patch for serial synths

[John Heim]

The problem with forgetting about trying to make the serial synth modules 
work correctly inside the kernel is that that could get me fired.  Well, 
that may be a bit of an exaggeration. But it ain't trivial either.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kirk Reiser" <kirk at braille.uwo.ca>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: patch for serial synths


> Yes, well, you have experienced exactly why I quit caring if speakup
> got into the official linux kernel or not.  I know a lot of folks
> hoped that once speakup did manage to get in there might be help from
> the kernel community to fix problems with the system but I never
> believed there would be help and I still don't.  I believe that unless
> Samuel or someone else that has good kernel savvy decide to attack the
> problems and straighten them out or find other solutions, it is just a
> short period of time before speakup is back out of the kernel again.
> That will leave another problem though which is speakup's entire git
> repo structure has been gutted to accomodate a community that doesn't
> care and who's going to piece things back together afterword?
>
> If you wish to be helpful and I personally am glad of it, my
> suggestion is to forget about trying to make the serial synth modules
> work correctly inside the kernel and write user space drivers/programs
> to read the output of the soft synth device and feed hardware synths
> from user land.  That should make it fairly easy to handle them
> properly either rs232C or usb.  Then the serial modules could be
> gutted and concentrate on fixing the problems speakup has that are
> show stoppers like cut-and-past bug/goto position bug and smp problem
> with screwing up the order of output.
>
> That's my .0000002 bitcoins worth.
>   Kirk
>
>
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, John Heim wrote:
>
>> From: "Samuel Thibault" samuel.thibault at ens-lyon.org
>>> Note: it's not a proper fix, as it won't prevent you from screwing your
>>> serial port if you concurrently access it through /dev/ttyS0 while
>>> speakup is running, but it's probably better than nothing.
>>
>> Right. I had intended to mention that. I said in another message that I'd 
>> talk about the controversy I stirred up on the linux-kernel list last 
>> weekend.  This is a related issue. So here goes...
>>
>> I signed up to the email list for kernel developers and last weekend I 
>> asked for help with this bug. The avice I gout was not exactly helpful. 
>> To tell you the truth, I found the attitude of the people on that list 
>> shockingly snobbish. They seemed more interested in criticizing the 
>> speakup developers than in helping me with the bug. In fact, I got no 
>> useful advice what so ever in actually fixing the bug. The patch I posted 
>> is the result of my own efforts to figure out what was going on and just 
>> make it so it would work. Screw correctness.
>>
>> But there was a debate on the list about the "right" way to fix speakup. 
>> It looked to me as if the developers offering advice didn't even 
>> understand what is required from speakup. Never the less, that didn't 
>> stop them from opining on how it should be rewritten.  I was trying to 
>> tactfully suggest that the speakup developers must have had good reasons 
>> for what they did but fortunately, Samuel was there to correct many of 
>> their misconceptions.  To tell you the truth though, I thought some of 
>> them should have been smacked. But, I guess you can't do that.
>>
>> So now I'm not entirely sure how to proceed.  I think I will have to post 
>> my patch to the linux-kernel list to see if I can get it incorporated 
>> into the linux kernel code. Admittedly, its a bad fix. All it really does 
>> is to cut out some code that didn't work anyway. I don't know what the 
>> point of having speakup at all is if it doesn't work. The patch doesn't 
>> really make things worse than they were before unless you consider not 
>> working at all better than working incorrectly.
>>
>> Then there is the bigger question of fixing speakup so the linux kernel 
>> developers will approve of it and so that it can support USB synths. I 
>> would like to start working on that but I don't really know how to get 
>> started. I think its going to take some talking to the linux developers. 
>> I'm sure there's an answer there somewhere. If you can get video as soon 
>> as the kernel loads, you ought to be able to get speech via a hardware 
>> synth. The linux kernel sends characters to your video card 
>> immediately... Why can't it do the same to your hardware synth? An even 
>> better example is serial consoles. The linux kernel can be made to use a 
>> serial console immediately upon boot. So the magic is there. Its just a 
>> matter of figuring it out.
>>
>> So I think that what will have to be done is to make a plan that everyone 
>> can agree on.  I am reluctant for obvious reasons to volunteer anyone 
>> else for that job. I'm willing to give it a try unless someone objects.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>
> --
> Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
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>
>