Not much gets done with most Linux upstreams unless 
they really go out of their way to accomodate us poor blind folks. It 
shouldn't be that way! Most of them have never heard of us and have no idea 
what we need, how to help or what to do.


On 4/24/2017 5:40 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 ha

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

On 4/24/2017 5:01 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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



Can you give specific examples? I generally get very fast page loads with 
NVDA and the latest Firefox on almost any site. I'm not a regular Orca user, 
but page loads seemed about the same to me. It might be that some complex 
pages with lots of dynamic content don't work well with Orca because of 
Firefox bugs. Maybe NVDA works around them or maybe they don't show up in 
Windows. The only way to make a fair test is to try the same pages several 
times with both screen readers running the same version of Firefox and using 
a stable version of those screen readers. If you pull from Orca master, 
there are constant fixes and changes. While it's hoped that nothing breaks, 
just due to the nature of development, both with Orca and Mozilla, breakage 
happens.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

You make my point, exactly! All of the BSDs, Windows, and who knows what 
else ship Gnome. Orca is part of Gnome. Therefore, they all ship Orca if 
they ship a complete Gnome environment. That doesn't mean they care about 
accessibility. That means they ship Orca because it's part of Gnome. Case in 
point. KDE has a package called KAccessibility. I assume it ships with all 
distros which ship KDE. KDE isn't accessible. KDE doesn't support Orca. Orca 
doesn't support KDE since KDE doesn't have an a11y framework like Gnome and 
MATE. Just because a vendor ships a product with accessibility components 
doesn't mean: A. they care about accessibility and B. they make any effort 
to make their products accessible. OpenSolaris ships a screen reader too. 
Has anyone tried it? Is it accessible? I honestly don't know.


Regarding your comment that no distros and no main developers care about 
accessibility, I flatly disagree. I've seen many posts to debian-boot and 
debian-devel from DDs wanting to make sure packages are accessible. There 
was a discussion about Java. Lots of work has gone into Debian-Installer. 
They have made accessibility truly part of their design process. Slackware 
was the first to ship a special Speakup kernel on their standard install 
media. Ubuntu has made great strides, but I don't think they're at the same 
level as Debian. I did see a post asking for people to join the 
accessibility team and test for problems, file bugs, write docs, etc. There 
is so much to do that I don't think a dozen nonprofits could do it all.


On 4/23/2017 11:52 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Wait, isn't Orca just a Gnome thing altogether? since RH uses Gnome,
Orca comes by default. I seriously think not one of the
distributions /care/ about accessibility. I know, it’s harsh of
me to say so, but the main developers? Shoot no! It’s truly up
to us to blast our way in if we want things to be stable, up to
date, all that. Just look at Fedora’s accessibility Wiki pages.
Even arch and Debian are better than that.


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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Wow, that's really interesting to know.
-- 
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:

> Nobody said anything about all blind people agreeing about anything.
> The issue is whether we are hurting ourselves with our inability to
> cooperate. Even if you don't believe that the infighting in the blind
> community is worse than it is in the general public, that's no reason
> to just accept the status quo. But think about curb cuts. Over the
> last 20 or 25 years, pretty much every curb in the country has been
> rebuilt to allow wheelchair access. Every building has to have
> acccessible bathrooms when it's remodeled. Stadiums, office buildings,
> classroom buildings have all been rebuilt to allow wheelchair access.
> And it is now just considered part of the cost of doing business in
> this country. How did they do it? How did partially paralysed people
> get those things done? They don't fight among themselves like we do.
>
>
> -- John Heim
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 04/25/2017 07:42 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>> I agree with this post. Sure it would be great if all blind people
>> agreed with one another, especially when it came to issues
>> concerning the blind, but I think this is unrealistic. In this
>> sense, the blind are no different then the general public, and as
>> nice as it would be if the blind were better than the average Joe, I
>> don't think we can escape the fact that we're human, and this brings
>> in all of the bad along with the good.
>>
>> For a job I had about five years ago, I needed to collaborate with
>> my peers on Google Docs. At the time this didn't work with any
>> screen reader or browser combination, except ChromeVox and Chrome. I
>> had no trouble learning the different key strokes, and in addition
>> to keeping me competitive on my job, is was exciting to be working
>> with my colleagues on the same document at the same time.
>>
>> As I said, I don't have a problem learning some new keystrokes when
>> coming over to a new platform or picking up a new screen reader. I
>> think people moving from platform to platform face much bigger
>> challenges. For me, for example, the fact that I have to use Outlook
>> at work and choose to use Thunderbird at home, and the different
>> ways they handle spell checking, is much more frustrating for me
>> then any keystroke differences between Orca and JAWS. Even as
>> frustrating as this is, and even though I prefer Orca and
>> Thunderbird, I'd never expect Microsoft and Freedom Scientific to
>> change how they handle spell checking in Outlook.
>>
>
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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I actually didn't make that assertion. All I stated was that we just 
shouldn't assume that the way JAWS does something is automatically the 
best way something could be done. Let the developers come up with new 
and innovative ways of doing things, such as new key bindings or totally 
different ways to get information from the screen. Don't tie their hands 
by forcing them to support one particular way of doing things now and 
forever into the future.


I think caps-lock+t is more intuitive then caps-lock+f12 for getting the 
time, but I'm sure there are plenty of examples that go the other way. 
We only have a finite number of keys, so mnemonics will only work for so 
long.


Sure, if you had a study that proved one set of key bindings was more 
intuitive, more efficient or easier to use then of course I'd consider 
it and I'd even encourage Orca developers to adopt it. That's my whole 
point. Let's pick a key binding that's better. I'd dump JAWS, Orca, NVDA 
or any other screen reader out there and learn a new key binding if it 
was better.


I just don't think that just because someone has been using JAWS that 
that makes it more intuitive or a standard. Sure, I get that JAWS users 
would love it if Orca were more like JAWS so that was one thing they 
didn't have to learn when moving to a new platform, but what about the 
VoiceOver or NVDA or ChromeVox users? What about the Orca users? Also, 
as a JAWS user myself, I'd dump that key binding in a heart beat for 
something better. Asking Orca to emulate JAWS key bindings just because 
it's JAWS keeps those JAWS users from having a choice to move to 
something different and potentially better.


BTW, this is just my opinion. I'll state it and argue it, but it's not 
like I'm going to dump Orca just because I don't get my way with a 
particular key binding. I think it would be unfortunate if we started 
boxing ourselves in and limiting our ability to be creative, but if 
that's what the Orca developers decide is in the best interest of Orca 
then I'm all for it.


--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail

On 25/04/17 09:05, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

So you are asserting that users would prefer insert+t to F12? Suppose I
were to provide you with evidence that that is untrue. Would that make
any difference to you? Suppose I were to show you that the majority of
users would prefer there to be a standard set of shortcut keys for the
most common functions in screen readers even at the expense of it being
a little less intuitive, would that matter to you?

-- John Heim




On 04/24/2017 08:27 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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.



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Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Nobody said anything about all blind people agreeing about anything. The 
issue is whether we are hurting ourselves with our inability to 
cooperate. Even if you don't believe that the infighting in the blind 
community is worse than it is in the general public, that's no reason to 
just accept the status quo. But think about curb cuts. Over the last 20 
or 25 years, pretty much every curb in the country has been rebuilt to 
allow wheelchair access. Every building has to have acccessible 
bathrooms when it's remodeled. Stadiums, office buildings, classroom 
buildings have all been rebuilt to allow wheelchair access. And it is 
now just considered part of the cost of doing business in this country. 
How did they do it? How did partially paralysed people get those things 
done? They don't fight among themselves like we do.



-- John Heim






On 04/25/2017 07:42 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
I agree with this post. Sure it would be great if all blind people 
agreed with one another, especially when it came to issues concerning 
the blind, but I think this is unrealistic. In this sense, the blind 
are no different then the general public, and as nice as it would be 
if the blind were better than the average Joe, I don't think we can 
escape the fact that we're human, and this brings in all of the bad 
along with the good.


For a job I had about five years ago, I needed to collaborate with my 
peers on Google Docs. At the time this didn't work with any screen 
reader or browser combination, except ChromeVox and Chrome. I had no 
trouble learning the different key strokes, and in addition to keeping 
me competitive on my job, is was exciting to be working with my 
colleagues on the same document at the same time.


As I said, I don't have a problem learning some new keystrokes when 
coming over to a new platform or picking up a new screen reader. I 
think people moving from platform to platform face much bigger 
challenges. For me, for example, the fact that I have to use Outlook 
at work and choose to use Thunderbird at home, and the different ways 
they handle spell checking, is much more frustrating for me then any 
keystroke differences between Orca and JAWS. Even as frustrating as 
this is, and even though I prefer Orca and Thunderbird, I'd never 
expect Microsoft and Freedom Scientific to change how they handle 
spell checking in Outlook.




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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I agree with this post. Sure it would be great if all blind people 
agreed with one another, especially when it came to issues concerning 
the blind, but I think this is unrealistic. In this sense, the blind are 
no different then the general public, and as nice as it would be if the 
blind were better than the average Joe, I don't think we can escape the 
fact that we're human, and this brings in all of the bad along with the 
good.


For a job I had about five years ago, I needed to collaborate with my 
peers on Google Docs. At the time this didn't work with any screen 
reader or browser combination, except ChromeVox and Chrome. I had no 
trouble learning the different key strokes, and in addition to keeping 
me competitive on my job, is was exciting to be working with my 
colleagues on the same document at the same time.


As I said, I don't have a problem learning some new keystrokes when 
coming over to a new platform or picking up a new screen reader. I think 
people moving from platform to platform face much bigger challenges. For 
me, for example, the fact that I have to use Outlook at work and choose 
to use Thunderbird at home, and the different ways they handle spell 
checking, is much more frustrating for me then any keystroke differences 
between Orca and JAWS. Even as frustrating as this is, and even though I 
prefer Orca and Thunderbird, I'd never expect Microsoft and Freedom 
Scientific to change how they handle spell checking in Outlook.


--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail


On 25/04/17 09:01, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Sometimes that slogan about the perfect being the enemy of the good is
useful, sometimes not.  In this instance, I'm inclined to think it's not.

Sighted people as a group disagree on a great many things, and vary a
great deal on the willingness to compromise.  It's the same with blind
folks, and we should expect no differently.  How willing I am to
compromise depends largely on whether matters of principle are involved.
 With computers and other devices, it also depends in part on whether I
think I'm being called on to change for an arbitrary reason or whether
the change seems to be intuitively better or clearly be a logical
improvement.

I use both JAWS and Orca.  I'm therefore used to using F12 with the
first and the letter t with the second for getting the time.  It would
be a bit easier if there were just one key for both screen readers, as
there are with a good number of other keyboard actions, but I usually
remember when to use which.  I'm kind of an old guy, so I had to learn a
bunch of different keystrokes for several screen readers since 1989.  I
have a memory like a broken coffee strainer, so maybe I should mind
more, but it doesn't bother me too much if (a) I can learn gradually and
(b) the thing I'm learning may have something genuinely better to offer,
as with Linux.

Incidentally, the other side of this is why I hated screwing around with
chromium and chromevox, along with the hassles of getting and installing
the latter.  I had to learn too many keystrokes at once just to use the
bastard, and I've heard of no reason why chrome/chromium couldn't be
designed to work with existing screen readers.  (Correct me if I'm
wrong, but as far as I know it hasn't been, although GoogleDocs or
whatever seems to be better in that respect than it was.)

Concerning the time keystrokes, I think the orca key and t is more
intuitive than the JAWS key and f12 is.  Other things being more or less
equal, I'd therefore want the t for the time if I were designing a
standard for all screen readers.  I might choose a JAWS key for
something else, but no example comes to mind.  I don't know how much
screen reader keystroke differences among screen readers has to do with
blind folks not giving Linux a good shot, but I do suspect it would be a
damned nuisance for many people, including me, if I'm using one system
and find I have to use different keys in the hope of pulling folks over
from another.  In this regard, "because it's the standard," seems to me
harsh and arbitrary, at least unless it's true beyond any reasonable
doubt.  (I refrain from ranting about the NLS switch from Grade II
Braille to UEB only because I consider that it might in the long run
flood the world with Braille.)

The complaint about there being two advocacy organizations among blind
people (I think there are more now) is old.  As far as I'm concerned, it
is as wrong as it was in the late 1970s, when I first heard it.  Yes,
we're a small group compared to others--though maybe a larger percentage
of people now than we were in the late 1970s.  Still, we're quite large
enough to have people with varied ideas about what our rightful place in
the world is and how we should try to get it.  The bitter battle that
created the American Council of the Blind from what was almost the
junkheap of the National Federation of the Blind seems to have had a lot
more to do with personality clashes and tyrannical ten

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Maybe the Debian kernel's less stable than Fedora's, but I've never 
heard that.  Then again, there are a lot of things I've not heard. 
(grimace)


I wasn't talking about outdated documentation, but the ability to get to 
it in the first place from


www.fedoraproject.org

or, more precisely, from the documents link or whatever's on that page. 
 If there's something I'm missing about that, I'll be glad to know: 
I'm not looking for reasons to bash Fedora.  No, I didn't always have 
this problem, only in the last maybe three or four years at the longest.


Al
discussion wrote:

The decision to disable the staging tree in Fedora has nothing to do
with a lack of interest in accessibility. It has everything to do with
security and stability, as staging is considered by the kernel
developers to be unstable and not fully known to be secure.

Regarding documentation, I have found things in the Fedora wiki that are
outdated, but this is the case everywhere.
~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The decision to disable the staging tree in Fedora has nothing to do 
with a lack of interest in accessibility. It has everything to do with 
security and stability, as staging is considered by the kernel 
developers to be unstable and not fully known to be secure.


Regarding documentation, I have found things in the Fedora wiki that are 
outdated, but this is the case everywhere.

~Kyle

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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I don't think I disagree with you much, but I made that point and others 
in the context of a lot of messages.  Also, I did not say that there is 
too much unity, only that some kinds of unity are better than others.


Al


On 04/25/2017 11:22 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

But the world doesn't have a problem with too much unity. You say,
"unity behind the wrong philosophy very well might give us a worse
world, not a better one." But it's not as if that has been a huge
problem for the blind community, developers of accessibility software,
or the combination of the two. And this is actually the key issue. I
started out in this thread defending developers of custom distros for
the blind. Critics say they are wasting a precious resource, their own
expertise, on custom distros for the blind when they should be
concentrating on fixing the upstream distros. Why is that anybody's
business but their own? Well, for one thing, we're all in this thing
together. All humans on this planet are interconnected whether they like
it or not. But even without that, there are questions as to how much
support the rest of us should give them. And even beyond that, you could
argue that it's a public list and anybody has a right to offer criticism
if they like. I originally used the line, "Don't let the perfect be the
enemy of the good" by way of defending the developers of custom distros
for the blind.

Even talking about possible problems with too much unity seems crazy to
me when we are drowning in a sea of disunity and can't compromise on
even the tiniest thing.



On 04/25/2017 09:01 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Sometimes that slogan about the perfect being the enemy of the good is
useful, sometimes not.  In this instance, I'm inclined to think it's not.

Sighted people as a group disagree on a great many things, and vary a
great deal on the willingness to compromise.  It's the same with blind
folks, and we should expect no differently.  How willing I am to
compromise depends largely on whether matters of principle are involved.
 With computers and other devices, it also depends in part on whether I
think I'm being called on to change for an arbitrary reason or whether
the change seems to be intuitively better or clearly be a logical
improvement.

I use both JAWS and Orca.  I'm therefore used to using F12 with the
first and the letter t with the second for getting the time.  It would
be a bit easier if there were just one key for both screen readers, as
there are with a good number of other keyboard actions, but I usually
remember when to use which.  I'm kind of an old guy, so I had to learn a
bunch of different keystrokes for several screen readers since 1989.  I
have a memory like a broken coffee strainer, so maybe I should mind
more, but it doesn't bother me too much if (a) I can learn gradually and
(b) the thing I'm learning may have something genuinely better to offer,
as with Linux.

Incidentally, the other side of this is why I hated screwing around with
chromium and chromevox, along with the hassles of getting and installing
the latter.  I had to learn too many keystrokes at once just to use the
bastard, and I've heard of no reason why chrome/chromium couldn't be
designed to work with existing screen readers.  (Correct me if I'm
wrong, but as far as I know it hasn't been, although GoogleDocs or
whatever seems to be better in that respect than it was.)

Concerning the time keystrokes, I think the orca key and t is more
intuitive than the JAWS key and f12 is.  Other things being more or less
equal, I'd therefore want the t for the time if I were designing a
standard for all screen readers.  I might choose a JAWS key for
something else, but no example comes to mind.  I don't know how much
screen reader keystroke differences among screen readers has to do with
blind folks not giving Linux a good shot, but I do suspect it would be a
damned nuisance for many people, including me, if I'm using one system
and find I have to use different keys in the hope of pulling folks over
from another.  In this regard, "because it's the standard," seems to me
harsh and arbitrary, at least unless it's true beyond any reasonable
doubt.  (I refrain from ranting about the NLS switch from Grade II
Braille to UEB only because I consider that it might in the long run
flood the world with Braille.)

The complaint about there being two advocacy organizations among blind
people (I think there are more now) is old.  As far as I'm concerned, it
is as wrong as it was in the late 1970s, when I first heard it.  Yes,
we're a small group compared to others--though maybe a larger percentage
of people now than we were in the late 1970s.  Still, we're quite large
enough to have people with varied ideas about what our rightful place in
the world is and how we should try to get it.  The bitter battle that
created the American Council of the Blind from what was almost the
junkheap of the National Federation of the Blind see

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I just don't understand how you can fail to see how judgemental you are 
being. My hardware speech synth is not obsolete as proven by the very 
fact that I use it all the time and the speakup code is being actively 
developed as we speak. It's just a different choice I made.  I have very 
good reasons for preferring the hardware speech synth to a serial 
terminal as I've already explained.


There is no technical reason for the serial terminal to be in the 
mainstream kernel code and speakup not. That was an arbitrary decision 
made by the kernel developers. I personally asked about this on the 
kernel developers email list. Why can't speakup just borrow the code for 
accessing the serial port from the serial terminal code? Because it has 
the same problem. Well, if both speakup and the serial terminal have the 
same problem with the way the access the serial port, what's the right 
way? There is none. Okay, if they both access the serial port the wrong 
way, why is the serial terminal code in the mainstream kernel code and 
speakup in staging? No answer.
I am not likely to ever use sonar/vinux. I don't really have any skin in 
this game. But I just find your my way or the highway attitude shocking 
and unethical. I am not saying you have an ethical obligation to include 
speakup in vinux. I am saying you have an ethical obligation to value 
the opinions of others and not to merely dismiss them when they don't 
happen to agree with your own way of doing things.


-- John Heim
. On 04/24/2017 07:15 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I know next to nothing about the NFB and ACB, and I could've sworn
there was an AFB in there somewhere, but unless one organization is
hoarding resources for their own members, refuse to let members be
part of other organizations, or abuse IP law to the point only those
willing to jump through their hoops can benefit, I'm not sure what the
problem is with multiple organizations opporating in the same arena
and pursueing differing goals. After all, the more choices one has,
the better the chances of finding something that works for their own
needs.

Sure, someone working to improve screen reading on the Linux Desktop
might be better off contributing to Orca than trying to produce their
own screen reader, and someone interested in improving screen reading
in Windows would probably be better off contributing to NVDA or even
applying for a job at Freedom Scientific than trying to create another
screen reader for Windows, but with how vastly different Windows and
Linux are as ecosystems, cooperation between the two sides might not
offer any tangible benefit not already provided by NVDA and Orca both
being open source. And even within the same ecosystem, speech and
braille are two completely different beasts, so not only could
cooperation between a speech developer and a braille developer not
benefit either side, trying to integrate their efforts into a single
program that does both braille and speech might just lead to something
that's harder to maintain than a pair of separate, single-purpose
programs.

Actually, I think that just might be a practical example of the wisdom
behind the Unix Philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well".

As for competing standards, when you only have a few competing
standards and one is clearly superior to the others(e.g. Blu-Ray vs HD
DVD), often the superior standard kills the inferior standard unless
the inferior standard has overwhelming backing of big business or the
government or is so much cheaper people over look it's inferiority.
However, when you have many standards in near perfect competition,
trying to introduce a new standard to replace them all often results
in just adding another standard to the list. Consider the various
document, image, audio, and video formats in common usage for storing
stuff digitally and how they tend to be an eclectic mix of formats
that have been around for decades and formats that popped up in the
last few years, and how the older formats aren't limited just to files
that have been circulating for years. Honestly, it's a small miracle
HDMI became the one standard to rule them all instead of ending up
with as many HD video connectors as there are different SD Video
connectors, and I'd say the same of USB if it wasn't a single
all-purpose standard replacing a multitude of single purpose
standards.

-- 
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]

But the world doesn't have a problem with too much unity. You say, 
"unity behind the wrong philosophy very well might give us a worse 
world, not a better one." But it's not as if that has been a huge 
problem for the blind community, developers of accessibility software, 
or the combination of the two. And this is actually the key issue. I 
started out in this thread defending developers of custom distros for 
the blind. Critics say they are wasting a precious resource, their own 
expertise, on custom distros for the blind when they should be 
concentrating on fixing the upstream distros. Why is that anybody's 
business but their own? Well, for one thing, we're all in this thing 
together. All humans on this planet are interconnected whether they like 
it or not. But even without that, there are questions as to how much 
support the rest of us should give them. And even beyond that, you could 
argue that it's a public list and anybody has a right to offer criticism 
if they like. I originally used the line, "Don't let the perfect be the 
enemy of the good" by way of defending the developers of custom distros 
for the blind.


Even talking about possible problems with too much unity seems crazy to 
me when we are drowning in a sea of disunity and can't compromise on 
even the tiniest thing.




On 04/25/2017 09:01 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Sometimes that slogan about the perfect being the enemy of the good is
useful, sometimes not.  In this instance, I'm inclined to think it's not.

Sighted people as a group disagree on a great many things, and vary a
great deal on the willingness to compromise.  It's the same with blind
folks, and we should expect no differently.  How willing I am to
compromise depends largely on whether matters of principle are involved.
 With computers and other devices, it also depends in part on whether I
think I'm being called on to change for an arbitrary reason or whether
the change seems to be intuitively better or clearly be a logical
improvement.

I use both JAWS and Orca.  I'm therefore used to using F12 with the
first and the letter t with the second for getting the time.  It would
be a bit easier if there were just one key for both screen readers, as
there are with a good number of other keyboard actions, but I usually
remember when to use which.  I'm kind of an old guy, so I had to learn a
bunch of different keystrokes for several screen readers since 1989.  I
have a memory like a broken coffee strainer, so maybe I should mind
more, but it doesn't bother me too much if (a) I can learn gradually and
(b) the thing I'm learning may have something genuinely better to offer,
as with Linux.

Incidentally, the other side of this is why I hated screwing around with
chromium and chromevox, along with the hassles of getting and installing
the latter.  I had to learn too many keystrokes at once just to use the
bastard, and I've heard of no reason why chrome/chromium couldn't be
designed to work with existing screen readers.  (Correct me if I'm
wrong, but as far as I know it hasn't been, although GoogleDocs or
whatever seems to be better in that respect than it was.)

Concerning the time keystrokes, I think the orca key and t is more
intuitive than the JAWS key and f12 is.  Other things being more or less
equal, I'd therefore want the t for the time if I were designing a
standard for all screen readers.  I might choose a JAWS key for
something else, but no example comes to mind.  I don't know how much
screen reader keystroke differences among screen readers has to do with
blind folks not giving Linux a good shot, but I do suspect it would be a
damned nuisance for many people, including me, if I'm using one system
and find I have to use different keys in the hope of pulling folks over
from another.  In this regard, "because it's the standard," seems to me
harsh and arbitrary, at least unless it's true beyond any reasonable
doubt.  (I refrain from ranting about the NLS switch from Grade II
Braille to UEB only because I consider that it might in the long run
flood the world with Braille.)

The complaint about there being two advocacy organizations among blind
people (I think there are more now) is old.  As far as I'm concerned, it
is as wrong as it was in the late 1970s, when I first heard it.  Yes,
we're a small group compared to others--though maybe a larger percentage
of people now than we were in the late 1970s.  Still, we're quite large
enough to have people with varied ideas about what our rightful place in
the world is and how we should try to get it.  The bitter battle that
created the American Council of the Blind from what was almost the
junkheap of the National Federation of the Blind seems to have had a lot
more to do with personality clashes and tyrannical tendencies than I
realized when I joined NFB, but there also were, or grew to be, some
genuine philosophical differences between the two groups.  (I remain
philosophically an NFB type in the main, but I

Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Is there a set of instructions for doing this?

Al

On 04/24/2017 04:46 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

All of this criticicism of Speakup, however valid, avoids the fact that 
Speakup has nonetheless been available as a staging module with Debian, 
for example, as well as Arch, if I'm not mistaken.  It is not available 
with Fedora.  It then became unavailable even from rpmfusion, and I've 
not heard that it has returned.  I take this to mean that Fedora has 
been less interested than other distros in acessibility in a very basic 
Linux thing, the text console.


I also find it a lot harder to get at Fedora documentation than I do 
getting Debian or Arch documentation.  I follow the document link and 
can't find actual documents.  I tried on Sunday.  I think I had to use 
Google to find some, which is bizarre.  I couldn't even get to them 
using the key for simulating mouseclicks!  I assume you can get to them 
somehow from there, but I haven't found it and I suspect it's an 
accessibility matter.  There much easier to find from the Debian or Arch 
homepage, and maybe from the homepages of other distros as well.  (I 
haven't looked lately.)


Third, although this may be a weaker point, minimalizing the text 
installer is another blow to accessibility.  I know blind folks have 
used the graphical one, but at least some of them found it troublesome.


Now, there are things I like about Fedora.  Although I technically 
started with Debian, but I pretty much started with the speakup-modified 
version of Fedora 4.  I used it a lot, along with GRML and a couple of 
others.  I like rmp and yum/dnf.  I'd be a mighty grateful and happy 
camper if Fedora became fully accessible, and might jump from whatever 
distro I use at that time to give it a shot.  But I don't think the 
complaints about speakup justify its absence there, or that 
accessibility is high enough on its priority list.


Best.

Al



On 04/24/2017 08:15 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

That's what I've thought.  Also, it seems to me as a matter of equal 
access that we should have speech and Braille access as close to the 
time as possible when sighted folks can see action on their monitors. 
If that requires that our speech/Braille output software be in kernel 
space, then it should be a given in kernel revision.


In this vein, I'm grateful for Samuel and Okash for their current work 
on Speakup.  I'll be a happy camper if I can use my TripleTalk LT with 
Speakup again--and presumably won't *have* to worry too much about 
hassles between Speakup and Pulseaudio.


Best!
Al

On 04/24/2017 10:59 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

So you are asserting that users would prefer insert+t to F12? Suppose I 
were to provide you with evidence that that is untrue. Would that make 
any difference to you? Suppose I were to show you that the majority of 
users would prefer there to be a standard set of shortcut keys for the 
most common functions in screen readers even at the expense of it being 
a little less intuitive, would that matter to you?


-- John Heim




On 04/24/2017 08:27 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

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.



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Re: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Sometimes that slogan about the perfect being the enemy of the good is 
useful, sometimes not.  In this instance, I'm inclined to think it's not.


Sighted people as a group disagree on a great many things, and vary a 
great deal on the willingness to compromise.  It's the same with blind 
folks, and we should expect no differently.  How willing I am to 
compromise depends largely on whether matters of principle are involved. 
 With computers and other devices, it also depends in part on whether I 
think I'm being called on to change for an arbitrary reason or whether 
the change seems to be intuitively better or clearly be a logical 
improvement.


I use both JAWS and Orca.  I'm therefore used to using F12 with the 
first and the letter t with the second for getting the time.  It would 
be a bit easier if there were just one key for both screen readers, as 
there are with a good number of other keyboard actions, but I usually 
remember when to use which.  I'm kind of an old guy, so I had to learn a 
bunch of different keystrokes for several screen readers since 1989.  I 
have a memory like a broken coffee strainer, so maybe I should mind 
more, but it doesn't bother me too much if (a) I can learn gradually and 
(b) the thing I'm learning may have something genuinely better to offer, 
as with Linux.


Incidentally, the other side of this is why I hated screwing around with 
chromium and chromevox, along with the hassles of getting and installing 
the latter.  I had to learn too many keystrokes at once just to use the 
bastard, and I've heard of no reason why chrome/chromium couldn't be 
designed to work with existing screen readers.  (Correct me if I'm 
wrong, but as far as I know it hasn't been, although GoogleDocs or 
whatever seems to be better in that respect than it was.)


Concerning the time keystrokes, I think the orca key and t is more 
intuitive than the JAWS key and f12 is.  Other things being more or less 
equal, I'd therefore want the t for the time if I were designing a 
standard for all screen readers.  I might choose a JAWS key for 
something else, but no example comes to mind.  I don't know how much 
screen reader keystroke differences among screen readers has to do with 
blind folks not giving Linux a good shot, but I do suspect it would be a 
damned nuisance for many people, including me, if I'm using one system 
and find I have to use different keys in the hope of pulling folks over 
from another.  In this regard, "because it's the standard," seems to me 
harsh and arbitrary, at least unless it's true beyond any reasonable 
doubt.  (I refrain from ranting about the NLS switch from Grade II 
Braille to UEB only because I consider that it might in the long run 
flood the world with Braille.)


The complaint about there being two advocacy organizations among blind 
people (I think there are more now) is old.  As far as I'm concerned, it 
is as wrong as it was in the late 1970s, when I first heard it.  Yes, 
we're a small group compared to others--though maybe a larger percentage 
of people now than we were in the late 1970s.  Still, we're quite large 
enough to have people with varied ideas about what our rightful place in 
the world is and how we should try to get it.  The bitter battle that 
created the American Council of the Blind from what was almost the 
junkheap of the National Federation of the Blind seems to have had a lot 
more to do with personality clashes and tyrannical tendencies than I 
realized when I joined NFB, but there also were, or grew to be, some 
genuine philosophical differences between the two groups.  (I remain 
philosophically an NFB type in the main, but I'm not a member at the 
moment.) The people with those differences, as well as others, have a 
moral as well as a legal right to compete with their differing peers in 
trying to shape the place we live in.  Yes, our lives would be simpler 
if we were all united, and our list of "accomplishments" might be 
longer, but unity behind the wrong philosophy very well might give us a 
worse world, not a better one.  Which is the correct general course of 
action is, of course, still up for grabs, but we seem to be better than 
we once were at acting in concert when we find common ground.  I think 
the world would be a much better place for us if it adopted my NFB-style 
blindness philosophy, just as I think it would be better if it adopted a 
free software philosophy--and, indeed, eradicated so-called intellectual 
property from the known universe.  But it's more important to me, in 
philosophy and in practice, that we have reasoned, principled, caring 
discussions about how best to improve the world, a willingness to start 
from the ground up if necessary but to avoid it if it isn't, and to 
retain and respect the freedom of all of us to try to spread our 
different views regardless of perceptions about our disunity.  That's 
the kind of world in which I or anybody else can be proven as wrong as 
acid rain and, at le

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: 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: 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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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: Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Right, you have to have a hardware synth as well as a screen reader that 
works in kernel space. But that can be necessary if you are a 
professional systems administrator. Well, I suppose there are always 
alternatives. You could use a serial terminal and get access almost as 
good. But a screen reader that starts during boot can be a life saver.


-- John Heim




On 04/24/2017 06:23 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

Screen readers cannot give boot messages anyways, with software speech.


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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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