Getting started

[Daniel Dalton]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, James Malone wrote:

> High I am James Malone, I amnew to this list and I would like to ask afew questions regarding linux and speak up and just some other things in general.

Hey James.

> 1. what distro of Linux should I use?

Well that's not an easy question to answer. Everyone has their own 
opinion.
But perhaps debian. Since I am in your  state I could perhaps help you out 
with it. It is the distro I am most familiar with and use.
The package manager is fantastic but perhaps you might want to try some 
other distrobutions of linux like fedora and ubuntu?

> 2. Is there an easy way to install speak up?

No not really. You need to patch a kernel. I guess I could try and do this 
for you though.
Its probably best though if you use an image that is already patched with 
speakup. I think shane from people.debian.org does this.
Anyway I can help you with this over the phone since I am not far from you 
and its fairly straight forward.

> 3. Does brltty support the Pac Mate 20 braille display?

I believe it does yes. See the brltty website to be sure. Perhaps google 
for "brltty".

> 4. Is it easy to install and use brltty?

Very!
You can get it from your distroe's repo or you can email me and I'll 
compile you a version. (the latest version I can compile you the ones in 
the repo are a bit out of date)

  > 5. How do do I get speakup to speak?

Well you install a patched kernel and  install speechd-up and 
speech-dispatcher.
Then install a synth. I use espeak. And modify the conf files.
It uses flite by default if you install speechd-up which has 
speech-dispatcher as a dependency.

> 6. What is the best sinth to use?

Well reed if you can aford it I guess... Its $40 last I heard. I doubt 
thats in au$ either.
But our dollar is pretty high at the minute so it shouldn't be too much. 
Perhaps $45 to $50?
Then you could email me for my conf files. I believe there are some errors 
in the default espeak ones.

> 7. What's the audio quolity like in Linux?

Not sure what you mean here.
For music and video not bad. Alsa is very good. I don't know much about OS 
though.
Os only allows you to play one sound at once.
Just use mplayer.

If its about the speech. Well the voices don't sound as good as windows I 
guess but I find them fine.
As long as it talks to me!

> 8. Should I use a G U I?

Depends what you want to do.
But its nice to have when you need it.
I use the cli mostly but have the option of using a gui if I like.
I log in with the cli and I use the cli for 98% of things. But if I want a 
gui I just need to do:
startx

> 9. What's the best screenreader that I should use?

Well for a gui orca. Since it is the only one I know of. :-)
And probably speakup for a cli although brltty does have some tts 
capabilities.

I am hoping to write my own screenreader for just software synths in the 
future and that wouldn't require the kernel to be patched.
You could build it from source or install from your distroe's repo. Or 
perhaps a rpm or .deb file.
But not sure when I will get to start on this.
It would be a cli one.

> 10. How to I get the screen readers to start automaticly?

Well speakup should automatically start.
And brltty you just need to modify your distroes start up file.
Or one of them and put the command
brltty
in it.
I also have some brltty stuff set up in grub too.

> What ever help any one can give me will be greatly appreciated

HTH

--
Daniel Dalton

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ddalton/
d.dalton at iinet.net.au