User Guide docs for Speakup questions.

[Thomas Stivers]

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On 02/26/04 10:37 AM +1100, Sean Murphy wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> I am planning to write a User Guide for Speakup.  In order to do this, I
> need to know some information which I haven't found at this point of
> time.The document that I am planning to write isn't on installing, updating,
> running the CVS, etc.  Its whole focus is on how to use the commands within
> Speakup.

Cool, I have tried to write a howto style document for speakup version
2.? but various things have kept me from devoting much attension to it
lately. I will make what there currently is of the rather sadly lacking
howto available for your use at
http://tomass.dyndns.org/~stivers_t/Speakup-HOWTO.html or you can
replace html with xml or txt to get those versions. If you or anyone
else wants to take up the torch I dropped before the barn burns feel
free, but hopefully I will be able to work on more of my preferred
projects this summer.

> 1.  What do the different punctuation numbers mean?  EG:  What 4 means when
> you change the read punctuation.

0 == none (no punctuation
1 == some (the characters in /proc/speakup/punc_some)
2 == most (the characters in /proc/speakup/punc_most)
3 == all (characters in /proc/speakup/punc_all)
4 == *really* all (all punctuation and extended ASCII characters)

Somebody who knows more please correct me if this is wrong.

> 2.  In some DOS and window screen readers, it is possible to set-up a window
> to monitor a spefic area of the screen.  This window would have several
> properties associated with it.  That is, silent (don't speak anything),
> Speak when x colour is seen, speak when text change, etc.  Is this possible
> in speakup?

I think a little of this functionality is built in. You can define the
start and end of a window area with speakup+f2 by moving the speakup
cursor there, and you can set that window to silent, but I don't know
about the rest of what you asked above.

> 3.  If you use the shift + pageup command to scroll your console back a
> screen, I don't find that Speakup is reading that new information.  I only
> am seeing the information that is visible.

I haven't the foggiest.

> 4.  How do you make settings become your defaults?  EG: speech rate,
> punctuation, etc?

In the drivers/char/speakup tree after you checkout speakup from cvs
there is a script called speakupconf. When run as a normal user with the
save parameter it saves your current speakup settings to the .speakup
directory in your $HOME. When you run it as root it saves the settings
to the /etc/speakup directory. When you run it with load the settings
are loaded back into /proc/speakup. One way to do it at boot up is to
put a script that runs speakupconf load in a file called
/etc/init.d/speakup and then create a symbolic link to it in
/etc/rcx.d/S10speakup. I have gotten this to work on Debian and Redhat,
but I think the runlevel (the x above) is different on Redhat than on
Debian. 

> I am only in the early stages of this proposed project, so any help would be
> welcomed.  I will be searching the archieves to gain information.   If I
> cannot find the information their, then I will of course ask the experts on
> this lists.

Good luck.

- -- 
Clarke's Corollary:
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Thomas Stivers	e-mail: stivers_t at tomass.dyndns.org
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