New member. Questions about Emacspeak under RedHat... Customising?

["Mirabella, Mathew J" <Mathew.Mirabella@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All.

I am a new member to the Emacspeak list, and am also quite new to Emacs,
Emacspeak and Linux.

I have a Windows 2000 Professional machine with Jaws 4.01 and I have just
installed a Red Hat Linux 7.2 boot partition on my computer.  I have
installed the Emacspeak software, and am trying to learn how it works.

I have a few questions...  ???  The more help people can send me the better.
I am a novice with Linux and am not comfortable with hacking in that
environment as yet.   
My questions may seem naive to some, but please bare with me.  I have done a
little reading (i.e.. the howto) and know a few basic things.  So... Here
goes...

How can I customize the Emacspeak voice?  I know that there is a group
called accessibility and a group called emacspeak in the custom section (M-x
customize).  But is there an easier way to customize the speech?  I am using
the speech synthesizer that comes with Emacspeak, not an external synth.

There are other emacspeak packages like W3 and VM (for mail) that do not
come with Emacspeak?  Is there a way I can download them all at once rather
than one at a time?  Since I am using Red Hat, maybe there are RPMs?

I have also downloaded Emacs for Windows and XEmacs for Windows.  Can I get
a version of Emacspeak to work under Windows 2000?  The XEmacspeak came as a
self installation wizard, and I think I got a lot of the packages like W3 as
part of that installation - I am not sure since I cannot get them to work
well.  Some people have told me that Emacspeak does not work under XEmacs,
but others have said that it should now.

For those who are interested, the Jaws cursor can be used to read the
contents of an XEmacs or Emacs buffer under Windows.

I would also like to know if you can customize the keyboard commands in
emacs / emacspeak so that they imitate the way that Windows and PC text
editors behave.  That is, home for start of line, end for end of line, arrow
keys for moving (although this works) shift and move to highlight, ctrl-c
for cut, ctrl-v for paste etc, ctrl-s for save.  This sort of thing would be
most useful for me, since I have useful vision and often use a section of
highlighted text to show me where the cursor is.  I do find the emacs
keystrokes a bit fiddly.

I have read a bit on the advantages of an audio desktop rather than a screen
reader.  I understand the concept, but my experience with Emacspeak has not
yet revealed to me the advantages of the features that Emacspeak offers.
That is, in the customize application, it is difficult to navigate around
and find the links.  Although I am impressed with the voice changes to
identify links and formatting.  Can anyone enlighten me?

One further question on customizing.  I would like the emacspeak voice to
respond a little quicker to keystrokes.  When I move up and down in a
buffer, the voice follows the keystrokes but lags behind a little so that a
few of the words from the previous line are spoken before the voice catches
up to the cursor position.  I can press "down" (C-n) a few times quickly and
see the cursor move up a few lines, but because the voice lags behind, the
voice does not give any indication that I have moved more than one line - it
simply eventually starts reading the line on the final cursor position.  In
Jaws 4.01 for Windows, I can scroll up and down rather quickly, and the
voice keeps up.  Is there a way to customize the emacspeak voice to do the
job faster too?  I know you can increase the rate, but this does not solve
the problem that I am talking about.  I also know you can change an option
for immediate voice interrupt, but that is on by default.

I also have little questions about how the buffers work.  For example, when
using C-x 1, does it actually close all other buffers, or just put others in
the background?  I know that when I use C-b to list buffers, old ones that I
thought I had closed appear in the list.  DO you really have to find a file
again if you have it already open in a buffer?  Is there a way you can just
alt-tab between full-screen sized buffers for example?

I have heard many great things about Emacs and Emacspeak and also Linux.  I
would like to learn more and use these tools more effectively.  If anyone
can help, it would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Mat.


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