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Announcing the third alpha release of speakup v-0.03.

Kirk Reiser writes:

Announcing the third alpha release of speakup v-0.03.

Speakup is a screen review package for the Linux operating
system. It allows you to hear all output directed to the console
and move around the screen using the typical screen review
functions.

This is an alpha release which means it is by no means complete.
It only supports the Double Talk internal synthesizer currently,
but hopefully we will increase it’s variety of synths in the not to
distant future.

It is quite usable in it’s current incarnation though, with the
blaring lack of cursor output support. That means in an editor it
doesn’t read each line as you move up and down the screen. It
tracks the cursor so you just need to do a say current line but it
doesn’t do it all by itself. There is more to be said for cursor
tracking and speaking than meets the ear at first glance.

Speakup is a set of kernel patches which means you should have
some experience with kernel compiling. It currently works on the
Linux development kernels 2.1.125 and above. At this release we are
at kernel 2.1.130.

What’s new in v-0.03? Read the Changes file included in the tar
archive for full descriptions of my changes. Say phonetic character
is new. Speakup now says the status of caps_lock, num_lock and
scroll_lock when they are toggled. Rewrote portions of various
files to speed up operation and clean up some bugs. Oh, don’t worry
there’s still plenty of bugs to squash!

There is a mailing list for speakup which you are welcome to
join if you are interested in it’s on going development. You can
subscribe to the mailing list by sending a message to
listserv@braille.uwo.ca with a line in the body of the message like
this:

subscribe speakup (YourFirstName YourLastName)

The mailing list is currently a very low traffic forum so you
probably won’t be overwhelmed with mail.

The official speakup distribution point is ftp://ftp.braille.uwo.ca/pub/speakup.
For now, I am just dropping the documents there as I write them. It
will probably become more organized as time goes on but for now I
just want to get information written and out there for public
consumption as quickly as possible.

Speakup is written by Kirk Reiser and Andy Berdan. It is covered
by the GPL (GNU Public License).

So, like I think that’s about it. If you have any questions feel
free to write me at kirk@braille.uwo.ca. If you have a DoubleTalk
internal synth, we could really use your feedback. If you are just
diing to get involved in a software project, boy do we have a
bridge to sell you! ‘grin’

Kirk

email: kirk@braille.uwo.ca

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