Main advantages of SBL over Speakup

Thu Feb 11 12:00:42 EST 2010

Well, you didn't originally say *most* motherboards don't have serial ports 
or that *if* a PC has no serial port there is no advantage to having 
speakup in the kernel. But I guess the symantics of the debate aren't really 
relevant anyway. We should get back to arguing the point.

Maybe its accurate to say that *most* modern motherboards don't have serial 
ports. I question even that. But you didn't address my questions about how 
you determined your priorities. We both agree that most servers have serial 
ports. That seems unlikely to change any time soon. So I don't understand 
why its so important to you to have hardware speech on your desktop. I 
understand it for servers. In fact, that was part of my original point --  
having speakup in the kernel is very important if you need to find out what 
a server won't boot or why it can't get a network connection. But on your 
desktop, why don't you just use software speech? In fact, why don't you just 
get one PC for yourself with a serial port and use software speech on all 
the other desktops that you do support on. That's what I do even though all 
of our PCs have serial ports.

Also, I have a problem with your prediction that speakup will become less 
relevant if it doesn't support USB hardware. I suppose its true as far as it 
goes but its like saying if pigs had wings they could fly. Maybe. But pigs 
don't have wings.  Speakup probably would and probably will support USB 
synths if and when it becomes possible.  But right now, its not possible. 
You will never be able to switch to orca or sbl or any other screen reader 
for boot time speech. If those screen readers tried to find a way to speak 
as early in the boot process as speakup does, they'd run into exactly the 
same problems  that speakup has.

Oorca and sbl are probably never even going to try to speak as early in the 
boot process as speakup does. Honestly, if you think about it, who uses 
hardware speech synths these days anyway? If you want to talk about modern 
solutions, hardware speech synths are definately yesterday's ttechnology. 
People want a GUI and they want software speech. The vast majority of people 
still interested in the CUI are systems administrators. I really doubt that 
not supporting USB synths is a serious threat to speakup's popularity with 
system admins if for no other reason than that if you want speech during 
boot, you have no choice but to use speakup.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Trevor Astrope" <astrope at tabbweb.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: Main advantages of SBL over Speakup

John, what I said is there is no advantage to having speakup in the kernel
if it cannot support serial synths on modern computers and I stand by my
statement that most modern computers do not come with serial ports. I know
there is a Dell business machine that does, but these are the exception,
not the rule and are also much more expensive.

Basically, my point is speakup needs to support external serial ports
and/or usb serial ports going forward or it loses any advantage it has of
being in the kernel. If software speech is the only option for the
majority of computers, than there is really no point of speakup being in
the kernel.

Feel free to disagree, but I think my statements are accurate and you will
find that over time you will find fewer and fewer machines with built-in
serial ports, as usb was intended to replace rs232 serial ports and this
is happening today, although I do agree it isn't totally complete.

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010, John G. Heim wrote:

> I just think you are over stating your case. I'm sure the speakup 
> developers
> would love to support USB.   But your original  comment was that speakup
> doesn't support modern  motherboards -- which is just totally untrue.  You
> also said that having speakup in the kernel has "no advantage". Also 
> untrue.
> I don't have a problem with your offereing the suggestion that speakup be
> modified to support USB hardware synths. I just think you shouldn't
> exaggerate the problems. After all, look at the subject line of this 
> thread,
> "Main advantages of SBL over Speakup."  If we're going to compare sbl and
> speakup, lets be fair about it.
>
> You made it sound like speakup is already obsolete. And that's just not 
> true.
> Really, it seems to me to be a fairly small niche you are in. We both 
> agree
> that most servers have serial ports, right? So your problem is that you 
> have
> a desktop with no serial port but you have to have speech right away 
> during
> boot? Why can't you just use software speech on your desktop? In fact, I'm
> unclear as to why it is so important to you that the workstations you 
> support
> have hardware synth speech. As I said, all of the PCs in my department 
> have
> serial ports (literally 100s of machines) but when I have to do support, I
> just use software speech. I'm not going to drag my hardware speech synth
> around with me unless I have to. Its so much easier just to grap a USB
> headset and fire up software speech.
>
> Actually, some years ago, I posted a message to this list about how you 
> could
> modify your udev rules to recognize when your USB headset is plugged into 
> a
> machine and have it start software speech.  Each USB device has a unique
> serial number and you can write a udev rule to run a script to start 
> speech
> when a device with a specific serial number is plugged in. So its possible 
> to
> sit down at a PC at the login prompt, plug in your USB headset, and login
> with speech.
>
> ---- Original Message ----- From: "Trevor Astrope" <astrope at tabbweb.com>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
> <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:09 PM
> Subject: Re: Main advantages of SBL over Speakup
>
>
> John, yes I do manage servers and I do agree that having speakup in the
> kernel is immensely important if you have a serial port and synth.
>
> Perhaps it is different where you are, but where I live, desktops with
> serial ports are extremely rare. The only ones I managed to find were some
> low end Acers. I also found some business machines with serial ports, but
> they are twice the cost for about half the performance as a consumer
> desktop machine and we don't buy them where I work.
>
> Like Kelly mentioned earlier today, I also do not install speakup in the
> kernels of the servers I manage, but in the machine I use to manage the
> servers.
>
> So, I respectfully disagree with you about the availability of serial
> ports in modern desktop machines and I stand by my statement that speakup
> as a kernel-level speech system will become less relevant over time unless
> it can support external serial ports and usb serial ports. In my opinion,
> this is where speakup development should be focused, as more and more
> people will face this issue as they upgrade their machines. But I am not a
> speakup developer, so I have no influence on the direction it takes. I can
> only offer my opinion, which I have stated several times on this list and
> I can only hope that speakup developers agree with it and take up the
> challenge.
>
> In the meantime, I do have a job to do and I will need to decide whether I
> continue using speakup with software synth, which will make my job more
> difficult or use something else like orca or a mac, which still won't
> solve the problem of having access to early kernel messages, but may give
> me more flexability going forward.
>
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, John G. Heim wrote:
>
>> Well, perhaps its a minor point but plenty of modern computers have 
>> serial
>> ports. I've never seen a server that didn't have a serial port. In fact,
>> except for laptops, I have yet to see a computer that doesn't have a 
>> serial
>> port. That includes the 200 or so desktop units we have where I work. 
>> Even
>> the machine I built myself has a serial port.
>>
>> It certainly is a huge over statement to say that having speakup in the
>> kernel  has no advantage. If you manage servers like I do, having speakup
>> in
>> the kernel is just about the most important thing there is for a screen
>> reader. I don't really care that much about what happens after the 
>> machine
>> is
>> booted. About the only time I need a run time screen reader is if 
>> something
>> is wrong with networking. But mostly, I can admin these machines remotely
>> after they boot.
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Trevor Astrope" <astrope at tabbweb.com>
>> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
>> <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 3:09 PM
>> Subject: Re: Main advantages of SBL over Speakup
>>
>>
>> Samuel, do you mean there is no kernel convention for accessing serial
>> ports or there is no speakup support for accessing serial ports according
>> to kernel conventions?
>>
>> It would be really great if speakup could use ttyS# devices, so speakup
>> would work with modern motherboards that do not have built-in serial
>> ports. The way I see it is speakup can only use software speech on modern
>> computers, so unless it can access external serial ports or usb serial
>> ports, there really is no advantage to speakup being in the kernel so far
>> as I can tell...
>>
>> On Tue, 9 Feb 2010, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>>
>>> Bill Cox, le Tue 09 Feb 2010 14:23:25 -0500, a écrit :
>>>> I hear that it doesn't follow kernel
>>>> programming conventions, for example in how it interfaces to the COM
>>>> ports.
>>>
>>> Yes, because no such thing exists (yet).
>>>
>>> Samuel
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>
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