Re: DAISY reader et al

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>> "Doug" == Doug Smith <bdsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Doug> Hi, just a couple of questions here.

    Doug> 1. How do you make w3 read a file of HTML on your own
    Doug> machine?  

M-x w3-find-file

    Doug>2. Where can one get the text versions of the
    Doug> o'riley books?  

O'Reilly is perhaps the most supportive publisher I found with respect
to providing their texts in a format suitable for the blind/vision
impaired. Essentially, they have a policy of providing any of their
books in text format to blind/vision impaired if the book is not
already available in an accessible format (e.g. available on CD-ROM,
tape, braillle etc). All you have to do is provide them with a medical
certificate to verify your vision status. I'm sending this from work,
so I can't provide contact details, but you should be able to find
info on their web site. Note however that I htink it is very important
not to abuse this support and therefore encourage you to check their
site and make sure any titles you are after are not already available
on CD or on tape etc. Also be aware that the formatting of the books
they provide is in very basic text format. Essentially, it is just a
dump of the books source with most formatting information stripped
out. This means you can often end up with books that have paragraphs
all in one line, often some formatting codes are left in etc. I was
told by an O'Reilly employee that there had been some people who had
complained about this and demanded better formatting. I was pretty
disgusted with the individual who did this as not only are O'Reilly
doing something which is a great example to other publishes, they
don't even charge us anything for the texts - thats right, they
provide them in text format for free! Given this fact, I think its
important to acknowledge that the service they offer is a privilege
and not a right and therefore we should be very appreciative of their
generosity. 

I apologise if I'm being over the top, but I have recently been
encountering situations where previously supportive individuals,
businesses or organisations have removed/reduced their support because
it has been abused by others with a vision impairment with a chip on
their shoulder who believe that just because they have a disability
the rest of the world owes them something and everything should be
handed to them on a silver platter with minimal effort or contribution
on their own part. I'll get off my soap box now.

    Doug>3. Where can I find this w3m and some 
    Doug> information on it?

google is your friend - use it. Personally, I run Debian and all the
packages you need are part of the Debian distribution (w3m and
w3m.el). 

Tim
-- 
Tim Cross					E-Mail: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
Snr. Analyst/Programmer                         Phone: 6773 3210
Applications Group			        Mobile: 0412 969193
University of New England
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find / -iname microsoft -exec rm -rf {} \;

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