Emacsspeak-9.0 (Speech-Enabled Desktop) available

                       Announcing Emacspeak-9.0 (BlackLab)
                       -----------------------

For Immediate Release:

San Jose, Calif.,  (October 24, 1998)
    Emacspeak99: Preparing For The Next Millenium
    --Interactive Accessibility enhances Speech-Enabled Desktop

About Emacspeak:
---------------

Emacspeak is a fully functional audio desktop that provides
complete eyes-free access to all major 32 and 64 bit
operating environments.  By seamlessly blending all aspects of
the Internet such as Web-surfing and electronic messaging
into the audio desktop, Emacspeak enables speech access to
local and remote information with a consistent and
well-integrated user interface.

Major Enhancements:
-------------------

0) Support for nested HTML tables to further enhance Emacspeak's
already efficient navigation and browsing of structured and
multicolumn WWW pages.

1)Fluent spoken access to  database applications.

2) Speech-enabled support for creating and maintaining XML documents..

3) Speech-enabling extensions for the following:

    A)Speech-enabled SQL: emacspeak-sql.el
    B)Network utilities: emacspeak-net-utils.el
    C) Enhanced Perl Mode:CPerl: emacspeak-cperl.el
    D) Speech-enabled on-the-fly spell checking.
    E) Speech-enabled hyperlink navigation in online help buffers.
    F)Locating Emacs source code: emacspeak-find-func.el

4) Additional user-visible enhancements:

Emacspeak 9.0 speech-enables all  new features introduced in
Emacs 20.3.

See the release notes for additional details.  The Emacspeak
source distribution now includes a structured FAQ list
designed to introduce new and old users to the Emacspeak
environment.

Preparing For The Next Millenium:
---------------------------------

Emacspeak is now bundled with all major Linux distributions;
however, users can rest assured that this present version
was not released prematurely to defeat anti-trust concerns.

At the same time, Emacspeak 99 continues to innovate in the
area of speech interaction and carries forward the
well-established Emacs tradition of introducing user
interface features that eventually show up in commercial
user environments.  On this theme, when recently challenged
by a proponent of a crash-prone but well-marketed windowing
system with the assertion "Emacs is a system from the 70's",
the creator of Emacspeak expressed surprize at the unusual
candor manifest in the assertion that it would take popular
idiot-proof interfaces until the year 2070 to catch up to
where the Emacspeak audio desktop is today.

Industry experts welcomed this refreshing breath of Courage
Certainty and Clarity (CCC) at a time when users are reeling
from the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) unleashed by
complex software systems backed by even more convoluted
press releases.

History:
--------

Emacspeak-9.0 --(AKA Emacspeak 99) code named BlackLab--
continues to innovate in the areas of speech interaction and
interactive accessibility.  Emacspeak-8.0 --(AKA
Emacspeak-98++) code named BlackDog-- is a major upgrade to
the speech output extension to Emacs.  Emacspeak-95 (code
named Illinois) was released on the Internet in May 1995 as
the first complete speech interface to UNIX workstations.
The subsequent release, Emacspeak-96 (code named Egypt) made
available in May 1996 provided significant enhancements to
the interface. Emacspeak-97 (Tennessee) went further in
providing a true audio desktop.  Emacspeak-98 integrated
Internetworking into all aspects of the audio desktop to
provide the first fully interactive speech-enabled WebTop.

Obtaining Emacspeak:
--------------------

Visit Emacspeak at http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
--You can also pick up emacspeak via anonymous ftp from
ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/raman/emacspeak/.
You can subscribe to the emacspeak mailing list
emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu by sending mail to the list
owner greg e. priest-dorman priestdo@cs.vassar.edu.

About Emacspeak:
---------------
        
Based at Cornell (NY) http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
--home to Auditory User Interfaces (AUI) on the WWW--
Emacspeak is mirrored world-wide by an international netwrok
of software archives and bundled with all major Linux
distributions on CDROM.  The Emacspeak mailing list is
archived at http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~priestdo/emacspeak/
--thanks to Greg Priest-Dorman.

Press/Analyst Contact:  Aster Labrador
              http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/aster/aster.gif

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