The Speakup User's Guide, official release

[Gene Collins]

Hi Janina.  What you are talking about with the initrd is not the same
thing as hearing all the bootup messages.  No matter how early you load
speakup in the boot process, it will not speak all the boot messages as
it will if it it is built in to the kernel.  Besides, this is an
installation and configuration issue.  In addition, how you handle
initrd stuff varies from distro to distro.

In other words, this was not an oversite on my part.

Thanks for the feedback.

Gene

>Hi, Gene:
>
>I'm sorry, but there's one thing I wish I had caught sooner. I do think
>it would be very helpful to make an additional edit to cover the
>situation, because we're continuing to run into folks who get this piece
>wrong.
>
>It has to do with getting speech during boot when the Speakup drivers,
>including speakupmain, are compiled as kernels.
>
>The following statement from Section 7 is not correct:
>
>7.  Loading modules
>
>As mentioned earlier, Speakup can either be completely compiled into the
>kernel, with the exception of the help module, or it can be compiled as
>a series of modules that can be loaded after the system is booted up.
>When compiled as modules, Speakup will not be able to speak the bootup
>messages, and the modules can only be loaded after the file systems have
>been checked and mounted. 
>
>n fact, the modularized Speakup can be made to talk if properly
>initialized. With the Speakup Modified Fedora, the method is to create
>an initrd.img in order to get speech as early in the process as
>possible. I would expect the same procedure would work with other
>distros, though the steps for creating an initrd may be different than
>those we describe in the Speakup Modified HOWTO.
>
>So, you should point out that this is possible, and it's an installation
>and configuration issue.
>
>Lastly, I would think it appropriate to mention this in Section 1,
>Starting Speakup, because it would seem to change a bit the guidance you
>provide when you say:
>
>>
>> If your kernel has been compiled with Speakup, and has no default
>> synthesizer set, or you would like to use a different synthesizer than
>> the default one, then you may issue the following command at the boot
>> prompt of your boot loader.
>>
>> linux speakup_synth=ltlk
>
>
>Indeed, this will not work for modules--at least in some circumstances.
>However, as I've already pointed out, a correctly provided initrd will
>provide speech during the boot--there's just no opportunity to choose a
>different synth for that spoken output.
>
>
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