slackware and accessibility packages

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
To further discuss what I am thinking regarding this.

Yes the comment about documentation is a good one, and I probably will
try and create some howtos for the packages I build (eg. speakup with
software speech on slackware howto, would discuss what packages you
would need, and what you might want to configure afterwards, such as
changing the synth speech-dispatcher uses, etc).

The packages I mentioned were just a start, of course there will be more
such as speechd-up, flite (possibly), gnome-java-access-bridge, etc.
What ever there may be a call for.

At the moment I don't have the knowledge to make a custom distro, so
that is partly the reason I am saying that unless there is something too
specific to expect to be in a main distro, the project will not try and
do that. Yes software speech for an install would be nice, but I don't
think other distros (ubuntu and grml) have sorted the sound issue fully
yet (unmuting the sound card, and for users to have a convenient way to
choose a card in a multi-sound-card system), so it may have to be a
longer term thought for that as learning to create the custom distro
probably is enough without having those extra issues to contend with.

I did find some interesting issues when trying to create the SlackBuild
for speech-dispatcher (related to the python bindings), but that I think
is a bit off topic for here, other than to say I have succeeded at
creating a SlackBuild script and package for speech-dispatcher.

Now the question remains, where to have this project hosted, I was
considering sourceforge, any better suggestions?

From
Michael Whapples
On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 05:12 -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> I would be quite interested in how things go for you.  I too built
> packages for some of these but never got them publically posted.  A
> couple things I seemed to run into were necessary customizations that
> might make it dificult to share to the general public without
> compatibility issues.  Don't suppose speech dispatcher / espeak /
> speechd-up fall into this but my package building experience is green
> aat the very least.:) 
> 
> I had been using checkinstall to help build some of these but I began
> running into unpredictable incidents where the build process would
> louse up my production environment so am going back to manually
> derived SlackBuild scripts to construct these in the future.
> 
> Anyway, I'm probabally veering way off topic for this list so would be
> willing to collaborate with you to further this effort if possible.
> 
> On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 10:53:25AM +0100, Michael Whapples wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I don't know how much interest this would be, but I am sure you will let
> > me know. I am thinking of creating slackware packages of some of the
> > accessibility related tools and any dependencies which are not already
> > in packaged formats. This would also cover any dependencies for these
> > packages which are not already available in slackware packages (either
> > from slackware or some of the alternative repositories). I have
> > currently made packages for espeak and speech-dispatcher (I have also
> > done dotconf as this is a dependency for speech-dispatcher).
> > 
> > I am considering starting a project/community for this topic. Aims would
> > be to create and maintain SlackBuild scripts and packages as described
> > above, encourage mainstream projects to include accessibility as default
> > (eg. gnome slacky www.slacky.eu installs orca, gnome-speech as default
> > when doing a full install, and they have festival in the repository, but
> > they don't install festival as part of a full install (so orca by
> > default cannot output speech), I would try and encourage them to alter
> > this to include festival as part of a full install). Also I would try
> > and encourage projects to take on packages not currently included at all
> > and possibly maintain the package for them (eg. neither slackware or
> > gnome slacky have espeak, speech-dispatcher or speechd-up so there is no
> > way to use speakup with software synths without compiling software). I
> > would not intend to try and create a custom distro of slackware, as I
> > think it is preferrable if the accessibility is there as default,
> > although I wouldn't rule it out should there be a significant call for
> > something and it being sufficiently different that a custom distro would
> > make sense (eg. a slackware install disk with speakup and software
> > speech support, so an install can be done without a hardware synth).
> > 
> > Any ideas on this? Is there call for this?
> > 
> > From
> > Michael Whapples
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>