heretical thoughts was Re: Speakup dropped from Ubuntu

[Henrik Nilsen Omma]

I'm not qualified to comment on the technical merits of a kernel vs. a 
user-space solution, but I know that from a maintenance point of view we 
would prefer it.

More importantly, this is the kind of forward thinking I would like to 
see more of in the access community. Over the next couple of years we 
will increasingly move over to ultra-mobile technologies. These will 
require lean kernels but there is scope for many options in user-space. 
Ubuntu is working actively with Intel on these new platform to make sure 
accessibility is a consideration from the very start. Hopefully we can 
avoid the long accessibility gap we had with mobile phones.

Henrik

C.M. Brannon wrote:
> Hi folks,
> I had a couple of observations that may not sit well with most of you ...
>
> Hardware synthesis is becoming obsolete.  Why?  More and more systems,
> especially laptops, are being manufactured without RS232 ports.  When
> I buy my next laptop, I won't let the presence of RS232 be a
> determining factor.  The vendors of USB synths won't release their
> product information, so these are unsupported.  Thus, I'm not buying
> one.  Who wants to do business with people like that anyhow?  So it
> looks like software speech is the way of the future, at least for me.
> Next, software speech is more convenient, especially when using a
> laptop.  You have to carry one less peripheral with you.
>
> The question to ask is this.  Given the decline of hardware synthesis,
> is it really necessary to have speech support within the kernel
> itself?  Software synthesizers run in user mode, so the benefits of a
> speech-enabled kernel -- notably a talking boot process -- are lost.
>
> Comments are welcome.
>
> PS. I'm not a GUI user, so I'm arguing from a console / command-line
> perspective.
>
> -- Chris
>
>
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