Main advantages of SBL over Speakup

[Pia]

For those that use the GUI, why not just use the terminal in Gnome with 
Orca and then you have the commandline with Orca keys and you don't have 
to change Speakup key bindings.  For one, I don't like that Orca will 
allow you to interrupt it with any key.  I do think Orca is great for a GUI 
because it is more like other familiar GUI environments blind people are 
used to, but for the commandline only server, I could be annoyed if my 
Speakup acted in a like manner.  I think for the GUI Orca is good though. 
Again, why make them all the same?  I also really like the editable key 
bindings of Yasr and actually would use it a lot if it didn't mess up my 
terminal redraw for some reason.  I like how easy it is to customize Yasr 
but admit I have not tried customization in other screen readers the way I 
have for Yasr.  An easily customizable key binding would make both camps 
happy I would think.  This for Speakup though would involve actually 
changing the keymap as I understand it though.  I mean, I like things the 
way they are but the capability for customization is always good.

On Mon, 8 Feb 2010, Bill Cox wrote:

> Ok, that makes some sense.  SBL is used as you suggest, in a menu
> driven environment.  Are the generic keybindings configurable?  I've
> heard requests, and I admit I agree, that it would be nice to have
> more consistency between speakup and Orca.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Pia <pmikeal at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
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