Hello

[covici at ccs.covici.com]

That is correct, I  have not seen a motherboard without a serial port,
but often the cable/bracket is not there to put it on the backplane.

I use speakup every day and its invaluable to me.  Linux is a part of my
infrastructure.

John G Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu> wrote:

> I have to dispute your assertion that serial ports have been unheard
> of on desktops for years. A basic Dell desktop still comes with a
> serial port. In fact, personally, I have never seen a desktop without
> a serial port.  I work for the University Of Wisconsin and of the
> hundreds of PC desktops I've worked on, every single one has had a
> serial port. At home I build my own computers so when I order a
> motherboard, I just make sure it has a serial port header block.
> 
> I'll grant that very few laptops have serial ports these days. But, to
> be quite honest, I don't think that's particularly relevant. I don't
> even think it's particularly relevant that many desktops don't have
> serial ports.  I doubt that very many people would use speakup on a
> laptop even if it worked via a usb port.  I doubt that very many
> people use speakup on their desktop on a daily basis. Don't get me
> wrong, speakup is sill a key part of the accessibility infrastructure
> but it is mostly valuable for servers and for rescue systems.
> 
> I know the opinions I've stated above are going to be controversial on
> this list. But I assert that the number of orca users vastly
> outnumbers the speakup users. And even orca users are probably a very
> tiny group. But, again, I am not saying speakup isn't important. My
> opinion is that it's extremely important because there are people who
> put bread on the table via speakup. Some of us literally couldn't do
> our jobs without speakup.
> 
> In fact, this is an important consideration for the developers of
> devuan. We aren't talking about some bug in a Windows screen reader
> that makes it hard for someone to play sudoku on-line.  Admittedly
> there are other rescue systems around. But if devuan is to become a
> player, a distro that everybody is familiar with,  it's extremely
> important that it be accessible. This is not an exaggeration -- the
> ability of someone to feed their family might depend on it.
> 
> I don't know how a developer weighs those considerations. What's more
> important, a bug that keeps a thousand people from playing sudoku or
> one that keeps ten people from rescuing a web server that is down? I
> know where I'd come down though.
> 
> PS: I don't care how sudoku is spelled.
> 
> On 06/07/2016 05:30 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t these only work if you have hardware serial ports on the motherboard? These have been virtually unheard of on modern desktops and laptops for years. If it were possible for Speakup to work with USB serial synthesizers, that would be ideal.
> >
> > Sorry for the thread hijack,
> > Zack.
> >> On Jun 7, 2016, at 3:26 PM, Gregory Nowak <greg at gregn.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 03:41:11PM -0500, John G Heim wrote:
> >>> Once I was able to log in as root, I was able to get speakup
> >>> working with software speech. No luck with my Tripletalk hardware
> >>> synth though.  We had a thread about serial port hardware synths
> >>> just a few months ago. IIRC, you had to put something in grub. I
> >>> never got that to work and it doesn't apply here anyway. But I see
> >>> there is a /dev/ttyS0 and I believe the most recent speakup patches
> >>> require you to keep the kernel from creating a /dev/ttyS0 before
> >>> they can load a speakup hardware synt driver module.
> >> I don't have a tripletalk here, so can't comment. However, I can tell
> >> you that I've tried using the devuan minimal i386 iso with a bns 640
> >> via the speakup_bns module, and that works just fine. All I
> >> needed to do is modprobe speakup_bns, and it came right up talking
> >> through the bns. So, I know the bns driver at least
> >> works right out of the box.
> >>
> >> Greg
> >>
> >>
> >> -- 
> >> web site: http://www.gregn.net
> >> gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
> >> skype: gregn1
> >> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
> >> If we haven't been in touch before, e-mail me before adding me to your contacts.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Speakup mailing list
> >> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> -- 
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim at math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
> 
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> 

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici at ccs.covici.com