General questions from someone who's never used Speakup...

[James Homuth]

I'm wondering, though, what kind of feedback overall I can expect 
from it. I'm giving serious thought to getting into system 
administration, yes, but if it's going to offer as much or, I guess, 
as little feedback as programs like asap for DOS have, then it 
probably isn't really worth my switching, and I'd likely be better 
off sticking to administering linux systems as best I can remotely, 
since I get more feedback that way. Also, how does it handle 
environments wherein the text is constantly changing? IE an active 
realtime communications medium. If I understand it correctly, it's 
designed to stop speaking when you start typing... is there perhaps a 
way that that can be changed, or at least temporarily disabled? 
Questions like that I'd rather have answered before I start looking 
for old computers to turn into experimental linux boxes.

James
At 12:19 PM 9/18/2006, you wrote:
>I think it all depends on what you want out of linux. Are you hoping to
>become a linux system administrator? If so, you'll want to get to know
>speakup -- it rocks. I use it every day. I even have speakup on my laptop as
>opposed to Windows 98. (It's a very old laptop.)
>
>But if you're just looking for a way to read email and browse the web, I
>don't think you'll see a productivity increase by switching from a
>windows/jaws system to linux/speakup.
>
>I've been telling all my blind friends who make their living doing computer
>support to get into linux. IMO, it's a great career move.  You're hardly
>handicapped at all in linux system administration. Almost everything is text
>based.
>
>But if you're not a computer nerd, I wouldn't bother trying to learn
>linux/speakup. WWhen the GUI screen readers are better, then it might be
>worthwhile to switch.
>
>I definately  think the way to get started is with an older machine. I have
>a LAN in my home running, well, everything... web server, dhcp, caching dns,
>samba. It even has 2 sound cards so I can record more than 1 radio program
>at a time. And it's just a pentium 450 with 384 Mb of ram.
>
>I don't know what the laws are like where you live but in Madison,
>Wisconsin, you have to pay like $20 to dispose of a computer. So people are
>more than willing to give you an old computer that linux and speakup will
>run on just fine.  That's how I would start.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "James Homuth" <james at the-jdh.com>
>To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
>Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 5:52 PM
>Subject: General questions from someone who's never used Speakup...
>
>
> >I do have linux experience, though not running it off my own machine,
> > since until recently I'd been unaware of anything remotely decent so
> > far as text-to-speech capabilities for it. What I'd like to know,
> > however, is what kind of feedback/configurability is offered with the
> > current version of Speakup? I should probably point out that, coming
> > from Windows, I'm probably going to end up comparing this with
> > whatever expectations I have after using JAWS and/or Window Eyes.
> > I've been tossing around the idea of finding a spare machine just to
> > fiddle around with linux and check out Speakup, at the very least,
> > but I like to know what I'm getting into before I go and jump in with
> > both feet. If anyone knows where I can get my hands on something like
> > a demo of the program in action, or can maybe tell me what their
> > experience with Speakup has been like, that'd be awesome. Email me on
> > or off list, whichever.
> >
> > James
> >
> >
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> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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> >
> >
>
>
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