Sonar GNU/Linux merges with Vinux

Thu Apr 27 06:34:21 UTC 2017

#+OPTIONS: latex:t toc:nil H:3
For me, in school, I started out with Windows XP, lol. Shows how young I
	am, only 22, 23 on May 7. But the future is for the young,
	mostly, although nowadays the old get older, lol. I’ve never
	represented a group of users or people... Well I did yesterday
	when I said that, because the IRS uses Jaws 16, we, the AT
	department of Lions World, cannot upgrade to Jaws 18 to fix a
	rather glaring bug in Jaws’s Braille handling where it cannot
	display the minus (−) sign in braille.

One big problem we’ll have with converting teens and young adults, is
that Orca/Speech Dispatcher/Espeak cannot read Emoji, such as ⌣ or 😺 or
😸 or even 😍. This will be a problem, one which needs fixing, as young
people use Emoji extensively. Sad to say, Emacspeak, which most regard
as old or arcane, at least in IRC, can handle any Unicode character you
through at it, with its usage of Emacs’s Unicode support and knowledge
of all Unicode symbols. Failure of "new and improved ways of accessing
speech synthesizers," to read Unicode symbols will turn young people
away, mark my words. That’s why I love using Emacs, because I know that
I have access to each and every symbol in the buffer I’m using, and can
even insert Unicode symbols. If only Emacs worked better with modern web
pages, I’d never leave the thing because it does such a good job at
being an audio interface to things, with "aural highlighting," audio
icons, and so forth. But another thing is, we don’t have to argue about
my using emacs over "traditional" applications, because it’s all Linux,
right? Nah, who am I kidding. If you don’t use Orca or speakup, you
ain’t no Linux user. You’re an Emacs user, and that is blasphemous to
any "true" Linux user, right? Right?

So, basically, Speech dispatcher /needs/ the ability to read /any/
Unicode character out there, including Emoji. We should not put this on
Espeak, because if some one uses festival, for example, we’d have to put
in the same code for it, too. And the same for Voxin, and fLite, and
Pico, and any new TTS that comes out there. Speech Dispatcher should be
able to take better control over its synthesizers under it!
-- 
Sent from Discordia using Gnus for Emacs.
Email: r.d.t.prater at gmail.com
Long days and pleasant nights!

Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list at redhat.com> writes:

> I agree with you, but when you say schools, you mean the government.
> They provide the majority of funding schools use for that sort of thing.
> I did not think of a grant writer.  That sounds like a good place to
> start.
>
> --Kelly Prescott
>
>
>
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>
>> Tony Baechler here.
>>
>> Your comments again emphasize the need for a nonprofit organization.
>> I wouldn't worry too much about the money. Funding will happen once
>> the word gets out. Oh, it takes time and it won't be immediate, but
>> it can and will happen. What we need is a grant writer. The
>> government issues grants. There are many private companies who put
>> lots of funding into Linux. Most major projects have outside
>> funding. If Mozilla had to survive only on donors, they wouldn't.
>> Debian gets lots of money and servers from HP Enterprise and many
>> other companies. You're right that the Windows guys get their money
>> mostly from the government, but not all. Schools are a lot of the
>> market.
>>
>> As I said before, start young. Get on social media where teens and
>> young people are and show them that there is another choice besides
>> Windows and the Mac. Even if they aren't programmers, they are
>> potential users. One of the reasons why the Apple II became so
>> successful was because it was given to so many schools. How many of
>> you grew up on the Apple II in the classroom? There was a company
>> called Raised Dot Computing. They wrote and sold Bex and other
>> programs. They were a commercial business. When they started, they
>> had no money. All of their newsletters are online and well worth
>> reading if you care about the history of technology for the blind.
>> They hired a grant writer. After getting several grants, they were
>> able to fund development of their software, like Braille Edit which
>> became Bex, a program to make AppleWorks accessible and eventually
>> Mega Dots for the PC. The point is it can be done and it wouldn't be
>> that difficult, especially with a good social media presence.
>>
>> On 4/24/2017 4:56 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>>>  Kelly Prescott here.
>>>  The reason Windows has better accessibility, is that the government has
>>>  largely funded it.  FS and all the other players get a large percentage of
>>>  there purchases from VR dollars which is the good old tax payer!
>>>  So while a private company developes it, Uncle Sam really foots the bill!
>>>  I only say that to show how hard it is to get accessible software built
>>>  and
>>>  maintained.
>>>  I am working on a UEFI boot loader that talks from bootup.  I am going to
>>>  release it as open source.
>>>  The thing is: I have to feed me and mine durring this effort.
>>>  This means that I work on borring normal projects most of the time, and my
>>>  boot loader when I have spare time.
>>>  I think there are several developers me among them who would do this full
>>>  time, but if there is no money in it, then we must continue to work on our
>>>  normal jobs/projects until we either have time to work on it or we find
>>>  some
>>>  good funding to pay for it.
>>>  Unfortunately, I do not know of good ways to obtain lots of money for
>>>  part-time developers.  There is only so much free time and free work to go
>>>  around.
>>
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>>
>
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