Re: New Member Intro, Installation Help
"Veli-Pekka Tatila" <vtatila@mail.student.oulu.fi> writes:
> Mario Lang wrote:
>> I'm afraid that there is very little internationalized software
>> speech support yet.
>
> It's not that serious but I'd like to read some e-mail and books in
> Finnish in particular. Of cours I can also use a multi-lingual synth
> in Windows, so no prob there. And I just read the Finnish-speaking,
> commercial speech synth Mikropuhe has been ported to Linux:
>
> <http://www.mikropuhe.com/mikropuhe.asp?sis=tuotteet&sisb=mplinux>
>
> The page is in Finnish, though.
BRLTTY apparently has a driver for this synth since version
3.5 or so. I am not sure if anyone attempted to write an Emacspeak
speech server for it though.
>> You might also want to look at the magnification features of Gnopernicus.
>
> I already did, and frankly speaking was disappointed. I thought it
> would support real full screen magnification which it did not. And the
> window could not magnify under itself, either. I thought this would be
> something that had been implemented by now, unless it requires some
> special screen interceptor driver as in Windows. Also, I found the
> refresh rate was not even as smooth as in MIcrosoft Magnifier. Still
> anything is better than that Win 3.1 app called Lens but it was not
> really intended as a magnifier to be fair and I'm getting off-topic
> here.
You should probably summarize your feelings about Gnopernicus
Magnification and send a mail to gnome-accessibility@gnome.org.
I am sure the people there would be quite happy about all sorts of
feedback, be it positive, or constructive criticism. Please keep
in mind that Gnopernicus is very new, in fact it is the
first GUI Screen Reader for Linux (if one ignores certain never
really released attempts at implementing something useful). Therefore,
it is very important that users actually give feedback to the
developers.
>> ecasound
>> for multi-track recording, and SuperCollider for everything else.
>
> Oh, I'll keep these in mind. What do you mean accessible, are these
> tools text based then?
Yes, sort of. Ecasound is basically fully text-based.
And SuperCollider is an audio programming environment which
can be used from a pure text based terminal from within Emacs.
> Do they support low-latency ALSA directly?
SuperCollider uses JACK (and therefore ALSA).
Ecasound can use ALSA directly, or also go through JACK.
>> NetHack is also a classic which tends to be quite playable with
>> braille output.
>
> I'd like to play that by zooming around the map with magnification and
> letting it read the prompts with speech, that could work. I suppose
> there are also Z-Machine and Tads emulators out there.
Yes, there are.
$ apt-cache search zcode
frotz - interpreter of Z-code story-files
jzip - Text mode interpreter for Z-Code adventures, etc.
xzip - Interpreter of Infocom-format story-files
int-fiction-installer - Installer for interactive fiction games from the if-archive.
>> HOWTO on creating a BRLTTY disk which can be used during the floppy
>> install.
>
> Thanks for the advice. I checked out the BRLSTATXh howto and it looks
> easy enough. There's one thing at the end I don't understand,
> though. It says the following:
>
> #2. BrlStatX and USB support
>
> Important option available in the Linux 2.4.19 kernel:
>
> Tieman Voyager USB Braille display support (EXPERIMENTAL)
>
> If you are using a Voyager, then you will set this option "on" to be able
> to use BrlTty with it.
>
> *** end of quote ***
>
> Umm, which option? I mean, it didn't say it explicitely at all. OK, if
> I'm reading this correctly I should be using the 2.4 kernel in stead
> of 2.2 to have proper USB support. But how can I specify this at boot
> time or is there a different floppy image for the 2.4 kernel I should
> be using? I'm slightly puzzled.
This information is already obsolete.
BRLTTY up to version 3.4.1 required a special kernel module to
be loaded for the Voyager support to work (brlvger.o).
This requirement was removed in BRLTTY 3.5, you no longer need
any special kernel module for the Voyager.
What this exactly ment is: If you were trying to use BRLTTY 3.4.1
to create your suplementary disk you'd also have to
replace the installer kernel with a version which includes
the brlvger module (this is a quite complicated job.)
If you use BRLTTY 3.5, it should work without modifications to
the kernel.
>> The boot parameters for serial console do vary from installation
>> method to installation method.
>
> Oh, I see. Could you please give me a direct link to the Woody boot
> parameters or info on serial install? I tried Googling for woody boot
> parameters but didn't come up with anything useful.
<URL:http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-rescue-boot.en.html#s-boot-parms>
(Go to www.debian.org, follow the link "Installation Manual" and
select "Installation Manual for Intel x86".)
In particular, this paragraph seems to be of interest to you:
If you are booting with a serial console, generally the kernel will
autodetect this. If you have a videocard (framebuffer) and a keyboard
also attached to the computer which you wish to boot via serial
console, you may have to pass the console=device argument to the
kernel, where device is your serial device, which is usually something
like ``ttyS0''.
> About the 40x25 text mode:
>> unfortunately, I do not really know if you can achieve this easily
>> during the installation.
>
> Howabout using SVGATextMode, does that let me scroll around if
> everything doesn't fit on the screen?
No, not that I'd know, SVGATextMode simply changes the text-mode
dimensions, it doesn't do any virtualisation.
Besides, SVGATextMode is not included on installation media as
far as I know.
>> You'd still need to complete
>> the installation up to the point where you have a working
>> network.
>
> I suppose this would be easier in Gentoo, then. I'm not sure but it
> uses some kind of a Live CD approach.
A very vague statement I can't do much with.
>> I'd recommend you read up on the Installer documentation
>
> Already did that, as well as reading a nice tutorial about it at:
>
> <http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2016>
>
> Thanks for all of your help so far. It's nice people are making Debian
> accessible and I find the philosophy more attractive than that of
> RedHat or Mandrake.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
> PS:
> I'll be posting this same message to you directly and cc-ing to the
> list, just like you posted directly to me as well. Hope you don't mind
No problem, but you don't need to CC me, I am subscribed.
--
CYa,
Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
.''`. | Get my public key via finger mlang@db.debian.org
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