software speech for speakup

Mon May 14 00:29:36 EDT 2001

I thought we already had the ability to put speakup to sleep and to wake it
up with ins+numpad-enter. Also, not to get off topic ... I know there are
some of you out there that either have used or are still using emacspeak.
Any recommendations on where to start after the howto if I decide to take
that route until speakup gets software speech? Also, I was thinking of how
to install Linux on such a system without sited help. I've got a braille
blazer here. I thought of setting up speech through the blazer's parallel
port, and using the line printer console. However, when I include
"console=lp0" on the loadlin command line, the kernel oopses, and I don't
know of how to activate the console on /dev/lp0 after logon. Any
suggestions? Thanks.
Greg
P.S. The kernel *doesn't* oops if I leave that option out.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry at gotss.eu.org>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2001 10:57 PM
Subject: Re: software speech for speakup

> Ok so that was all 1 big long line! I won't be slicing that message
> down into smaller sections in ed os it remains attached below.
>
> The fundermental problem with software speech and speakup is this:
> speakup gets control extremely early on in the boot process, just after
the
> console driver or at the same time. At this point; no sound is
initialized,
> no hard disks are known, ho usb is active, no file systems
> are mounted and therefore sound and viavoice can't yet be loaded.
> Via voice is a huge application, and putting it into the kernel isn't an
> option since it would make the kernel image too large and anything in
kernel
> image is unswappable and consumes memory.
> Not to mention we don't have the viavoice source so we
> can't even integrate it if we wanted to.
>
> It may be possible to do something like keep speakup asleep until viavoice
> is running, and make some shim between speakup and viavoice but this
> is not trivial. What you are trying to do is take information
> from kernel space (console driver) handle it with speakup, hand it to
userspace
> to a program that mightn't even be running anymore, have that program
> synthesize the speech and pass it back to kernel land sound drivers that
we
> presume you loaded. This is going to make the performance of the system
like
> cyphoning honey uphill. Even assuming the speakup mods were made by
somebody
> in the forseeable future, there are many more moving parts to make work.
> What if one of the tasks such as viavoice dies or sound drivers unload,
how
> do we tell the kernel to tell user space to tell the kernel to tell user
space
> that something ahs gone wrong?
> Emacspeak is a user application. It calls a speech server
> to interact with its talking device and assumes that sound and viavoice
are
> in top shape. When the speech server crashes emacspeak respawns it.
> What you are asking is for speakup to become re-enterant, the ability to
put it
> to sleep and wake it up at will and the ability to talk to it from user
space
> despite the fact it is kernel code and have that kernel code talk back to
> user space. This requires a complete redesign of speakup
> and although it may be possible, so is Bill Gates giving away all his
> money and becoming a hermit.
> Even if Kirk changed his mind regarding viavoice tomorrow and coded flat
out
> until the project was complete it would require months of coding time
before
> the whole system was usable if indeed it could be done.
> Remember Windows screen readers run in user land and although they hook
into
> the windows subsystems they are applications like any other. Speakup is in
> the kernel itself and is part of the operating system.
> Ever had jfw or windoweyes crash and lost your speech? Often you are left
with
> no clue as to why it happend and often jfw is unrestartable. If we were to
> have this happen in Linux it may result in bits of the kernel becoming
> unusable and could lead to an entire system crash.
> My personal recommendation is to learn how to use emacspeak, preferably
from
> a seasoned emacs user and learn about term mode and shell mode.
> W3 is a nice browser, vm works well and so does emacspeak. Once you have
this
> down pat, you can then use the c-mode in emacs to start writing the code
> for speakup and take some of the weight off the existing coders <smile>
> If it takes you a week to get emacspeak working for you, it will tide you
over
> until tuxtalk is ready for prime time.
> There are other userland screen readers and one supports software speech
can't
> remember what it is called. Use that until the massive
> modifications are in speakup itself around 2010.
> If we get more coders things might go faster, but until then; you might
need
> to use another solution for accessability if you have no serial ports.
>
> Regards, Kerry.
> On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:13:40PM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Ok, here is my penny's worth on software speech for speakup. I certinly
don't mean to flame or unconstructively critisize here, so please read on if
you're interested. There are some of us that don't have serial ports on a
PC, but do have a sound card supported in Linux (based on some earlier posts
I've seen on this list, I know I'm not alone in this situation). As a
result, I would personally like to entirely blow away the other OS on such a
machine, and dedicate it to Linux (simply because I'm getting tired of using
the other OS on it, and because all its hardware is Linux compatible). I
know that Kirk mentioned that he was working on a software synth that would
work with speakup in the far future, and that he wouldn't write anything for
IBM viavoice, because it wasn't an opensource product. However, as I stated
earlier, there are thoes of us that would like to be able to use software
speech with speakup in the very soon future (now). Yes, I know that I could
use emacspeak which supports viavoice. However, I've recently downloaded it
and played with it for two days (even read  the howto). Given a choice of
access though, I would much rather stick with speakup. Thus, not writing a
driver for a product that is not opensource (and so far for me works without
a hitch) is a serious limitation to access. Speakup certinly doesn't have to
be distributted with viavoice (emacspeak isn't), but it would be nice to
have the option of using it. It shouldn't be that hard to modify a dectalk
or doubletalk PC driver to work with the speech engine. I've taken c++ my
junior and senior years of high scghool (AP computer science). Even so, I
have somewhat of an understanding on how the sample programs work that come
with the engine. I also plan to read the API docs, and hopefully learn more.
As you can see, I'm not a candidate to write the speakup driver for
viavoice, so I'm not volenteering. I certinly wouldn't mind switching to the
opensource engine when it became usable. However ... ok, I've wined enough.
Kirk, I guess I'm sim
> ng your mind regarding viavoice as a speech engine for speakup for now at
least. If there is anyone else here that agrees with me, please write so
that we could see how many more takers there are, and maybe try to persaude
Kirk some more to change his mind. Thanks for reading.
> > Greg
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
> --
> --
> Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.net
> alternatives: kerry at gotss.eu.org or kerry at gotss.spice.net.au
> ICQ UIN: 8226547
>
>
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>