[Re: emacspeak for windows?]

[Kalyan Mukherjea <kalyan.infinity@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- Begin Message ---

• To: Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: emacspeak for windows?
• From: Kalyan Mukherjea <kalyan.infinity@xxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:00:26 +0530
• In-reply-to: <Pine.BSF.4.64.0907300450090.79092@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Jude,
As has already been pointed out,  there is no theoretical reason for
Emacspeak not to be portable to the Windows  platform since there is
an Emacs port and Espeak works with windows. 

But I don't think there is any possibility of this. I have used the
Windows port of Emacs, it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I
had to use it because my computer had crashed and my wife used Windows. 

Remember that  everytime a new upgrade to Emacs is released
you will have to wait till a port of the new version appears. Also it
has taken Raman a decade and a half   of cumulative effort to get
Emacspeak to its present level of functionality. It is sensitive to
versions of Emacs, tcl-tk and some of the associated packages like the
w3 lisp-based browser  will not work with even slightly out dated
versions of Emacs. Unless you are willing to check every new version
of each subsidiary programs,  write new ports of these and essentially
reinvent the wheel which Raman is creating you will not have the same
Emacspeak that people on this list are using.

I suggest that you may find getting used ubuntu  a more rewarding
effort.

I am _not_ an evangelist for linux or any other OS. But Emacspeak is
absolutely the best way for a blind person to use the computer. And
since it is based on linux, if you really are visually disabled, you
_need_ to start using linux, Emacs and Emacspeak. 

I suddenly remember one other  incident to emphasize the sensitivity
of Emacspeak to associated software. There had been some attempts to
port Emacspeak to XEmacs (on the linux platform). To the best of my
knowledge, this attempt has since been abandoned.
Cheers.
Kalyan




Jude DaShiell writes:
 > There was experimental work done on such a port several years ago in Japan 
 > and I think Watanabe was one of those connected to it.  In one of the 
 > emacspeak release announcements the wording was such a couple years ago 
 > that it gave me the impression that development had succeeded on windows 
 > platforms because all 32-bit platforms or something to that effect was 
 > noted in that announcement as being supported.
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > On Wed, 29 Jul 2009, Kalyan Mukherjea wrote:
 > 
 > > Hi Jude,
 > > Where did you see any mention of a Windows port of Emacspeak? Unless
 > > it announce the unavailability of such a port now or ever!
 > >
 > > If you really need Emacspeak, you will have to migrate to Linux. The
 > > ubuntu distro has a helpful feature for would be immigrants from
 > > Windows. You should try it out.
 > > Cheers.
 > > Kalyan
 > > Jude DaShiell writes:
 > > > Is the port of emacspeak for windows still available?  I have a windows xp
 > > > system that's being reinstalled because it went south on me and figured if
 > > > this version of emacspeak is available by now it would be a good time to
 > > > install and try out.  The machine is a personal machine and the disk that
 > > > holds windows xp is removeable so I'm in a very good position to be able
 > > > to experiment here and now.  I need the information and the download urls
 > > > for this package since I would like to get it installed correctly.
 > > >
 > > >
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 > >

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