Speakup compared to the other linux/unix screen readers

[Hermann]

Am 05.08.2009 18:18, schrieb Michael Whapples:
> Hello,
> With all the other unix systems available, I am wondering whether it is
> worth learning about another text console screen reader so I could use
> non-linux unix systems. My question is though, how do the alternatives
> compare to speakup? Things I am considering in how they compare are:
> * How good are they to use
> * How advanced are they (speakup has a variety of tracking modes, window
> to read from, etc)
> * How frequently updated are they (looking at the yasr website the last
> release was over a year ago)
>
> So in comparing them is it worth looking at them or is speakup much
> better and the lack of it would make working on the other unix systems a
> pain?
>
> I know about emacspeak, and its probably worth learning it for an
> advanced editor, but I was more thinking about general screen readers
> like yasr.
>
First of all: Which systems are Linux and which ones are Unix in a 
narrower sense of this word? (Generally they all are based on Unix).
Second: Did you test Suse-Blinux? Despite its name, which may confuse, 
it runs on a variety of Linux/Unix systems.
It has an excellent support of speech, especially together with SD. It 
can be used with speech-only. (Originally it was a braille screen reader).
I think that yasr is a bit out of date, and it is not at all developped 
continously.
Besides that it doesn't support Unicode properly, which does not matter, 
as long as you use English. But all other languages are not supported well.
Note: I am writing this on my Windows notebook, and i do not have the 
link to Suse-blinux here. But I'll post it as soon as I am back at my 
Linux machine.
You can contact one of the developers, Halim Sahin, whose address should 
be in one of your mailing list folders (for example the Orca list).
Hermann