Re: Fwd: Re: request for emacspeak installation instructions on mandrake 7.2

[tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx]

I have emacspeak working fine with via voice on both a Mandrake 8.0
system and a redhat 7.1 system. On both these systems, there were some
problems because both distributions are now shipping with emacs rpms
which setup a default site init file. In the Mandrake case, there is a
directory called /etc/emacs which contains site-startup.el and
site-startup.d The site-startup.el sets some features which are
incompatible with emacspeak such as setting trainsient mark mode and
redefining some key maps so that it behaves more like xemacs etc. Once
you disable this stuff, emacspeak works fine.

If you go through the emacspeak mailing list archives, you will find a
post from me which contains a modified site-statup.el file which you
can use to replace the default mandrake one which turns off all the
stuff which causes problems with emacspeak.

Note that there is NO reason emacspeak won't work with any linux
distribution - its just some distributions require more tweaking than
others. It is largely because of these differences in distributions
there is no full proof installation approach which is guaranteed to
work 'out of the box' - you often need to do some research and think
about problems and possible causes/solutions. In this respect, I guess
you can say that linux and maybe emacspeak is not as 'user friendly'
as windows and programs like jaws or windows-eyes. However, one thing
I do know is that at least when something doesn't work under linux you
have a chance of tracking down the problem because linux tends to log
errors and provide various levels of diagnostics - windows constantly
frustrates me because you only get obscure error messages if your
lucky and just a beep if your not. There are numerous problems I've
never been able to solve with windows because you get no diagnostic
info, but under linux I have very rarely found a problem I could not
solve without a bit of reading and tracking through logs etc. All I an
do under windows is look around, click on various options and modify
various dialogue entries and hope I happen to tweak the right value -
usually when I get something to work under windows I have no real
understanding of what I did to get it to work! Under Linux 

As the saying goes "Its not that Linux is not user friendly, its just
that its picky about who its friendly with!".

Tim

helkenn writes:
> 
> >Roger,
> 
> 
> If your experience with installing emacspeak onto a Mandrake installation 
> is universal, then I for one am in the deep unplesant stuff.
> 
> I've had considerable trouble getting emacspeak installed with via voice 
> and still do not have it working.  I've had to resort to locating somebody 
> with experience at this stuff.  Funny thing is, that Mandrake installed 
> very easily -- very smooth, no hitches.  Getting bootstrapped with 
> emacspeak has been just the opposite.  I'm getting a certain degree of the 
> depth of my aversion to Windows, by the fact that I'm still pursuing linux 
> as the desired alternative.
> 
> So, are there others who actually have emacspeak 14.0 with via voice 
> running under Mandrake 8.0??? If not, I've wasted $80!!
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> 
> >From: Roger <roger@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >To: Aruni <aruni_sharma@xxxxxxxxxxx>, emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxx
> >Subject: Re: request for emacspeak installation instructions on mandrake 7.2
> >Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 09:41:14 -0500
> >
> >Hi Aruni,
> >
> >I've found that Mandrake is so install friendly, that it writes alot of stuff
> >that you don't need and have to hunt, find, eliminate, just to get emacspeak
> >and viavoice to work.
> >You really need RH, thats what most of the people on the list use, I believe.
> >And its the only one I have been able to get to work, though I have tried
> >Mandrake, SuSe, and the kitchen sink. If ViaVoice wasn't so proprietary, I
> >think the BLINUX project would already be bearing fruit with a simple single
> >install (and of course some tweaking).
> >
> >  If you or a friend has DSL and a CD burner you can go to the following link
> >and download ISO images of most all the distributions, including RH 7.1.  The
> >download will still take 3-5 hours per disk, and there are two disks,
> >minimum, plus an optional power-tools disk.
> >  http://www.linuxiso.org/
> >
> >  The Gnome Java stuff looks really promising!! I hope KDE follows suit as
> >well.
> >
> >Peace In Troubled Times,
> >rog
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >On Saturday 06 October 2001 11:02 am, Aruni wrote:
> > > Hello, everyone. I've just got mandrake 7.2 installed on my system.
> > > However, I don't have any idea about Linux. So will somebody help me with
> > > specific instructions on how to install viavoice and emacspeak on mandrake
> > > 7.2. Actually I was looking for Redhat7.1. But I could not get hold of it.
> > > thanks in advance,
> > > Aruni.
> > >
> > >
> > > _________________________________________________________
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> > >
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-- 
Tim Cross
mailto: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
phone: +61 2 6772 5973
mobile: 0412 969193
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