Re: Updating mbrola (again)

[adr <adr%sdf.org@localhost>]

On Sat, 20 Jan 2024, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> 	I use a screen reader called yasr, along with a build of eflite, which uses flite as its
> speech synthesizer in conjunction with Yasr.  Yasr was written by a gentleman named Mike Gorse,
> who is also totally blind.

Yes, I know them. I've used them with edbrowse. Have you wrote
pkgsrc ports of them?

I suppose the ideal would be to add something like linux's speakup
to the kernel, and make the system respond to some keybinding at
boot time to activate it.

> 	As far as nonvisual usability, the challenge I've not yet worked out is how to get Orca
> working with Firefox on the X environment under NetBSD.  I think this has mostly been due to a
> lack of time on my part, but if anyone wants to help with this process, I'd be greatful.  Orca
> is in the pkgsrc tree, and it compiles, and my issues have mostly been the same as for every
> one else, that is, geting X to work reliably with the graphics cards and monitors I have
> available, as well as just getting the X keyboard to do what I expect with the keys I want.

I'm not personally interested in Orca. I understand that you could
need it, specially if you have to interact with office suites, or
you need to access complex web sites, etc. It seems like a tool to
help you find your way in an ecosystem created for people without
visual impairment. As I said before, I'm not visually impared, so
I don't have that need. But I will try it when I find time and I'll
share my experience with the list.

I'm more interested in an ecosystem developed from the beginning
to interact with the computer with text and audio only. Emacspeak
does the trick because emacs is basically a lisp machine with a
textual interface, and it is extensible and customizable at every
level. But if you are totally blind, you'll need some backup, emacs
is so bloated, if you start changing settings it's pretty easy to
mess its initialization. And then silence.

Edbrowse is very interesting. It can be a little hard at first,
but if you are familiar with ed and the old-school unix way of
combining small programs to achieve the goal in an efficient way,
you will love its scripting capabilities.  There is a port in wip
already.

If I were blind, I wouldn't know how to start with netbsd, but
after reading your mail I'm thinking that maybe things are not so
hard as they look to me.

Regards,
adr.