[Grml] I got Espeakup finally to work

[Hermann]

Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
I had to pull the latest from GIT, and after compiling I had to type:
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann

--

[Michael Whapples]

Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann

[Hermann]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

I don't know whether locale detection in speakup has been discussed on
the speakup list, I don't know whether speakup can do locale detection
or not as it is kernel modules. If I don't see a message from you on the
speakup list soon I will ask for you and try and find out.

Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3). My thought is that may be the thinking is for
synths/synth connectors to set up the speakup table to work with them
(eg. by default speakup's characters table says "zehd" for the letter
z,this is due to Kirk the author of speakup being Canadian and like us
in the UK don't like the American "zee" of US synths, however due to
this espeak says the letter z unusually when using speakup, this
indicates the table may need to be synth specific).

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Hermann]

On 28.05.2009 at 13:38:56 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

I tried both versions, but the same result:
In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of >127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

Before saying more on this it may be worth reading the speechd-up
documentation http://cvs.freebsoft.org/doc/speechd-up/. The problems
page may describe what's going on better. I also will have a good read
of it before saying more.

I don't know about the possibility of posting to the speakup list
without being subscribed, I guess probably not as it has some stupid
limitations.

Unless there is anything to do in GRML's swspeak I would suggest
possibly moving this to the speakup list.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of>127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

Before saying more on this it may be worth reading the speechd-up
documentation http://cvs.freebsoft.org/doc/speechd-up/. The problems
page may describe what's going on better. I also will have a good read
of it before saying more.

I don't know about the possibility of posting to the speakup list
without being subscribed, I guess probably not as it has some stupid
limitations.

Unless there is anything to do in GRML's swspeak I would suggest
possibly moving this to the speakup list.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of>127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

Before saying more on this it may be worth reading the speechd-up
documentation http://cvs.freebsoft.org/doc/speechd-up/. The problems
page may describe what's going on better. I also will have a good read
of it before saying more.

I don't know about the possibility of posting to the speakup list
without being subscribed, I guess probably not as it has some stupid
limitations.

Unless there is anything to do in GRML's swspeak I would suggest
possibly moving this to the speakup list.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of>127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Hermann]

On 28.05.2009 at 13:38:56 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

I tried both versions, but the same result:
In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of >127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Hermann]

On 28.05.2009 at 13:38:56 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3).

I tried both versions, but the same result:
In general, when Speechd-up is used, the German text is spoken well,
except the punctuation chars and the numbers, and with the two letters
"a" and "z", the latter you mentioned.
When moving the cursor char by char, those strange char naming comes
up, due to the fact, that chars of >127 are not recognized.
The difference to Espeakup is, that, out of the box, it doesn't work at
all in German, and when the characters file is adjusted, it spells right
when moving cursor-left-right, but it doesn't read the umlauts when
reading German text. This all is fixed for Espeak since 0.6 together with the
modified characters file.
So my conclusion is, that the main issue is in Speakup, since everything
works well when I use built-in speech support of Brltty or Suse-Blinux.
I hope I could clarify things a bit.
Is it possible to write to the Speakup list when one is not subscribed?
Because I didn't use Speakup for a while, I left the list.
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

I don't know whether locale detection in speakup has been discussed on
the speakup list, I don't know whether speakup can do locale detection
or not as it is kernel modules. If I don't see a message from you on the
speakup list soon I will ask for you and try and find out.

Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3). My thought is that may be the thinking is for
synths/synth connectors to set up the speakup table to work with them
(eg. by default speakup's characters table says "zehd" for the letter
z,this is due to Kirk the author of speakup being Canadian and like us
in the UK don't like the American "zee" of US synths, however due to
this espeak says the letter z unusually when using speakup, this
indicates the table may need to be synth specific).

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

I don't know whether locale detection in speakup has been discussed on
the speakup list, I don't know whether speakup can do locale detection
or not as it is kernel modules. If I don't see a message from you on the
speakup list soon I will ask for you and try and find out.

Regarding the replacing of speakup's tables, I thought speechd-up did
that, may be I am thinking of 0.4, have you tried updating speechd-up to
that (it would require compiling it from source as GRML comes with
speechd-up 0.3). My thought is that may be the thinking is for
synths/synth connectors to set up the speakup table to work with them
(eg. by default speakup's characters table says "zehd" for the letter
z,this is due to Kirk the author of speakup being Canadian and like us
in the UK don't like the American "zee" of US synths, however due to
this espeak says the letter z unusually when using speakup, this
indicates the table may need to be synth specific).

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Hermann]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Hermann]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

I guess it would be better to implement an autodetection of the locale in
Espeakup, since swspeak not only starts Espeakup, but also Speechd-up,
where, maybe, a different approach is needed.
Note that Speechd-up almost detects the locale correctly, and only the
characters file must be edited; Espeakup failed completely till 0.6 and
the characters file has to be edited as well.

Post by Michael Whapples
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

See above. But what about that characters file? I guess this is due to
Speakup. It should be possible that Speakup identifies the locale on
start up. Has this been discussed on the Speakup list?
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.

Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Whapples]

Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.

I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

So I am saying yes at the moment, but I would like to know fully what is
involved before saying yes for definite.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.
Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.
regards,
-mika-

[Hermann]

On 02.06.2009 at 15:23:44 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.
Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

So that's what happens, I had noticed the prompt is different between
finished booting and after running swspeak.

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.

May be I was unclear about what I meant there. When I install GRML to my
HD it picks up about the swspeak boot option and adds it to lilo. The
problem is that swspeak as a boot option still requires you to type
swspeak once booting finishes. Now on the Live CD you don't get
presented with a log in screen therefore you can just start typing
swspeak, but on HD it requires you to log in first and then you can run
swspeak command. Its that the speech messages are the same as those on
the Live CD and so don't quite match the HD installation. Braille and
hardware speech support aren't affected as those options don't require
anything to be entered once booting finishes for them to work (IE.
brltty is started when you give the brltty or blind option at the boot
prompt). Its this having to run a command once booting finishes which
causes the problem.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Well, that's not really true for the current grml version anymore,
it's just that special options for Zsh are set up, because the
default ones are known to cause problems for some of you.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Whapples]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

So that's what happens, I had noticed the prompt is different between
finished booting and after running swspeak.

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.

May be I was unclear about what I meant there. When I install GRML to my
HD it picks up about the swspeak boot option and adds it to lilo. The
problem is that swspeak as a boot option still requires you to type
swspeak once booting finishes. Now on the Live CD you don't get
presented with a log in screen therefore you can just start typing
swspeak, but on HD it requires you to log in first and then you can run
swspeak command. Its that the speech messages are the same as those on
the Live CD and so don't quite match the HD installation. Braille and
hardware speech support aren't affected as those options don't require
anything to be entered once booting finishes for them to work (IE.
brltty is started when you give the brltty or blind option at the boot
prompt). Its this having to run a command once booting finishes which
causes the problem.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Well, that's not really true for the current grml version anymore,
it's just that special options for Zsh are set up, because the
default ones are known to cause problems for some of you.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Whapples]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

So that's what happens, I had noticed the prompt is different between
finished booting and after running swspeak.

Post by Hermann

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.

May be I was unclear about what I meant there. When I install GRML to my
HD it picks up about the swspeak boot option and adds it to lilo. The
problem is that swspeak as a boot option still requires you to type
swspeak once booting finishes. Now on the Live CD you don't get
presented with a log in screen therefore you can just start typing
swspeak, but on HD it requires you to log in first and then you can run
swspeak command. Its that the speech messages are the same as those on
the Live CD and so don't quite match the HD installation. Braille and
hardware speech support aren't affected as those options don't require
anything to be entered once booting finishes for them to work (IE.
brltty is started when you give the brltty or blind option at the boot
prompt). Its this having to run a command once booting finishes which
causes the problem.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Hermann
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Well, that's not really true for the current grml version anymore,
it's just that special options for Zsh are set up, because the
default ones are known to cause problems for some of you.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
documentation:

Debian New Maintainers' Guide:
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

Debian Developer's Reference:
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/

Debian Policy Manual:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/

Post by Michael Whapples
Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.
I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

Ok fine.

Post by Michael Whapples
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
-------------- next part --------------
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[Michael Whapples]

Post by Michael Prokop
[...]

Post by Michael Prokop
It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Fine with me. I just thought that knowledge on packaging would be useful
even if so I could say why the package is wrong. Will have a read of the
docs you refer to below.

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
[...]
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Will look at that report and put further comments on that as necessary.

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

OK, my grml2hd comment was partly that messages currently are wrong once
performed the installation due to the difference of having to login to
the installed system but no need to login on a LiveCD. If software
speech is all automatically started then this will not cause a problem
as the speech output from speakup will let users know that they are at a
login screen.

Relating to your comments about grml2hd not being recommended for those
unfamiliar with debian unstable. I plan to make an audio walkthrough for
using GRML to install linux with software speech, can I infer that you
would suggest this walk through should be using grml-debootstrap, as
users who grml2hd would be suitable for would be fine with reading docs
and working out what to do.

Post by Michael Prokop
So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

In the past there hasn't been an official debian installation CD with
software speech output. I think there was a installer CD back around
kernel 2.6.18 but this only used speakup with hardware speech output. I
think there may be some work being done on creating a suitable debian
installer CD with software speech output, but I have stuck with GRML as
it is also such a good live environment which provides me with all the
accessibility I need.

Post by Michael Prokop
And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

I personally feel espeakup gives me a better user experience than
speech-dispatcher and speechd-up. Reasons are: espeak and espeakup seem
to be very responsive and tend not to split words up (speech-dispatcher
on the GRML 1.0 or something like that suffered from problems like
that), speech-dispatcher is a server which can and sometimes does die on
me so leaving me without speech (espeakup as far as I can remember has
never died on me) and espeakup is certainly getting frequent updates
(speechd-up seems to be slower on development). Speech-dispatcher has
the following advantages: I think from what people say seems to be quite
good for internationalisation (I am in the UK so use english, so don't
find some of the internationalisation issues), speech-dispatcher seems
to be being pushed for becoming a speech API for linux (I think there
are plans for gnome-speech to be dropped for gnome 3.0 and
speech-dispatcher to take its place) and other synthesisers can be used
by speech-dispatcher (espeakup is tied to espeak). Its a shame the
speech side of things isn't as clear as it is with the braille display
support, brltty.

As a note about espeakup, the one used by GRML is 0.41 (or something
around that version, quite old) but debian seem to have an espeakup
package now for 0.71 (although package is numbered relative to speakup,
3.0..4.dfsg.1-2). As debian is now providing this package and the debian
one is newer may be follow that.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop
regards,
-mika-

[Michael Whapples]

I would agree. As far as I know for self voicing emacs there's either
emacspeak which requires either a hardware synth or viavoice which is
commercial, or speechd-el which can use speech-dispatcher, so speechd-el
and speech-dispatcher seems to be the best free solution for software
self voicing of emacs. In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly). I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it. Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

Michael Whapples

It should stay on GRML, because it is used as speech output by other
a11y apps, above all Brltty. It is also supported by other screen
readers like Suse-Blinux.
But besides that, Espeakup is good stuff.
Hermann
(No need for quoting in this case, I think).

[Michael Whapples]

[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly).

No it can't. You have to use SD in order to use Espeak. So SD is
important for non-English speaking users.

I stand corrected, I just assumed as it supports, flite, festival,
swift, viavoice, etc directly that espeak might be, no the docs don't
mention espeak support.

Post by Michael Whapples
I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it.

Yes, but unfortunately the SD team cannot find what causes this. It
does not appear on all machines, so it is difficault to figure out
what's going on.
Moreover: It seems to be an Espeak problem, since other synts don't
crash at all or very seldom (for example Voxin).

I am sure I have had voxin crash on me when using speech-dispatcher.
Anyway it seems like it will be a hard bug to track down.

Post by Michael Whapples
Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

I agree, but in addition I would prefere to have drivers for synths
that communicate directly with the apps, such as Espeakup.
But perhaps that's what I'm familiar from Windows. Hardcore Linux
users seem to prefer server solutions.

I'm not saying don't have direct drivers like espeakup, particularly at
the moment when speech-dispatcher still has some bugs which impact on
useability. I just consider speech-dispatcher should be treated like
SAPI is on windows. I thought that on windows when an application added
speech output they tending to add SAPI support first before adding
direct drivers for the synths.

I also have to say although server processes can be useful at times, I
think there are times it seems to go too far on linux.

Michael Whapples

Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly).

No it can't. You have to use SD in order to use Espeak. So SD is
important for non-English speaking users.

I stand corrected, I just assumed as it supports, flite, festival,
swift, viavoice, etc directly that espeak might be, no the docs don't
mention espeak support.

Post by Michael Whapples
I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it.

Yes, but unfortunately the SD team cannot find what causes this. It
does not appear on all machines, so it is difficault to figure out
what's going on.
Moreover: It seems to be an Espeak problem, since other synts don't
crash at all or very seldom (for example Voxin).

I am sure I have had voxin crash on me when using speech-dispatcher.
Anyway it seems like it will be a hard bug to track down.

Post by Michael Whapples
Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

I agree, but in addition I would prefere to have drivers for synths
that communicate directly with the apps, such as Espeakup.
But perhaps that's what I'm familiar from Windows. Hardcore Linux
users seem to prefer server solutions.

I'm not saying don't have direct drivers like espeakup, particularly at
the moment when speech-dispatcher still has some bugs which impact on
useability. I just consider speech-dispatcher should be treated like
SAPI is on windows. I thought that on windows when an application added
speech output they tending to add SAPI support first before adding
direct drivers for the synths.

I also have to say although server processes can be useful at times, I
think there are times it seems to go too far on linux.

Michael Whapples

Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly).

No it can't. You have to use SD in order to use Espeak. So SD is
important for non-English speaking users.

I stand corrected, I just assumed as it supports, flite, festival,
swift, viavoice, etc directly that espeak might be, no the docs don't
mention espeak support.

Post by Michael Whapples
I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it.

Yes, but unfortunately the SD team cannot find what causes this. It
does not appear on all machines, so it is difficault to figure out
what's going on.
Moreover: It seems to be an Espeak problem, since other synts don't
crash at all or very seldom (for example Voxin).

I am sure I have had voxin crash on me when using speech-dispatcher.
Anyway it seems like it will be a hard bug to track down.

Post by Michael Whapples
Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

I agree, but in addition I would prefere to have drivers for synths
that communicate directly with the apps, such as Espeakup.
But perhaps that's what I'm familiar from Windows. Hardcore Linux
users seem to prefer server solutions.

I'm not saying don't have direct drivers like espeakup, particularly at
the moment when speech-dispatcher still has some bugs which impact on
useability. I just consider speech-dispatcher should be treated like
SAPI is on windows. I thought that on windows when an application added
speech output they tending to add SAPI support first before adding
direct drivers for the synths.

I also have to say although server processes can be useful at times, I
think there are times it seems to go too far on linux.

Michael Whapples

Hermann

[Michael Whapples]

I would agree. As far as I know for self voicing emacs there's either
emacspeak which requires either a hardware synth or viavoice which is
commercial, or speechd-el which can use speech-dispatcher, so speechd-el
and speech-dispatcher seems to be the best free solution for software
self voicing of emacs. In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly). I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it. Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

Michael Whapples

It should stay on GRML, because it is used as speech output by other
a11y apps, above all Brltty. It is also supported by other screen
readers like Suse-Blinux.
But besides that, Espeakup is good stuff.
Hermann
(No need for quoting in this case, I think).

[Michael Whapples]

I would agree. As far as I know for self voicing emacs there's either
emacspeak which requires either a hardware synth or viavoice which is
commercial, or speechd-el which can use speech-dispatcher, so speechd-el
and speech-dispatcher seems to be the best free solution for software
self voicing of emacs. In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly). I
would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
support) makes me personally want to back away from it. Although I have
my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
use it so would say it should stay if possible.

Michael Whapples

It should stay on GRML, because it is used as speech output by other
a11y apps, above all Brltty. It is also supported by other screen
readers like Suse-Blinux.
But besides that, Espeakup is good stuff.
Hermann
(No need for quoting in this case, I think).

[Michael Whapples]

Post by Michael Prokop
[...]

Post by Michael Prokop
It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Fine with me. I just thought that knowledge on packaging would be useful
even if so I could say why the package is wrong. Will have a read of the
docs you refer to below.

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
[...]
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Will look at that report and put further comments on that as necessary.

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

OK, my grml2hd comment was partly that messages currently are wrong once
performed the installation due to the difference of having to login to
the installed system but no need to login on a LiveCD. If software
speech is all automatically started then this will not cause a problem
as the speech output from speakup will let users know that they are at a
login screen.

Relating to your comments about grml2hd not being recommended for those
unfamiliar with debian unstable. I plan to make an audio walkthrough for
using GRML to install linux with software speech, can I infer that you
would suggest this walk through should be using grml-debootstrap, as
users who grml2hd would be suitable for would be fine with reading docs
and working out what to do.

Post by Michael Prokop
So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

In the past there hasn't been an official debian installation CD with
software speech output. I think there was a installer CD back around
kernel 2.6.18 but this only used speakup with hardware speech output. I
think there may be some work being done on creating a suitable debian
installer CD with software speech output, but I have stuck with GRML as
it is also such a good live environment which provides me with all the
accessibility I need.

Post by Michael Prokop
And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

I personally feel espeakup gives me a better user experience than
speech-dispatcher and speechd-up. Reasons are: espeak and espeakup seem
to be very responsive and tend not to split words up (speech-dispatcher
on the GRML 1.0 or something like that suffered from problems like
that), speech-dispatcher is a server which can and sometimes does die on
me so leaving me without speech (espeakup as far as I can remember has
never died on me) and espeakup is certainly getting frequent updates
(speechd-up seems to be slower on development). Speech-dispatcher has
the following advantages: I think from what people say seems to be quite
good for internationalisation (I am in the UK so use english, so don't
find some of the internationalisation issues), speech-dispatcher seems
to be being pushed for becoming a speech API for linux (I think there
are plans for gnome-speech to be dropped for gnome 3.0 and
speech-dispatcher to take its place) and other synthesisers can be used
by speech-dispatcher (espeakup is tied to espeak). Its a shame the
speech side of things isn't as clear as it is with the braille display
support, brltty.

As a note about espeakup, the one used by GRML is 0.41 (or something
around that version, quite old) but debian seem to have an espeakup
package now for 0.71 (although package is numbered relative to speakup,
3.0..4.dfsg.1-2). As debian is now providing this package and the debian
one is newer may be follow that.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop
regards,
-mika-

[Michael Whapples]

Post by Michael Prokop
[...]

Post by Michael Prokop
It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Fine with me. I just thought that knowledge on packaging would be useful
even if so I could say why the package is wrong. Will have a read of the
docs you refer to below.

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
[...]
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Will look at that report and put further comments on that as necessary.

Post by Michael Prokop
Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

OK, my grml2hd comment was partly that messages currently are wrong once
performed the installation due to the difference of having to login to
the installed system but no need to login on a LiveCD. If software
speech is all automatically started then this will not cause a problem
as the speech output from speakup will let users know that they are at a
login screen.

Relating to your comments about grml2hd not being recommended for those
unfamiliar with debian unstable. I plan to make an audio walkthrough for
using GRML to install linux with software speech, can I infer that you
would suggest this walk through should be using grml-debootstrap, as
users who grml2hd would be suitable for would be fine with reading docs
and working out what to do.

Post by Michael Prokop
So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

In the past there hasn't been an official debian installation CD with
software speech output. I think there was a installer CD back around
kernel 2.6.18 but this only used speakup with hardware speech output. I
think there may be some work being done on creating a suitable debian
installer CD with software speech output, but I have stuck with GRML as
it is also such a good live environment which provides me with all the
accessibility I need.

Post by Michael Prokop
And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

I personally feel espeakup gives me a better user experience than
speech-dispatcher and speechd-up. Reasons are: espeak and espeakup seem
to be very responsive and tend not to split words up (speech-dispatcher
on the GRML 1.0 or something like that suffered from problems like
that), speech-dispatcher is a server which can and sometimes does die on
me so leaving me without speech (espeakup as far as I can remember has
never died on me) and espeakup is certainly getting frequent updates
(speechd-up seems to be slower on development). Speech-dispatcher has
the following advantages: I think from what people say seems to be quite
good for internationalisation (I am in the UK so use english, so don't
find some of the internationalisation issues), speech-dispatcher seems
to be being pushed for becoming a speech API for linux (I think there
are plans for gnome-speech to be dropped for gnome 3.0 and
speech-dispatcher to take its place) and other synthesisers can be used
by speech-dispatcher (espeakup is tied to espeak). Its a shame the
speech side of things isn't as clear as it is with the braille display
support, brltty.

As a note about espeakup, the one used by GRML is 0.41 (or something
around that version, quite old) but debian seem to have an espeakup
package now for 0.71 (although package is numbered relative to speakup,
3.0..4.dfsg.1-2). As debian is now providing this package and the debian
one is newer may be follow that.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop
regards,
-mika-

[Hermann]

On 02.06.2009 at 15:23:44 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
documentation:

Debian New Maintainers' Guide:
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

Debian Developer's Reference:
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/

Debian Policy Manual:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/

Post by Michael Whapples
Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.
I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

Ok fine.

Post by Michael Whapples
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Hermann]

On 02.06.2009 at 15:23:44 Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
[...]

Post by Michael Whapples
On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.

And the question is also, why does that second "swspeak" open a new
shell? It should stay to the shell opened at startup.

Post by Michael Whapples
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

This is new to me, but I never started the grml2hd with speech, I used
braille and this does not happen. Perhaps because I started the script
using some parameters, such as the target drive and the place where the
boot manager has to be written.
Hermann

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

It's not that important that you do the packaging for us. It would
help me a lot if you'd (kind of regularly) test our stuff, help us
in accessibility related questions and provide suggestions and tips
how we could improve stuff. It's especially hard for me to check out
all the speakup related features because I don't have the hardware
on my own and don't really know what people using those stuff really
need.

Regarding packaging: have a look at the official Debian devel
documentation:

Debian New Maintainers' Guide:
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

Debian Developer's Reference:
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/

Debian Policy Manual:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/

Post by Michael Whapples
Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.
I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

Ok fine.

Post by Michael Whapples
My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

Alright, regarding the swspeak setup (the "type swspeak once booting
finished") I've created a wishlist bugreport in our bug tracking
system: http://bts.grml.org/grml/issue684

Regarding grml2hd: I'm *not* a fan of the fact that people that
don't know how to deal with Debian/unstable install a
Debian/unstable based system on their box. There are several Debian
developers working in the accessibility team of Debian and I'd like
to have good accessibility in the official Debian installer and
distribution. grml should be a good environment for all of you as a
*live* system but if you intend to install Debian with accessibility
features to harddisk then please either use the official Debian
installer or consider using grml-debootstrap (which installs plain
Debian on your system). But please do *not* use grml2hd if you're
not really familiar with Debian/unstable.

So what I'd like to know: what are the biggest problems for you in
using the official Debian installer with regards to accessibility?
Might it be worth the effort to put work into grml-debootstrap
providing an official Debian accessibility enabled harddisk
installation?

And I'd like to work out a list of what software is important for
you nowadays. speakup, speech-dispatcher, espeakup, speechd-up,...
etc. - I somehow lost the overview what's the way to go nowadays,
what needs an update, what could be dropped, etc.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Whapples]

Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.

I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

So I am saying yes at the moment, but I would like to know fully what is
involved before saying yes for definite.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.
Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.
regards,
-mika-

[Michael Whapples]

Before saying yes, I will just state I need to learn about debian
packaging. The only debian packages I have created have been on my own
python packages using stdeb. Any guides you would suggest for debian
packaging?

Also I will briefly mention a little about myself.

I do use speakup (I have an apollo synth on my desktop and for my laptop
I use software speech output with espeakup). I also have a Braille
display which I use brltty with.

My view on accessibility is that where ever possible it should be in the
main distro and easy to get running. When I say easy to get running I
realise it can't be fully automatic on a CD such as GRML as not all
users want it, but ideally giving the swspeak command at the boot prompt
should be enough for software speech to come up working for the user
with all language settings as they gave (IE. if the console shows german
then speech should be german). On this topic it is something I never
really worked out, why does GRML require me to type swspeak once booting
finishes as surely the start up script which gives the speech messages
(eg. "software speech has been enabled, type swspeak once booting
finishes" or something like that) could run the swspeak command for me.
Related to this, when I do grml2hd the HD installation when it starts
will not come up automatically speaking, even if I used swspeak for
install. This has caught me and I think others out in the past, as the
instructions from the speech messages tell you type swspeak once booting
finishes but the HD installation puts you at a login screen so you need
to log in first.

So I am saying yes at the moment, but I would like to know fully what is
involved before saying yes for definite.

Michael Whapples

Post by Michael Prokop

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.
Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.
regards,
-mika-

[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.

Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
#grml @ irc.freenode.org # meet us on irc
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[Michael Prokop]

Post by Michael Whapples
Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.
Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

grml has all the relevant options for handling language stuff, so if
espeakup just needs to be started with some special options when
using german settings (using lang=de) with swspeak this shouldn't be
a big deal, yes.

Michael, you seem to be very good at all the swspeak/espeakup/...
related stuff. Are you interested in helping us in better
integration of swspeak/espeakup/... at grml? I don't have any active
developers working on accessibility in grml (so far I'm doing all
that stuff on my own), so I'd highly welcome you as a contributor.

regards,
-mika-
--
http://grml.org/ # Linux for texttool-users and sysadmins
http://wiki.grml.org/ # share your knowledge
http://grml.supersized.org/ # the grml development weblog
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[Hermann]

Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
I had to pull the latest from GIT, and after compiling I had to type:
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann

--

[Michael Whapples]

Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann

[Hermann]

Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
I had to pull the latest from GIT, and after compiling I had to type:
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann

--

[Michael Whapples]

Good to hear you've got it working. While you didn't ask for it, I can
imagine it would be useful, would you like the swspeak script to
identify your language and start espeakup with the correct -V option? My
idea is that all this stuff should be as transparent to the user as
possible (IE. you've set your language, the console may be using your
language, so why should you need to set extra for your speech to speak
your language). Or would it be better to be an espeakup enhancement to
auto detect your language? If I get time I may look at this.

Any thoughts, personally I would have thought espeakup would be the
better place although swspeak script may be easier for me to modify.

Michael Whapples

Post by Hermann
Hi,
just let you know: Espeakup now works in German.
espeakup -V de
or
espeakup --default-voice=de
Note: You can replace that "de" by any non-English voice.
I got the tip from the Speakup list archive.
Question: Is it possible to replace the 0.4 by the latest version
(0.60)?
Second note: the modified characters file is still needed.
Hermann