An updated SpeakupModified repo now available.

Tue Oct 28 01:46:37 EDT 2008

Hi all,

      It's been a long time in coming, but the ISO images and RPM 
repository for Speakup Modified Fedora 9 have been updated.  First, the 
problems.  On Fedora, Starting with the 2.6.26 kernels, there's a nasty 
bug connected to the soft synthesizer driver.  If the driver is loaded, 
and there's no synthesizer to take the output, the machine will lock up. 
The workaround is to run a script that loads the soft synth driver and 
immediately starts the synthesizer.  I understand that not all machines 
suffer from this problem.  Next, the fix that makes sure that serial ports 
are recognized in the same order whether or not Speakup is loaded does a 
number on the Dectalk Express and friends.  It's an interaction with HAL 
Daemon which causes the Dectalk to hesitate for about three seconds every 
time a key is pressed.  The workaround for this is to keep HAL from 
running.  As root, do: chkconfig haldaemon off I don't know what the 
consequences are of not running HAL.  For those who must have it, the last 
2.6.25 kernel is posted at 
ftp://ftp.speakupmodified.org/speakupmodified/fedora/9/Fedora/.

      Now for the good stuff.  Since the last update on Aug 12, there have 
been about 2GB of updates.  And we've done some work to address our unique 
needs.  A patched version of xulrunner is included that fixes the bug with 
Orca finding firefox to be inaccessible on x86_64 systems.  We now install 
braille support for Orca by default along with espeak and tiresias fonts.

     Now, we can focus on F10.  I've successfully rebuilt and updated the 
f10 beta.  As I write a batch of 32bit kernels with Speakup included are 
being built.

      If anyone has questions, they can post here or call me at the number 
at the top of this message, or at sip:3890 at octothorp.org.

-- 
           Bill in Denver