Any experience w/ Debian Woody Speakup Packages?

[Hugh Esco]

Hey folks:

I have a few questions below.  But first some background.

All this talk about the RH9 kernel .rpm got me to thinking of whether 
Debian Woody might have something that I could apt-get install or dpkg 
-i.  My last attempt at compiling from source was pretty frustrating.  So 
tonight I went to the debian.org/packages site and found a 2.4.20 speakup 
kernel image in the unstable and the testing distributions.  Nothing yet 
listed in Stable, but I'm told that Debian is pretty conservative about how 
they upgrade packages, so I'm not too concerned about that.

Since I last posted to this list, I swapped out a fried mother board on my 
machine with one which has a built in sound chip, which was easily 
accommodated by re-configuring the kernel to load the cs4232, uart401, 
ad1848 and the sound modules.  Once that was all done, the emacspeak 17.0-1 
and eflite 0.3.5-2 I had previously installed from the debian packages 
began instantly to work.

But both I and Adam (my blind friend who I've been supporting) are both 
using Debian Woody.  And we're still both reliant on software 
synthesizers.  A hardware synth is not in the budget for either one of us.

I keep lurking on this list, hoping that I'll figure out how to get his 
software synth to speak the dmesg's to him at startup -- or pretty close to 
it, anyway.  I'm hopeful I can show him how to invoke lynx out of a shell, 
perhaps use oleo for a spread sheet, teach him what is possible at a mysql 
prompt, etc.  I'd love to show him that there is life (or at least least 
audible feedback) without having to invoke emacspeak first.

Adam is our state Party's Membership Development Coordinator.  I want to 
share with him a copy of our membership list, so he can work it for 
us.  Right now, he's still calling me to read him off ten numbers at a time 
and recording them on his cassette recorder.  He and his County Chair keep 
reminding me to take it slowly, though; not to rush him.

Anyway, so my questions this evening are these, I guess:

	1)  Is there anyone out there with experience with the Debian Speakup 
kernel package?  If so, what can you tell me about it?  What can I expect?

	2)  Will it accommodate a software synthesizer?

	3)  If it won't, can someone who has built Speakup from source to use a 
software synthesizer please tell me more of your experience?  Might you be 
willing to share a phone number so I can get some coaching on an 
installation?

If I can get this working on my own machine, I'll borrow Adam's box long 
enough to get it on a high speed connection to download and re-build the 
new kernel.  But before I launch into such a project on my box, I would 
really appreciate some additional guidance, perhaps even some hand holding.

Two weeks ago, when on vacation I finally got around to building up the old 
used laptop I was given last year.  Its display is fried (or I wouldn't 
have it, I'm sure), but I'd rather carry a laptop and a monitor than a 
desktop and a monitor.  I was missing my Debian install disk and reached 
for the RedHat 9 set another friend passed on to me.  Its my first 
experience with RedHat.  Two weeks later, having rebuilt the kernel at 
least twelve times so far, I'm still trying to get ppp working on a 
dial-up, though.  I have a broader base of support for Debian, than for 
RedHat.  And I'd hate to have to rebuild Adam's machine from scratch.

Adam, by the way, for those of you who are also on the emacspeak list, is 
coming along fabulously.  He's learned a bit about the Bourne Again Shell, 
including many basic shell commands and how to use pdftotext and is 
starting to use view mail now.  He's still pretty frustrated by not fully 
understanding how to navigate between the headers and the message bodies 
and more reliant on chancing upon what he's looking for, never sure whether 
an email is being read from the start or from the middle.

But even so, I am encouraged by his progress.  He seems pretty excited as 
well, getting a better understanding of how much information is being 
shared and how much work is taking place by email within our 
organization.  (Adam is a member of our state Party's governing 
Coordinating Council, and a solid contribution in spite of the 
communication challenges).

I am also excited that I can now invoke on my machine, what he's using on 
his, so I can provide him support by phone, when I can't be in Atlanta 
(which is two hours away when I get to be home).  I hope to check in with 
him in person on Tuesday for the first time in six weeks.  My next goal is 
to get him to start responding to some of the e-mail he's starting to read 
now.  And to get him writing on his machine, instead of always relying on 
his braille-writer and cassette deck.  He's on our editorial council 
responsible for publishing our state newsletter.  Its pretty exciting being 
able to share these tools with him.

All replies are appreciated.  Thanks.

-- Hugh Esco
Political Coordinator
Georgia Green Party