Main advantages of SBL over Speakup

[Pia]

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010, Bill Cox wrote:

> I'm trying to port SBL (Suse Blind Linux) to Ubuntu.  It is the
> default console screen reader in Knoppix Adrian.  Some users report
> they prefer SBL, and two main reasons are given:

The problem with application specific key bindings is that it makes your 
basic environment inconsistent.  I think the two programs were written for 
different audiences but I could be wrong.  I find in general most command 
line only power users prefer a consistent environment, ie behavior won't 
be application specific, whereas a user more comfortable with a menu driven 
system who only wants a handful of standard applications to be smoother to 
operate and don't care about generic consistency would prefer something 
like SBL.

>
> - SBL has application specific keybindings, all of which are
> user-configurable.  This makes it easy to be more Orca compatible.
> - SBL relies only on the uinput and console devices, and doesn't need
> any special modules to be compiled for the current kernel.  This makes
> it possible to ship as a simple Debian package.
>

To make Speakup not be kernel space would not only require a complete 
rewrite but also again would not let the power user or sys admin hear boot 
time messages.  I think in general because these two software packages 
serve different user types that it is important speakup not change because 
it is the only software package that meets my needs as a sys admin who 
needs a serious full fledged environment that can talk at all times.

Regards,

Pia