Hi gang.
The previously announced BRLTTY enabled Debian-Installer flavour (access)
has been extended and now also includes a Linux kernel patched with the
Speakup extension.
Where to get:
Currently, floppy images with speakup and BRLTTY support can be found
at <URL:http://people.debian.org/~mlang/install/>.
The first floppy you need is called speakup-image.img, this is your
"Boot floppy". The second floppy required in the boot process is
called access-image.img, which is the "Root floppy" with BRLTTY included.
If you need support for less common hardware, you might also want to grab
the access_drivers-image.img floppy which provides additional drivers which
can be loaded after the second floppy has initialized properly.
How to specify accessibility hardware in use:
As we all know, autodetetion is unfeasable when it comes to speech synths
and braille displays. So you need to pass at boot time some
more or less cryptic strings to tell the system which type of hardware
you use on what port.
If you are using a hardware synthesizer connected to a serial port on your
PC, you will need to tell speakup which type of synthesizer it is by
passing the boot option speakup_synth=<type> where type is one of:
acntsa = Accent SA
acntpc = Accent PC
apollo = Apollo
audptr = Audapter
bns = Braille 'n' Speak
dectlk = DECtalk Express
decext = DECtalk External (old)
dtlk = DoubleTalk PC
ltlk = DoubleTalk LT or LiteTalk
spkout = Speak Out
txprt = Transport
If your synth is not connected to the first serial port (the default), you
need to specify the port in use by passing the boot option speakup_ser=N
where N is a number starting at 0 for /dev/ttyS0 (or COM1).
If you want to use a Braille display during the installation, you need
to pass the boot option brltty=<drivercode>,<device>,<translation-table>
where <drivercode> is one of:
al = Alva [ABT3xx, Delphi, Satellite]
bl = BrailleLite [18/40/M40]
bn = BrailleNote [18/32]
cb = CombiBraille [25/45/85]
ec = EcoBraille [20/40/80]
eu = EuroBraille [AzerBraille, Clio, Iris, NoteBraille, Scriba]
ht = HandyTech [Modular 20/40/80, Braille Wave 40, Braille Star 40/80,
Bookworm, Braillino 20]
lt = LogText [32]
mb = MultiBraille [MB125CR/MB145CR/MB185CR]
md = MDV (protocol 5) [MB208/MB408L/MB408S]
mn = MiniBraille [20]
pm = Papenmeier [Tiny, Compact, 2D Lite/Screen, EL2D 40/66/80, EL 40/80,
Elba 20/32, IB 80]
ts = TSI [Navigator 20/40/80, PowerBraille 40/65/80]
va = Vario/RBT (emulation 1) [40/80]
vd = VideoBraille [40]
vh = Vario/RBT (emulation 2) [40/80]
vo = Voyager [44/70 (USB)]
vs = VisioBraille [2040]
If you have your braille display connected to the first serial port
(the default), you can leave the <device> string empty. For a
braille display on the second serial port (/dev/tts/1 or COM2), you
would specify tts/1 or /dev/tts/1.
<translation-table> is a two-letter language code identifying a special
language specific braille translation table to load.
How to pass boot options:
If you insert the boot floppy (speakup-image.img), and boot up your
PC, the first thing which is started after the boot process from
floppy has begun is syslinux, a boot loader. It prompts you to
enter additional boot options after approximately 3 to 5 seconds
of floppy disk access, depending on your particular hardware.
There it currently waits for 5 seconds for user input. If no key has
been pressed during that time, it continues booting without any additional
boot options. If you start typing during that interval of time, the boot
loader will wait until you confirm your choices by hitting return.
An exmple:
For a LiteTalk Hardware speech Synthesizer connected to serial
port 2 (/dev/ttyS1) and a TSI PowerBraille 40 braille display connected
to serial port 1 (/dev/ttyS0) with a German (de) braille translation table you
would enter the following:
linux speakup_synth=ltlk speakup_port=1 brltty=ts,,de
Making boot options permanent:
Since the speakup-image.img is an ordinary vfat formatted floppy, you
can mount it on your system with a command like this:
# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /floppy
After you successfully mounted the floppy, you wil find that it contains
several files, one of them being named syslinux.cfg. This is the
configuration file used by the syslinux bootloader. Open this
file with your favourite text-editor, and find the line which starts
with
append=
to the end of this line, simply add yyour speakup and/or brltty
related boot options. Save it, exit and unmount the floppy driver
again. You now have a customly tailored Debian Installer floppy for
your particular type of accessibility hardware, and no longer need to
manually pass the required boot options at boot time.
Note, that this can also be done from a non-Linu machine, such as a
Windows or MS-DOS machine, since the filesystem used on the floppy
is compatible with Microsoft Operating Systems.
Please let me know of any positive or negative test results. However,
please keep in mind that anything not accessibility related you might
find is probably a bug in Debian Installer itself, and should be directed
to the debian-boot mailing list or to the appropriate package(s) in the BTS.
--
CYa,
Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
| Get my public key via finger mlang@db.debian.org
| 1024D/7FC1A0854909BCCDBE6C102DDFFC022A6B113E44
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