Integrating Speakup/ESpeakup into Debian boot process

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Gaijin, le Wed 08 Apr 2009 15:03:19 -0700, a écrit :
> 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?

Then as said above, use speakup, yasr, and emacspeak.

> 	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.

> 	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.

Ah!  Ok, so that was your point.  Yes, I would definitely not recommend
Debian for new users either.  But that's very different from saying that
it is not "accessible" (in the sense that it can't be used by blind
people).

> 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,

You can put speakup in the initrd to achieve the same with newer kernels.

> 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.

Ok, so that's the same point as raised earlier this day, and I do
agree: the stability requirements of Debian does not meet users wanting
cutting edge advances in accessibility.  Just like it does not meet
users wanting cutting edge advances in software in general, that's not
specific to accessibility.

> Debian is beginning to look like Windows where the
> ability to get around  what the maintainers are forcing everyone to do
> is concerned.

I do not understand this.  I've always had a much harder time getting
rpms configured the way I want than with debs.

> 	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.

The way you describe has been tried in the past (ultrasonix), with
little success, and nowadays it just can _not_ work.  What you will
get at the X server layer is just pictures, which you will have a very
hard time to decipher into text.  That's why the at-spi architecture
was developed: it plugs itself into the GTK libraries to fetch the
text directly from there.  Note however that even if the current
implementation is done in GTK only, at-spi is _not_ meant to only
support GTK.  It is actually currently being rebased on d-bus in order
to support KDE.

> 	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.

As I said, yes, the stability requirements of Debian made Mario not
upgrade edbrowse before the Lenny release. Now that it's out, edbrowse
did get upgraded to 3.4.1. Now, the question is: was Mario aware of that
bug?  There is no bug report saying "please upgrade to 3.4.1 for Lenny
because that nasty bug got fixed there"...

> I don't think it ever will be upgraded until Sid goes stable in
> another 2 to 4 years.

Grumbling is not welcome, thanks.  If more people were helping Mario,
maybe there could be more work done...

> PS: If this gets me censored the way they did to me in the Orca group,

Grumbling sure is not welcome.  Raising valid points is, however, and
you made a few, and I do agree with them, as that's how Debian is.

Samuel