Integrating Speakup/ESpeakup into Debian boot process

[Gaijin]

On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 01:03:23PM +1000, Daniel Dalton wrote:
> I couldn't agree with that. Debian provides brltty, orca and now speakup
> modules, and just recently yasr. Emacspeak is also in the repo... 

	<smiles>  And if you don't have a braille display, or have been
even granted the grace of being taught braille by The State?
	Sorry, I just can't see spending every waking moment learning
how to keep Debian unstable/Sid working while I'm still playing catchup
from when Woody had just been released, and I had just started learning
Linux.  A lot of things have happened since I was punching in monitor
frequencies to get X11 working and looking for howtos on how to get the
system to make a 56K call to my ISP.  It's like, "Oh! there's already a
pon and poff script already on the system for this.  Wish I'd known that
6 months ago when I was tweaking settings in pppd.conf."
	Unless you already know exactly what you're doing and exactly
where all the information is spread all across the internet, and are
willing to spend every waking moment keeping track of all the changes, I
still can't recommend Debian for new users.  Your perspectives are
coming from the top of the mountain, not the bottom. or from somewhere
onn the slope where everyone else is.  You likely *already know* how to
get out of trouble when something completely hoses the system, or you
possess hardware like braille terminals that give you added ways to
access the system.  I only have the2.6.18 Shane kernel to count on when
the latest upgrade crashes on bootup, because there are no more speakup
upgrades scheduled in Lenny, and I have to port to the never-ending
battle with Sid...or do you really think all this talk sounds like
English to a Fedora/Slackware/BSD/SuSE user or Linux newbie?
	It's not like someone who's just gotten their Lenny CD from
cheapbytes, are even going to know what questions to ask to get info, let
alone know where to go, what to look for, and how to even possibly
manage to keep up with it all in an unstable version of Debian that may
not work from one day to the next, all while just trying to get it set
up and configured in the first place.
	Yes, I do have a problem with run-on sentences. <grins>  I'm
just saying that Debian isn't the best platform to choose where new
technology like accessibility is concerned.  Once a version goes stable,
Advances get locked out, and when you depend on those advances, Debian
is pretty much the worst system to count on.  Very few things in
Debian are standard with the rest of the Linux world because of debconf
and dpkg dependencies.  Debian is beginning to look like Windows where the
ability to get around  what the maintainers are forcing everyone to do
is concerned.  It's either "depend on Debian to do it or go without,"
a'la Microsoft.
	I had much the same problem with Orca, tying itself to the GTK
libraries, instead of acting like speech-dispatcher and acting like a
middleman between Xorg and the synthesizer, translating X server
transmissions to speech.  They are never going to stop playing catch-up,
trying to clean up behind hundreds of programs rather than just one,
decoding the X server transmissions/feed itself.  Otherwise you're
always having to depend on the sighted world to generously grant you some 
support, like a dog hoping for a few table scraps from it's master.

	I'm still waiting for that edbrowse upgrade that fixes the 1z bug 
that won't print the first line of a web page in Lenny, and it's been out
there for months.  I don't think it ever will be upgraded until Sid goes
stable in another 2 to 4 years.  That's Debian in a nutshell.  It's
policies make it the absolutely *wrong* platform where new tech is
concerned, unless you're a linux guru and want to join the "play
never-ending catch-up" game with the Orca maintainers.  Maybe I'd have
time to learn to code and write it myself, if I wasn't trying to keep my 
computer talking all the time.

	It's too bad linux fragmented into distro-based rather than
kernel-based branchings.  The talent fragmented with it and everyone
lost from it.  We've become another Tower of Babel, and it's getting
progressively worse. <shrugs>  Just my $.02.  Debian's regimentation is
a major stumbling block for the handicapped in an already difficult
environment.

			Michael

PS: If this gets me censored the way they did to me in the Orca group,
it'll be worth it just to get it said.  Thinking inside the sighted's box 
has never gotten us anywhere.  Louis Braille learned *that* much and
changed an entire world.  You people are the radiant diamonds formed in 
that furnace.  God Bless You All, and Thank You for all I have here.