speakup desktop again

[Gregory Nowak]

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Granted, however keep in mind that emacs does also have a steep
learning curve, so it may not be a choice for everyone. Some people
find it easier to navigate to, and hit enter on a spellcheck button in a GUI menu,
rather then typing m-x ispell-buffer, enter, or memorizing a shortcut
keystroke for it for example. Yes, some find this kind of navigation
and use to be annoying, time consuming, and wasteful, but again, there
are those that prefer that method for their own reasons.

Greg



On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 11:36:46AM -0400, Christopher Moore wrote:
> Hello,
> I saw this topic on the speakup list recently and followed the 
> discussion with interest.  
> 
> I'd classify myself as a happy linux user.  When I was working I more or 
> less had to use windows to conform to the culture of my employer.  Even 
> if linux alternatives were available, convincing the IT staff that 
> accessing their network with "non-standard" software would somehow 
> compromise their security would not have been 
> an easy task.  Now that I am retired, I find that the linux text console 
> satisfies most of my computer needs except for web browsing.  So I still 
> need to boot up the ms windows to access some web pages when I need to 
> order something online or listen to audio streams.  
> 
> While reading this discussion, it occurred to me that we already have a 
> text-based desktop environment in the form of emacs.  What emacs lacks 
> is an up-to-date web browser.  While I've read comments on the w3 
> browser, most of them are not favorable.  What emacs does have, however, 
> is buffers and robust editing features.  If, there were a way to say, 
> run firefox in a X session and control it from an emacs environment, 
> would this not fill the gap?  
> 
> Let me take this a step further.  We're all aware of the effort to make 
> the gnome desktop accessible.  This is a major undertaking and involves 
> retooling many applications to use the gtk+ archa tecture to expose 
> their contents.  It further involves developing screen readers to 
> retrieve this information and speak it in some usable format.  To-date I 
> am aware of three such screen readers: gnopernicus, orca and lsr.  Work 
> on the first appears to have stopped while work on the latter two is 
> still underway.  
> 
> This brings me back to the emacs environment.  Much of the work on the 
> above screen readers centers on developing speech and braille output 
> facilities.  Orca for example, has an on-screen dialog for 
> modifying speech, braille an magnification parameters.  If the screen 
> readers were designed to communicate with emacs, the spoken content 
> would appear in an emacs buffer and the applications could be controlled 
> from a text console.  If this approach had been taken, all the effort 
> put into developing the braille and speech facilities would have been 
> unnecessary.
> 
> I'm looking for volunteers to investigate the prospect of 
> communicating 
> with X applications from a console environment.  While it would be nice 
> to use the entire gnome desktop, my initial focus would probably on web 
> browsing since there is a definite gap in this area.  
> 
> Feel free to comment on the speakup list or to me directly.  If such a 
> group were to be be formed it would probably make sense to start a 
> separate mailing list or other vehicle for sharing ideas.
> 
> Chris
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

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