still more on bug

[Deedra Waters]

John Heim wrote
| <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
| Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 2:00 PM
| Subject: Re: still more on bug
| 
| 
| >John Heim wrote
| >| Well, admittedly, we have a problem down the road regarding serial
| >| hardware synths. But it will be years before serial ports go away
| >| entirely. Every Dell server class machine still comes with at least
| >| one serial port. I don't know about other server manufacturers but I
| >| would guess they're the same. In fact, even dell small footprint
| >| desktops still have serial ports. So I think it will be some time
| >| before server class machines don't come with serial ports. And even
| >| after serial ports become obsolete, speakup won't be obsolete, it
| >| will just have to start supporting USB synths.
| >
| >You say just like it's easy to fix speakup to do what you want it
| >to do. It's not that easy in fat to fix the code, hell i'd fix it
| >if i could my husband would fix it if he could probably, but it's
| >not that easy.
| >
| 
| First of all, I didn't say it was going to be easy. But have you
| tried?  Are you an experienced C coder?  Are you saying you tried
| and found it couldn't be done?

I'm saying i know several who have worked on speakup over the years and the folks who've maintained it lately can't fix it/haven't been able to is probably the better wording here. As for me, no i'm no coder at all but saying i'd be willing to work on it if i could code my way out of a wet paper bag.
| 
| >I've got a couple serial synths laying around but the fact is that
| >i've not had a computer with a serial port since 2007 so yep,
| >guess they're out of date. Last time i tried ordering a computer i
| >couldn't get del or hp to add them even though i wanted them.
| 
| I am typing this on a Dell Optiplex 760 with a serial port.  We have
| about 100 760s all with serial ports. We have another 40 small
| footprint 760s in our student labs all with serial ports.  We have
| about a dozen newer Dell desktops and they all have serial ports. I
| don't know how you managed to order a Dell w/o a serial port but its
| not that hard to get one with it.

maybe you should tell del to start advertising the models with serial ports?:P point is like i said the machines i've gotten which are generally the shitmachines as i call dells haven't had them:P

| 
| And those are just desktops. Of course, every one of our servers has
| a serial port.  We have 3 mail servers, 2 DNS servers, 3 web
| servers, and 6 machines in our VMware cluster. All have serial
| ports.
| I just built myself a machine for home with parts ordered from
| newegg. The mobo didn't have an external serial port but it does
| have a serial port header. So then it was just a matter of attaching
| the appropriate cable. So even a machine I built myself has a serial
| port.

Yeah machines you build yourselves will have serial ports i found that out after we baught our machines.... Not gonna keep arguing the point with you accept to say that most machines you see unless you know what you're looking for just usually wont have a serial port.

Serial synths aren't used hell even hardware synths aren't usually used these days it's all about software speech. I'm not saying serial/usb synths are bad, in fact i tend to prefer them. However those people who like and prefer them aren't a majority of the blind population. The majority prefers software speech as far as i've seen and could care less.Of course i could be completely wrong, but that's what i've seen over the past several years. My long-winded point here is that several factors combine together make software speech the better choice, be it the lack of serial ports on low priced machines, or the fact that the kernel folks could care less about speakup being in the kernel, or pulseaudio being forced on everyone.

If you really want the support, pitch in and start fixing code.:)
| 
| Look, I'm not saying you don't come across machines w/o serial
| ports. But holy cow, I have certainly never had any trouble finding
| machines with serial ports. Laptops & apples... You're in trouble
| there.
| 
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