speakup 1.0 and slackware 8.0

[Geoff Shang]

On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Thomas Ward wrote:

> Well, I'd have the entire manual entry converted into a text file, save it,
> and then if you wanted it in braille you'd have to configure a braille
> printer under Linux.
> If you want it in grade two then you'd have to setup something like megadots
> for dos using the dosemu program.

I'm pretty sure NFBTRANS will do this under linux.

> Speakup is not a bad tts app,

Speakup is not a TTS ap, it is a screen reader.  Tuxtalk, festival and
viavoice are TTS aps.

> but it's biggest draw back is it will not give
> you any speech access to the x-Windows server, x applications, or anything
> with alot of graphical widgits.

And the biggest drawback of a car is that it doesn't float on water.
C'mon!  Speakup was never designed or intended to provide access to the X
windows environment, just as ASAP, vocaleyes and such don't provide access
to MS windows.  I gotta say, I don't really understand all the desire for
access to X.  It's not like DOS and windows.  DOS was an 8 bit OS with many
limitations, whereas Win32 is a 32 bit app with alleged multitasking, etc.
X provides no functional advantages over the text console as all the power
is in the OS itself, which is where it should be.  X is a memory and
resource hog and I know many sighted people who don't use it or use it
minimally.  OK, so there are a few aps that only work in X, but those are
diminishing rapidly as text users take up the cause.

Geoff.