Re: Emacspeak in Arch Linux

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

If your use to debian based systems, why not just use Ubuntu? This will give you all the 'familiar' apps which Debian won't distribute, but keep the platform and package management familiar. 

Another alternatie would be something like vinux or one of the accessibility specific debian or ubuntu flavors. These usually have at least basic accessibility features enabled and a support list with people familiar with such issues. 

I would suggest, if you are having problems wtih Arch, then linux from scratch certainly won't fit our need. Arch is a great distro, but you have a lot to learn/unlearn if you are coming from another distro flavor, such as debian. 

All distros have their own little quirks. I doubt there is any which will be perfect - at least I've never found one. I've found many with some good aspects and all of them has some aspects I don't like. However, they are still a lot easier than doing a linux from scratch, which I have done a while ago. Great learning experience, but unless you want to spend most of your time down in the guts just keeping things working, it probably isn't the right choice. 

These days, I have little interest in OS level stuff. I no longer want to build kernels, compile from source or spend hours tweaking things. I want a reliable system which will allow me access to email, surf the web, author documents and do a bit of programming in lisp, clojure and perl. 

These days, I use stock standard Ubuntu. I was running Xubuntu as I liked Xfce over Unity or Gnome, but now, I just run stock standard except for emacs and emacspeak. 

I build emacs from the emacs 24 bzr branch (not the dev branch, though I do try that out from time to time), emacspeak from googlecode and a few other elisp packages. I use the vinux ViaVoice stuff to setup speech dispatcher, emacspeak etc running 32 bit sound subsystem, using pulseaudio. I rarely run at te console, always under X. I also use ChromVox and google chrome unstable from google. 

In my spare time, I run a clojure based speech server for emacspeak which uses the espeak tts. This is experimental and work in progress (not at all stable and full of bugs). The main reason I'm doing it is to have a non-Tcl based interface as then I can run 64 bit across the board (I could run 64 bit across the board if I didn't use ViaVoice, but once I run 32 bit Viavoice, my Tcl envrionment is 32 bit and so must use 32 bit espeak if I want it as a backup).

Tim

On 27 December 2012 16:45, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Everyone,

Frustrated by Debian Rules which don't allow Firefox and Thunderbird because of their logos being copyrighted,, I decided to try Arch Linux.

Mind you I had found a work around with installing Firefox and Thunderbird, but I have heard that the latest GNOME Desktop offers excellent accessibility, I went ahead with installing Arch.

GNOME came up nicely - except gdm has a bug but I found a work around.  ORCA doesn't work, and I wanted to see if there was an easy way with Arch's install system to install the current emacspeak from subversion.

What a disappointment.  I think I might try Linux From Scratch after this.

What ARCH does have is is a choice - when you ask to install gnome, it tells you the programs that come with it and it gives you a choice.  I like this.  I don't want some of the standard GNOME programs because they have poor accessibility.

I guess I will bite the bullet if anyone doesn't have any ideas for suggestions on installing emacspeak in Arch.  So far it doesn't work while DEBIAN works perfectly.

I guess the solution to Debian's not using Firefox and Thunderbird is to use source and compile them myself. :0)

Any suggestions?

David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA  Radio-Officers Group -- Join CW email list -- Historic Morse Recordings 

Gopher Hole:  gopher://sdf.org/1/users/djringjr/ (native or with Firefox's Overbite extension) or via http to gopher gateway

Chat Skype: djringjr MSN: djringjr@xxxxxxxxxxx AIM: N1EA icq: 27380609

=30=

--
Tim Cross