gentoo dropping speakup support

[Lorenzo Taylor]

For a couple of years now I have felt that Speakup should move into
userspace, and from time to time I have posted messages to this effect
on this list. However I have thought it over and have come to the
conclusion that Speakup as it is should remain in the kernel for the
sake of those of us who have hardware synthesizers and who can receive
the boot messages from start to finish for troubleshooting purposes. On
the other hand, speakup in its present form will never gain wide use in
major distributions unless it makes it into the mainline kernel tree. My
present position is that an alternative userspace only application with
the functionality of Speakup should be developed. Unfortunately, the
text console userspace only screen reading applications are limited to
YASR and Emacspeak. Despite being portable, these applications are quite
limiting, since YASR runs a subshell under a running shell in one
console only and Emacspeak requires that Emacs be running. A screen
reading application based on Brltty's direct access to the console is
the best approach to take, since it provides direct access to the
currently visible console even if switched, including messages printed
to the console by the kernel, and is quite portable, being able to run
on any Unix-like OS and even DOS. The configuration is also much easier
since it has a configuration menu and a persistent configuration file
that it reads automatically at startup so that the persistent files
don't have to be copied into /proc to change configuration options. I
found also that Brltty can actually start very early on in the boot
process, and can even get access to boot messages earlier than Speakup
as modules using software speech. I have for some time wanted to play
around with PC/Free/Open/NetBSD, but it's nearly impossible, since
Speakup depends on the Linux kernel and only YASR and Emacspeak will run
on such systems, and I don't want to have access only via SSH or telnet.
Some sort of Brltty derived or other userspace only app that will
provide the same type of access would help me and others to be able to
use and possibly help develope these other OS's.

I guess this message has possibly become a call for developers/others
who can help me in developing a portable userspace only screen reading
application, based on Brltty or not, with as much of the functionality
of Speakup as possible as an alternative to a kernel based screen
reader. Speakup is good for what it does and should stay in the kernel.
It just needs a little work to become mainline kernel ready, and kernel
code tends to scare off some developers (like me). <smile> I have played
with coding some userspace applications, and have contributed some code
to others, but the kernel still scares me. I also like the userspace
approach for portability. If anyone who knows anything about programming
or can help me in any way and is interested in helping to develope such
a portable userspace only screen reader, feel free to contact me off
list for discussion of concepts and how to procede. I will be posting
messages to other blind Linux user lists as well, unless someone wishes
to forward this message on to such lists. I look forward to getting this
project off the ground, not as an insult to the Speakup developers who
have put so much time and effort into a good application, but as an
alternative when Speakup just won't do the job because of its dependence
on the Linux kernel and the extensive patching needed to make it work
with an upstream kernel.

Live long and prosper,
Lorenzo

-- 
I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
--Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)