Re: Choosing emacspeak!

[Thomas Ward <slingshooter@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, and welcome to the emacspeak list. My answers are below.

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, Alireza Darvishy wrote:

> Hi
> 
> 
> I have been developing software using various tools on the Windows-system.
> Unfortunately, we had to write new JFW-scripts for almost every new tool, in
> order to work with it.
> 
> Now, I would like to lern emacspeak on a Linux system.

One thing to keep in mind is that emacspeak is not a screen reader in the 
traditional sense. Emacspeak simply turns the emacs environment into a 
talking   environment, and since emacs has many modes for 
programming, email,  web browsing, etc one never has to leave emacs often, 
and can do many of the same tasks you would do with a traditional  screen 
reader, but within the confines of the emacs environment.

 > My questions:
> 
> 1. Is it difficult to install emacspeak? Is there any documentation for
> installing emacspeak? Is there any support, if the installation doesn't
> work?

No it is not vary hard. Typically, as long as you have the tcl, tclx, and 
emacs packages already installed it as simple as doing:
rpm -iv emacspeak-version-9i386.rpm
Which installs it onto your system.
Getting a synth  might be a little trickier. Such as flite and eflite need 
to be compile from source, before you can use them.


> 
> 2. How long will it take me to lern emacspeak for writing codes, using
> email, Internet and reading news?

I'd give yourself a couple of weeks to gain any skill at it. You'll want 
to learn basic navigation commands, emacspeak specific commands, and now 
to use emacs's many modes, and thinking the way emacs thinks.
There are some totally new conceptial ideas to get by, but once learned 
you'll have that knolege from then on.


> 
> 3. I used Unix-system many years ago. I found it annoying to type paths such
> as \..\.. the whole time in order to find a file. On the Windows-system, it
> is easy to go through the file-system. How is the using of the file-system
> in emacspeak? Do I have to type the whole path in order to find a file?

Typically, your main method for doing anything vary complex will be using 
emacs in shell mode. You'll eventually have to learn commands such as how 
to copy files using the shell like:
cp file docs/books
There is a mode called dired which will allow you to browse around in a 
mannor you are somewhat similar to, but I still find the command line 
quicker, etc.


> 
> 4. Which software syntheses work at best with emacspeak?

Well, there are several hardware synths, and a few software synths that 
work well with emacs.  As far as software goes if you are using Red Hat 
you can purchase the Detcalk Softare for $50, or you can build flite from 
source, and build and install the eflite driver.
Personally, found if you replace the default voices for flite with the 16k 
voices, and pick a better voice it is the most portible and least hastle 
free synth around.


> 
> 5. Does the debugging in Java or Perl work well with emacspeak? I really
> would appreciate your help.

Java and perl and C++ work well under emacs. It's all text based, and I 
don't have much problems with it.


> 
> Thanks
> Alireza
> 
> 
> 
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