I don't know whether you are seriously miss-informed or just spouting hot air. I could assume the latter and just ignore your post, but since it has a great potential to seriously misseducate the general public, I will address every point in your comment.
Zipspeak is a version of the zipslack minidistribution which incorporates the speakup kernel patches. Speakup is a screen reader project headed by a blind hacker named Kirk Reiser and assisted by speakup users and other interested people. Therefore, it is not a threat to independant producers as it is itself an independant product. It is always open to new people to get involved, it is released under the GPL, and it therefore is also free.
Since speakup is a product written by the people who wish to use it, the aim is, in fact, to be as compatible with as much hardware as possible. The list of synthesisers supported in zipspeak matches those supported at the time of the last speakup release. Since then, more drivers have been written and driver code is constantly being worked on. As some of these drivers are not to a satisfactory standard, they were not included with zipspeak. I dare say that zipspeak will be updated upon the next speakup release, which by the way will only be version 0.09.
Kirk is always keen to add more synths. I needed a specific driver written for my particular hardware. He began writing it one Saturday morning, and by Sunday night, I was running it. Talk about service.
We are curious to know about your speech synthesiser. All Kirk needs to write a driver is a spec sheet listing the commands and the lend of a unit to test the drivers with. Even if your speech is in software, we are interested in knowing about it. Feel free to drop Kirk some mail.
I can't emphasise the independence of this enough. This is free software! There is no FDA approval, tax exemptions or any such things, it's just plain hard work and satisfaction in the result. I know little about Apple's standards, but none of their operating systems are particularly usable, in fact, I'd say that linux is much more usable than any apple OS ever was or, quite probably, ever will be.
If you would like to know more, you can visit the speakup webpage at http://www.braille.uwo.ca/speakup/ where you can also check out the speakup mailing list. In addition, you may also contact Kirk Reiser, head of the speakup project at kirk@braille.uwo.ca.
Actually, I have to point out that minimising windows is important for blind people. Windows screen readers, like human beings, need to be able to see what they are trying to read. If a window is partially obscured by another one, then the screen reader will not be able to read all of it. So minimising and maximising windows are very necessary for blind people who use windows.
I admitedly have not read to the end of this thread but I do currently have the time to do so. Firstly, there is NOT a keystroke for every windows icon. Oh that there were. The user-friendliness of a given windows application is defined by the thoughtfulness of the particular programmer. Some programs lack many conventional windows keystrokes and also lack meaningful labels on icons so that alternate methods for using the program also do not work. I also need to stress that speech recognision is of no use to blind people on its own, and is only useful at all if there are other reasons why they cannot type. As a blind person, this would seem self-evident, but it comes up time and again. The is not putting data in, the issue is getting information out. The best typer in the world will have problems if they don't know where they are typing. Strides are being made in access to windows and its applications, but the best solutions cost the better part of a thousand U.S. dollars. For this reason, many blind people continue to persist with DOS, believe it or not, and dialup shell accounts. Because both DOS software and shell accounts are becoming scarce, linux provides a real alternative. I have been using linux for around 14 months and wouldn't give it up. I do still have a windows machine at my disposal for doing certain tasks, but its main use is as a terminal for my partner to telnet into our linux box. I look forward to the day when I could, if I wanted to, uninstall windows completely. Geoff.
Slashdot Mirror
Zipspeak is a version of the zipslack minidistribution which incorporates the speakup kernel patches. Speakup is a screen reader project headed by a blind hacker named Kirk Reiser and assisted by speakup users and other interested people. Therefore, it is not a threat to independant producers as it is itself an independant product. It is always open to new people to get involved, it is released under the GPL, and it therefore is also free.
Since speakup is a product written by the people who wish to use it, the aim is, in fact, to be as compatible with as much hardware as possible. The list of synthesisers supported in zipspeak matches those supported at the time of the last speakup release. Since then, more drivers have been written and driver code is constantly being worked on. As some of these drivers are not to a satisfactory standard, they were not included with zipspeak. I dare say that zipspeak will be updated upon the next speakup release, which by the way will only be version 0.09.
Kirk is always keen to add more synths. I needed a specific driver written for my particular hardware. He began writing it one Saturday morning, and by Sunday night, I was running it. Talk about service.
We are curious to know about your speech synthesiser. All Kirk needs to write a driver is a spec sheet listing the commands and the lend of a unit to test the drivers with. Even if your speech is in software, we are interested in knowing about it. Feel free to drop Kirk some mail.
I can't emphasise the independence of this enough. This is free software! There is no FDA approval, tax exemptions or any such things, it's just plain hard work and satisfaction in the result. I know little about Apple's standards, but none of their operating systems are particularly usable, in fact, I'd say that linux is much more usable than any apple OS ever was or, quite probably, ever will be.
If you would like to know more, you can visit the speakup webpage at http://www.braille.uwo.ca/speakup/ where you can also check out the speakup mailing list. In addition, you may also contact Kirk Reiser, head of the speakup project at kirk@braille.uwo.ca.
Geoff.
Actually, I have to point out that minimising windows is important for blind people. Windows screen readers, like human beings, need to be able to see what they are trying to read. If a window is partially obscured by another one, then the screen reader will not be able to read all of it. So minimising and maximising windows are very necessary for blind people who use windows.
I admitedly have not read to the end of this thread but I do currently have the time to do so. Firstly, there is NOT a keystroke for every windows icon. Oh that there were. The user-friendliness of a given windows application is defined by the thoughtfulness of the particular programmer. Some programs lack many conventional windows keystrokes and also lack meaningful labels on icons so that alternate methods for using the program also do not work. I also need to stress that speech recognision is of no use to blind people on its own, and is only useful at all if there are other reasons why they cannot type. As a blind person, this would seem self-evident, but it comes up time and again. The is not putting data in, the issue is getting information out. The best typer in the world will have problems if they don't know where they are typing. Strides are being made in access to windows and its applications, but the best solutions cost the better part of a thousand U.S. dollars. For this reason, many blind people continue to persist with DOS, believe it or not, and dialup shell accounts. Because both DOS software and shell accounts are becoming scarce, linux provides a real alternative. I have been using linux for around 14 months and wouldn't give it up. I do still have a windows machine at my disposal for doing certain tasks, but its main use is as a terminal for my partner to telnet into our linux box. I look forward to the day when I could, if I wanted to, uninstall windows completely. Geoff.