Rewrite of "advice for new user"

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

    If you might find the time to delete references to the particular
    questionner's father, I'd like to include the document in the
    Emacspeak distribution.

Here is a rewrite.  I have changed it considerably.

I fear I made mistakes in the third part of this message, the part on
installing Debian and espeakf.  I cannot remember what I did to
install Emacspeak; and in any case, I have a non-standard set up.

Please check this all out and tell me what to change.

This is in plain text form.  If you like, I could convert it to Texinfo.



Advice for a new user of Emacspeak

by Robert J. Chassell
2003 Apr 23

This essay contains advice for a new user of Emacspeak.  It consists
of six parts:

  * Introduction

      A short introductory segment, for orienting yourself.  I ask
      two rhetorical questions.

  * Introducing Emacspeak

      The advice itself.  This is the longest part

  * A short digression:  free books and music

      How to downloadtexts, such as "Alice in Wonderland", from the
      Gutenberg Project.

  * Two software text-to-speech synthesizers

      A discussion of eflite and espeakf, neither of which are mature
      programs; each of which has virtues.

  * Emacspeak Installation

      A segment on installing Emacspeak in Debian with both eflite and
      espeakf.  I am least certain about this part, even though I am
      now running two instances of Emacspeak, one using eflite and the
      other using espeakf.  This is because so much of my Emacs and
      other installation is from sources.  I don't know what a
      standard Debian or standard Emacspeak installation involves.  I
      think what I describe is correct; but am not sure.

  * A sample ~/.emacs initialization and customization file.  

      I cannot imagine running Emacspeak without customizing it.


Introduction

My first question is whether you already know and use Emacspeak and
are introducing someone else to an already running Emacspeak with
which you have experience, or whether you are the new user and must
not only learn to use Emacspeak yourself, but must also install it?
(I know there are other alternatives, but these are critical.)

My hope is that you are the first: that you, the reader, are someone
who already knows and uses Emacspeak and are introducing it to someone
else; but my fear is that you are the second.  The second path is
harder.

I will mention installation again, but before that I want you to
think about the kind of text-to-speech facility you use.

Do you expect to use a hardware card for text-to-speech generation or
do you expect to use a software text-to-speech package such as eflite
or espeakf?  I run both those two software packages, neither of which
are mature.  In the installation section, I will talk about them.  I
am told that a hardware card is better, and that if you can, you
should use one.  Emacspeak was originally written for a hardware card.

Introducing Emacspeak

Let me hope that you, the reader, already know and use Emacspeak and
are introducing it to someone else.  You may not be that person, but
I will write this section as if you are.  You are introducing a
friend to Emacspeak.

First of all, in Info, listen together with your friend to the
beginnings of the Emacspeak manual.  You might want to start with the
Introduction node.  It is well written.  You can use the opportunity
to introduce various Emacspeak commands and to discuss the philosophy
or world-view behind Emacspeak.

You can also explain the meaning of some of the jargon, such as
`point' to mean the place in the text where commands operate, `visit'
to mean opening a file in a buffer, and `string' to mean a `string of
characters'.

Sighted people tend to work with the three contemporary user
interfaces: command line, graphical, and Emacs.  Each is different.

A key to Emacspeak is to understand that it provides a fourth type of
user interface.

Emacspeak is different from the shell command line interface that uses
commands such as `ls'.  It is different from a graphic user interface
such as GNOME/sawfish that uses a package such as `Mozilla'.
Moreover, although it is based on the virtual lisp machine interface
that is GNU Emacs, it is different from it, too.

Put another way, Emacs and Emacspeak are both integrated user
interfaces, like a shell, plus `vi', plus `ls', plus `gdb', plus
`gcc', plus Mozilla, and so on.  While related to each other, they
are also different.

Emacspeak is a complete audio desktop; it is not a visual desktop.
T. V. Raman describes it in his Emacspeak manual.

Your friend will want to learn a great many keystroke commands, but if
he is like me, he will continually forget them, too.

So you need to teach him how to use Info, which is where he can listen
to the Emacspeak manual.  And you need to teach him how to use help.
This way, he can always learn more, or relearn what he has forgot.

The first commands I learned were:

    C-h C-e
        Give a brief overview of Emacspeak.  I use this command all
        the time, to remind me of other commands.

    C-e {
         Speak paragraph.  With prefix arg, speak the rest of the
         current paragraph.  A negative prefix arg will read from
         start of current paragraph to point.

    C-e [
         Speak a page.  With a prefix arg, speak the rest of the
         current page.

         I often use the `C-u C-e [' command.

    C-h s
        Stop speech.

    C-h i
        Start Info

               In Info, press "h" for an Info tutorial

    C-h t
        Start the Emacs Tutorial

    C-u
        The `universal-argument', which you use as a prefix to some
        interactive commands, as with  `C-u C-e ['.

Your friend will also need to learn the regular movement and search
keys.  The Emacs Tutorial is good for that.  But first teach him how
to listen to Info and to use the online help.

As for movement:  incremental search, bound to `C-s', is the most
important way of moving around documents.  Often people do not think
of a search command as a movement command, but it is.  Moreover,
Emacs incremental search provides the single best user interface for
a search command that exists.  Many other search commands require that
you figure out your search string before you type, which means that
the search fails when you type too little.  Incremental search is
nicer to use.

The character and word movement keys, and the character and word
deletion keys, are reasonably easy for English speakers to learn,
since they use English language mnemonics:  C-f to move forward a
character, M-f to move forward a word.  p is for previous, n is for
next, b is for backwards, and d is for delete.

Control key commands are often (but not always) for character
movement; meta key commands are often (but not always) for word
movement.

Hmmm ... you will want to explain the use of Meta.  You might tell
your friend that on many modern keyboards, a Meta key is what is now,
generally erroneously, labeled ALT.  (Genuine ALT keys can and do
exist; but the default keybinding for many machines automatically
makes the key labeled ALT be a Meta key.  Naturally, you should set up
the machine so that a genuine ALT key takes on a Meta keybinding, for
example with the `install-keymap emacs2' command.)

Worse, in some cases, people press the Escape key to simulate a Meta
keypress.  No one in their right mind does this, unless forced by a
really old keyboard.

While I am speaking of keybindings, and to be complete, please be sure
to make sure the control key is the key to the left of the `A' key.
This is something you should set up; you don't need to explain any of
this.

You may have to change the keybinding.  On some keyboards, the key to
the left of the `A' key is labeled `Caps_Lock'.  It is as if the
keyboard manufacturers think that computers are typewriters from 1885.
Worse, they put the key labeled `Control' in an awkward spot, and then
provide default keybindings that match the labels.  You have to change
the keybindings.

Generally, the proper keymap is in

    /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/emacs2.kmap.gz

You can install the keymap permanently on your system for a console
with the shell command:

    install-keymap emacs2

(This may be a Debian specific command; it copies the emacs2.kmap.gz
file to the /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz file, which is loaded into
the kernel at boot-time.  The older and widely used command is
`loadkeys'; when you run it, you have to specify the full path to the
file.  For example, you might type

    loadkeys /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/emacs2.kmap.gz

to install the proper keymap.  Note that since files in the /usr/
directory are sometimes not available early on during boot, it is a
good idea to copy the `/usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/emacs2.kmap.gz'
to the `/etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz' file.  This is what the
`install-keymap' does.  If you don't have an `install-keymap' command,
you can copy the file yourself and put a
`loadkeys /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz' command into one of
your boot scripts.)

If you are using a graphical user interface, you may need to specify
the keymap that X uses in addition to specifying the keymap used by a
console.

You can put the following commands in your .xsession or .xinitrc file:

    xmodmap -e "clear Lock"
    xmodmap -e "add Control = Caps_Lock"

Some systems reverse the meaning of the Help key, Control-h, and the
Delete key.  The node, "Keyboard Translations" in the Emacs manual
describes what to do.

You can go directly to that node in Info by evaluating the following
expression, that is to say, by positioning point after the final
parenthesis and typing `C-x C-e':

    (info "(emacs)Keyboard Translations")

(Please remember to note my use of the jargon word `point'; it needs
to be explained.)

Returning to what you might talk about early on with your friend:

He may want to set the voice synthesizers speech rate.  I use both the
`dtk-set-predefined-speech-rate' commands:

    C-e d 1
    C-e d 2
    C-e d 3

and the `dtk-set-rate' commands, such as

    C-e d r 230

Probably it is a good idea to pick one of these commands.  Two sets of
commands may overload his memory.

As he gains more experience, your friend will be able to understand
text spoken faster and faster, and will want to increase its speed.

Note that in both set-rate commands, an interactive prefix means to
set the speech rate globally.  Otherwise, it is set only for the
current buffer.

Your friend may want to set rates globally, so it is worth telling
him about typing `C-u' first.


For a description of the basic commands, see the node `Reading' in the
Info file emacspeak.info

    (info "(emacspeak)Reading")

As I said earlier, you can go directly to that node by evaluating the
Emacs Lisp expression: position point after the final parenthesis and
type `C-x C-e'.

Perhaps evaluation is too much too soon, since it means remembering a
new command as well as figuring out where `point' is.  On the other
hand, I think it is worth illustrating the action, since the it opens
up future possibilities.

Incidentally, you can go directly to the Introduction node by
evaluating:

    (info "(emacspeak)Introduction")


My hope is that you will inspire your friend to experiment with many
commands and learn a few of them; you will inspire him to learn how to
use the help features, to listen to the Emacspeak Info manual, and
then to listen to the Emacs manual.

After that, he can start using Emacs W3 or Emacs W3m mode to browse
the Web, Emacs RMAIL mode to listen to Email, and Emacs mail mode to
send it.  You may need to make sure his machine is properly configured
for all this.

While listening to the Emacspeak Info manual, it is worth explaining
some of the problems people have with the Emacs manual, to which he
should listen next, or at least listen to part of it.  I do not
recommend listening to it all at once.

The Emacs manual is tightly written.  When I first read it, I found I
sometimes had to spend several minutes puzzling out a concise meaning.
The good news is that it is accurate and well written.  And after you
understand it, the sentences make perfect sense.

When I first started, I read the manual in segments over 2 years.
(This was in the 1980s.)  I did not understand all that I could do at
first.  Indeed, for the longest time, I did not switch from using
`ls -al' in a command line to using Dired mode.

Some people say that the Emacs learning curve is steep.

In my experience, this is not true.  It took me about five minutes to
start to use Emacs productively.  But I could not and did not do much
at first, except write.

However, the learning curve will be steep if you try all at once to
use many of the features that Emacs provides.  I have described
GNU Emacs as

    like having a dragon's cave of treasures.

You should not try to be too greedy and over-stuff yourself all one
sitting.

(That quotation is from the Info node "On Reading this Text" in the
Info manual that introduces programming in Emacs Lisp:

    (info "(eintr)On Reading this Text")

I wrote that text "as an elementary introduction for people who are
not programmers", but presupposed experience with Emacs.  So I doubt
you or your friend will want to look at it early on.  But I hope that
he will keep it in mind for the future.)

Returning the Emacs manual.   RMS (Richard Stallman) wrote it.

Unfortunately, RMS thinks of editing as having a very large meaning.
He writes as if using `ls' and `rm' in a command line is the shell
equivalent of editing Emacspeak.  People who use a shell do not not
think of this as editing.

However, if you think about it, it is true that the Emacspeak actions
in Dired mode are a kind of editing.  But they are not the same kind
of editing as people do in an editor like `vi' when they press the
`h', `j', `k', and `l' keys to move around.  People are fooled by the
language.

The words `mode' and `library' are not confusing, but may not be
understood immediately.  The two provide the features that programs
have in other interfaces.  Thus `Dired mode' provides the same
features in Emacs that the combination of `ls', `mv', `chown',
`chgrp', `gzip', `more', `vi', and `rm' provide in a shell.  A
`library' provides a `mode'.

Because of the adaption of Xerox Parc style windowing systems over the
past generation, many people are confused by Emacs' use of the words
`window' and `frame'.  Emacs provides for multiple windows within a
frame, as it always has.

You will probably not use a graphic user interface at all; but enough
people do that you will hear what they say.

Nowadays, sighted people often think of a `window' on a computer
screen as being a contiguous, usually rectangular space, what in Emacs
is called a `frame'.  That is because Emacs was designed initially to
fill a complete display as a tiling window manager.  (A tiling window
manager is one in which windows do not overlap, but are contiguous,
like physical tiles.)  Parts of the display were called `windows'
because they enabled a sighted person to look at all or part of a
buffer.

Companies like Apple and Sun, and the X Consortium, copied Emacs
jargon for their own `windows', to mean a part of a screen.  (Or else
the notion of a `window' was generic and commonplace.)

Thus, the term `window' started out and continues to mean a `part of a
display'.

But when Apple, Sun, and the X Consortium, and their followers adopted
the term `window' to mean a `part of a display', they lacked a term to
handle a part of a `window'.  (The word `pane' was suggested, but
never popular, because it sounds similar to the word `pain', spelled
p a i n, and because some people were accustomed to material windows
that were not made up of multiple `panes of glass'.)

However, in those days, mostly the 1980s, `windows' seldom contained
parts, other than a menu or tool bar or panel that applied to a whole
`window'.  Thus, one spreadsheet would appear in one window; one file
would appear in another.

Indeed, many of the non-Emacs programs I use today in a graphic user
interface still tend to put one set of contents, with its associated
panels and tool bars, into one `window': for example, XMMS, Mozilla,
or gnome-apt.

With Emacs, on the other hand, you could always put a directory
listing, two files, and an email message into four different parts of
an Apple or X style `window' (although most people keep to one or two
parts most of the time).  These different parts had always been
themselves called `windows', and so they remained.  Hence, the
invention of the term `frame' to refer to a segment of a display as
produced by an X or Sun user interface program.

Nowadays, you can start different frames in an instance of Emacspeak
that is not running in a graphical user interface.  One frame overlies
another.  The mode line will tell you which frame you are in.  (Type
`C-e m' to listen to the mode line.  That key chord calls the
`emacspeak-speak-mode-line' command.)

Emacs jargon can be brutal.  Some people are upset by the use of the
word `kill' to mean `cut' as in `cut and paste'.  (The word `cut' also
upsets some people, but generally less than the word `kill'.)  In
Emacs, an entity `killed' can be resurrected, which I think of as a
Christian form of meaning.

Some years ago, at the transition from Emacs version 18 to version 19,
I offered to convert every use in Emacs of the word `kill' to `clip'.
There were more than 400 such uses.  You could `clip' a segment of
text, and if it were never put back, it would be deleted.
Alternatively, you could yank the segment from `clip-ring'.  I picked
`clip' as the replacement word since it has four letters and fits the
older formatting and language without requiring much rewriting.

Moreover, had I changed the term to `cut', people would have expected
me to replace the word `yank' with `paste', to fit the phrase `cut and
paste'.  But I do not like the word `paste'; I no longer literally
paste clips onto a sheet of paper as I did when I was young.  It makes
more sense to me to `yank' a segment back from the `clip-ring'.

However, RMS never wanted me to make the replacement.  I think part of
the reason is that at that time, RMS still enjoyed what I think of as
a dead joke: the manual for version 18 Emacs said:

    ... you don't have to kill all the text in one command; you can
    keep killing line after line, or word after word, until you have
    killed it all, and you can still get it all back at once.  (Thus
    we join television in leading people to kill thoughtlessly.)

(The parenthetical remark about television was removed sometime later
and the other wording slightly improved.)

Perhaps more significantly, RMS asked many people whether they were
bothered by the jargon use of `kill'.  They said `no'.  It turned out
that RMS asked people he thought of as significant, namely people at
M.I.T.  I think that was too narrow a group.  But that is what
happened, and I still think it was a mistake.

Most important of all, please emphasize and explain that Emacspeak is
safer than many programs.  What you write is automatically saved to
disk.  This means you can work with unreliable power supplies, or
learn by trying out new things and make what otherwise would be
catastrophic mistakes.

You can experiment and learn.



A short digression:  free books and music

With Emacspeak, you can listen to your email, browse the Web, write
reports, programs, novels, and poetry.

You may also want to download various books, documents, and audio
recordings from the Gutenberg Project archive, such as Jane Austen's
novel "Pride and Prejudice".

You can visit the archive directory using W3 mode or W3M mode at

    ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/

I just typed

    M-x w3m-goto-url

and then then the URL to reach that directory.  (Well, actually, I typed

    M-x w3m-got

and then pressed return.  Emacs automatically completed the name of
the command, so I did not have to do so much typing.  And I copied
the long URL listed above into the minibuffer so I did not have to
type it.  I hate typing and avoid it as much as possible.)

The index is

    GUTINDEX.ALL

and you can download it using W3M mode by positioning point on the
name and pressing the return key.  (There are other ways of
downloading it, too; this is one of them.)

As I write this in April 2003, the Gutenberg Project index is 780
kilobytes long and lists more than 7000 books, documents, and audio
recordings.  I saved my copy to a file, since I dislike long downloads.

You may want to use Emacspeak to listen to "Pride and Prejudice",
"Alice in Wonderland", "The Federalist Papers" or other of the
Gutenberg books, documents, and music.

The text files from the Gutenberg Project that I have downloaded use
the DOS `carriage-return linefeed' convention to mark ends of lines
rather than the Unix `newline' convention.  This does not really
matter since Emacspeak automatically detects the convention and visits
the file using the DOS end-of-line coding format.  

However, I prefer the Unix end-of-line format.  After visiting a file,
I run the `set-buffer-file-coding-system' command on it:

    C-x RET f unix RET

and then save the file:

    C-x C-s



Two software text-to-speech synthesizers


At the time I write this in April 2003, I am running two instances of
Emacspeak, one using the eflite software text-to-speech synthesizer
and the other using the espeakf software text-to-speech synthesizer.

The current eflite package reads Info files better than espeakf.
Unlike my current version of espeakf, eflite does not pause
momentarily at the ends of lines in Info.  However, espeakf provides
different voices, which my current version of eflite lacks.

Currently, I prefer espeakf.  But I dislike the way it pauses at the
ends of lines in Info, so I use eflite when I want to listen to Info
files.

Interestingly, in Text Voice mode, espeakf reads Jane Austen's novel,
"Pride and Prejudice", without pausing at the ends of lines.

At the moment, I am using two different Emacspeak commands, one for
starting Emacspeak with eflite and the other for starting Emacspeak
with espeakf.  Right now, I am running both, each as its own instance
of Emacspeak.

    emacspeak-eflite

    emacspeak-espeak

The two commands are shell scripts in the /usr/bin/ directory.

(I am also running two other non-Emacspeak instances of Emacs: an
Emacs version 21 owned by user `bob', and an Emacs version 20.7 owned
by user `root'.  That way, I separate dangerous system administration
task from ordinary work.  Moreover, since I tend to run the most
recent CVS development snapshot of Emacs 21, I like to keep a
known-to-work Emacs version 20.7 handy.)


Emacspeak Installation

Regarding installation:  if you have not installed Emacspeak recently,
and plan to install the package again soon, please practice a
reinstall first.  Perhaps, nowadays, all will go well; but perhaps not.

In the past, I have had troubles with Emacspeak installation, although
recently everything has gone well.  I am sighted, and do not depend on
Emacspeak, so perhaps I continually renew my ignorance.

In addition to a computer with a sound system, Emacspeak requires
three packages: GNU Emacs, Emacspeak, and a text-to-speech
synthesizer.  A hardware text-to-speech synthesizer is best, but I do
not have one.  Instead I use two different software text-to-speech
synthesizers, both of which are immature programs that make use of the
more basic `festival' text-to-speech program.

Installation is extensively described elsewhere.

I am going to describe ony what you do in Debian and what you do to
get espeakf running.  The process should be simple, but for some
reason, I do not find it so.

In Debian, to install Emacspeak using the eflite software
text-to-speech synthesizer, type the following in a shell

    apt-get install emacs21 emacs21-el emacspeak eflite festival

The `emacs21-el' package contains the Emacs Lisp source files that
Emacs uses.  In theory, you can run Emacs without them, but I have
found them essential, if only for the extra documentation and
commentary they provide.  Also, I doubt you need to install `festival'
manually, since it should be installed automatically.  But I am
listing it just in case.

After running `apt-get', you should be able to run Emacspeak by typing

    emacspeak

in a shell.  That command is a shell script in `/usr/bin/emacspeak'.

In theory, that is all there is to it.  And if you are not using the
awkward, non-standard system that I am, but instead are using a well
configured, modern, standard system, what I just told you should work.

Since I run both the eflite and espeakf text-to-speech synthesizers,
I renamed that shell script to `/usr/bin/emacspeak-eflite'.

I start Emacspeak with espeakf with a different shell script, called
`/usr/bin/emacspeak-epeakf'.  (These names are not very imaginative,
but I can remember them.)

As I write this in April 2003, espeakf is available only from
CVS on SourceForge.  Fortunately, it is easy to download and install.

First you need to decide on a directory in which you plan to keep the
espeakf directory that you will download.  I use

    /usr/local/src/

Make that directory if you do not have it already, then go to it.

Here are the commands, which I run as the non-privileged user `bob'
in a shell, such as one in Emacspeak that you can start with the 
`M-x term' command.  This facility is described in 

    (info "(emacspeak)Running Terminal Based Applications")

(Before you try `M-x term', be sure to learn how to get out of the
buffer!  In Term mode, the usual commands for killing a buffer or
switching buffers do not work.  I find the `C-c C-f', the new
keybinding for `find-file' useful as well as the `C-c k' command,
which kills the buffer.)

In a shell, I first switch to the appropriate directory, and then I
run the CVS login command:

 cd /usr/local/src/
 cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx:/cvsroot/espeakf login

You need to login once for CVS.  The login command will ask for your
password.  Just press your return key.  Then, type the following
command:

 cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx:/cvsroot/espeakf co espeakf

These commands will create a /usr/local/src/espeakf/ directory below
your /usr/local/src/ directory and fill it with several files and
other directories.  Emacspeak will actually run an executable Perl
script called `espeakf.pl'.  CVS installs that Perl script properly,
so you do not need to do anything.

However, you do need to modify your `/usr/bin/emacspeak-eflite' and
`/usr/bin/emacspeak-espeakf' start up scripts for the two different
text-to-speech synthesizers.

I use a variation on the `/usr/bin/emacspeak' script that Emacspeak
creates automatically.  That script makes use of a
`/etc/emacspeak.conf' file that I simply ignore, since the
configurations for Emacspeak with the two synthesizers is different.
Instead, I put all the configuration information into the two
`/usr/bin/' scripts.

First, the `/usr/bin/emacspeak-eflite' script:


#!/bin/sh
## /usr/bin/emacspeak-eflite - execute emacs with speech enhancements
## use EFLITE

## based on
#$Id: emacspeak.sh.def,v 17.0 2002/11/23 01:29:08 raman Exp $

if [ -f $HOME/.emacs ]
then
	INITSTR="-l $HOME/.emacs"
fi

CL_ALL=""
for CL in $* ; do
	if [ "$CL" = "-o" ]; then
		DTK_PROGRAM=outloud
		export DTK_PROGRAM
                elif [ "$CL" = "-d" ]; then
		DTK_PROGRAM=dtk-soft
		export DTK_PROGRAM
	elif [ "$CL" = "-q" ]; then
		INITSTR=""
	else
		CL_ALL="$CL_ALL $CL"
	fi
done

export EMACS_UNIBYTE=1
export DTK_TCL=/usr/bin/eflite

exec emacs -q -l /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el $INITSTR $CL_ALL
### end /usr/bin/emacspeak-eflite


Second, the `/usr/bin/emacspeak-espeakf' script:


#!/bin/sh
## /usr/bin/emacspeak-espeakf - execute emacs with speech enhancements
## use ESPEAKF

## based on
#$Id: emacspeak.sh.def,v 17.0 2002/11/23 01:29:08 raman Exp $

if [ -f $HOME/.emacs ]
   then
	INITSTR="-l $HOME/.emacs"
fi

CL_ALL=""
for CL in $* ; do
	if [ "$CL" = "-o" ]; then
		DTK_PROGRAM=/usr/local/src/espeakf/espeakf.pl
		export DTK_PROGRAM
                elif [ "$CL" = "-d" ]; then
		DTK_PROGRAM=dtk-soft
		export DTK_PROGRAM
	elif [ "$CL" = "-q" ]; then
		INITSTR=""
	else
		CL_ALL="$CL_ALL $CL"
	fi
done

export DTK_PROGRAM=/usr/local/src/espeakf/espeakf.pl
export DTK_TCL=/usr/bin/perl
export EMACS_UNIBYTE=1

exec emacs -q -l /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el $INITSTR $CL_ALL
### end /usr/bin/emacspeak-espeakf


Both these files need to be made executable.  I did

    chmod 755 emacspeak-*

in a shell as user `root'.


A ~/.emacs initialization and customization file

Also, I wrote a ~/.emacs file to customize Emacspeak.  As far as I can
figure, the only person who like Emacs in its default configuration is
Richard Stallman, who wrote Emacs.  All the rest of us change it
somewhat.

I will not describe my full ~/.emacs file since it is more than 180
kilobytes long.  Instead, I will create a ~/.emacs file that works (I
just tested it) and that has a few of the customizations that I like.



;;; ~/.emacs                          -*- mode: emacs-lisp -*-

;; Robert J. Chassell, 2003 Apr 23

;;; First, general customizations for GNU Emacs

;; Make Text mode the default, with autofill
(setq default-major-mode 'text-mode)
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)

;; Put two spaces after a colon with explicit fill commands
(setq colon-double-space t)

;; Do not insert tabs
;  Indentation can insert tabs if indent-tabs-mode is non-nil,
;   but I do not like tabs.
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)

;; Prevent overly frequent garbage collecting
(setq gc-cons-threshold 600000)

;; Increase undo limit
(setq undo-strong-limit 60000)

;; Increase `max-specpdl-size'
(setq max-specpdl-size 2500)

;; Automatically resize minibuffer as necessary
(resize-minibuffer-mode 1)
(setq resize-minibuffer-mode t)

;; Enable numbered backups
; `t'     Make numbered backups.
; `nil'   Make numbered backups for files that have numbered backups already.
;         Otherwise, make single backups.
; `never' Always make single backups.
(setq version-control t)

;; Enable goal column
(put 'set-goal-column 'disabled nil)

;; Enable upcase region
(put 'upcase-region 'disabled nil)

;; Enable downcase region
(put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)

;; Enable narrowing
(put 'narrow-to-region 'disabled nil)

;; Allow narrowing to a page.
(put 'narrow-to-page 'disabled nil)

;; Run Ediff with its help window in the same frame
(setq ediff-window-setup-function 'ediff-setup-windows-plain)

;; Ignore case when using `grep'
; The options are:
;    -n Prefix each line of output with line number
;    -i Ignore case distinctions
;    -e Protect patterns beginning with -.
(setq grep-command "grep  -n -i -e ")

;; Automatically uncompress gzip'd files when visiting them
(load "uncompress")

;; Find existing buffer, even with different name
;  (Avoid problems with symbolic links.)
(setq find-file-existing-other-name t)

;; Insert newline at the end of a buffer
(setq next-line-add-newlines t)

;; Set command history list to 1000
(setq list-command-history-max 1000)

;; Load Info at start up rather than when you first use Info
(load "info")

;;; Custom keybindings

;; Binding for goto-line.
(global-set-key "\C-c\C-g" 'goto-line)

;; Use `apropos' instead of `command-apropos'
(global-set-key "\C-ha" 'apropos)

;; Binding for compile
(global-set-key "\C-xc" 'compile)

;; Binding for occur
(global-set-key "\C-co" 'occur)

;; List all the function definitions and defvars and the like
;; that are in an Emacs Lisp source file.
(defun occurrences-of-def ()
  "Run `occur' to find `^(def' from beginning of buffer (or narrowed part).
Replaces going to the beginning of the buffer and finding the
occurrences of `^(def'."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffer (current-buffer))
	(current-def nil))
    (save-excursion
      (end-of-line)			; so as to find def on current line
      (if (re-search-backward "^(def\\w+\\W+\\w+-*.*" nil t)
	  (setq current-def
		(buffer-substring (match-beginning 0) (match-end 0)))))
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (occur "^(def\\w+-?\\w*" nil)
      )
    (pop-to-buffer "*Occur*")
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (if current-def (search-forward current-def))
    (beginning-of-line)
    ))

(global-set-key "\C-cf" 'occurrences-of-def)

;; For sighted people using GNU Emacs 21, turn off the blinking cursor!
(if (fboundp 'blink-cursor-mode) (blink-cursor-mode -1))

;; Set the title for a frame
(setq frame-title-format '("Emacspeak:  %b"))

;;; For Emacspeak specifically

;; Make sure all Emacspeak code is in the load-path.
;; I commented this out since the load-path since is specific to my set up.
;;  The rest of this ~/.emacs file should work with all instances of Emacspeak.
;;  Depending on how you set up Emacspeak, you may not need to
;;    configure your load-path manually at all.
;; (setq load-path (cons "/usr/local/src/emacspeak/lisp/" load-path))

;; Turn on global-font-lock for the voice lock engine
(load "font-lock")
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
(setq font-lock-global-modes t)
(setq global-voice-lock-mode t)

;; Speak time in a reasonable format: `C-e t'
(setq emacspeak-speak-time-format-string
  "The time is %_H hours %M minutes %Z on %A %_e %B %Y")

;; Set the audio theme
;; /usr/local/src/emacspeak/sounds/chimes-mono/
;; ( alternatively /usr/local/src/emacspeak/sounds/chimes-stereo/ )
(emacspeak-sounds-define-theme
 (expand-file-name "chimes-mono/" emacspeak-sounds-directory)
 ".wav")

;; Set punctuation mode to MODE `some', `all', or `none'.
;; For individual buffers the keybinding is are: `C-e d p'
(dtk-set-punctuations 'none t)

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; end ~/.emacs ::::::::::::::::


-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             bob@xxxxxxxxxxx

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