emacspeak for DEBIAN ---------------------- Emacspeak is authored by T. V. Raman . These are the primary changes made in building the Debian package: html and plain text versions of the documentation were added. A configuration script (/usr/sbin/emacspeakconfig) and associated speech server descriptions (/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/blurbs/*) were added. Manual pages for emacspeak and the configuration script were added. Minor changes are listed in changelog.Debian. The user is expected to start emacspeak with /usr/bin/emacspeak, which gets configuration parameters from /etc/emacspeak.conf and starts emacs with emacspeak support. Several "flavors" of emacs may be installed at the same time (emacs20, emacs21, xemacs21, etc.). In accordance with the Debian emacs policy, emacspeak is byte-compiled separately for each supported flavor - currently only emacs21. There is a separate script to start each flavor of emacs with emacspeak support - for example, /usr/bin/emacspeak.emacs21. /usr/bin/emacspeak is actually a symlink managed by the "alternatives" mechanism. That is, it points to /etc/alternatives/emacspeak, which points to one of several links like /usr/bin/emacspeak.emacs21. (See the manpage for update-alternatives.) The alternatives for emacspeak inherit their priorities from the corresponding emacs packages. So, as long as the emacs and emacspeak alternatives are in "automatic" mode, both "emacs" and "emacspeak" will start emacs21. If someday an emacs22 package is installed, with priority higher than for emacs 21, then by default both "emacs" and "emacspeak" will start emacs22. The administrator can use update-alternatives to change which flavor is started by either /usr/bin/emacs or /usr/bin/emacspeak. Or, of course, any user can use one of the flavor-specific links like /usr/bin/emacspeak.emacs21 to start whichever flavor he wants. Starting with version 11.0, the Emacspeak sources include a speech server written in C++ for the IBM ViaVoice speech synthesis software. However, it depends on the ViaVoice runtime kit which does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. (It is available only as object code, and only under a temporary license.) Therefore, support for ViaVoice is not included in this Debian package. If you would like to try it, you can find some information in /usr/share/doc/emacspeak/VIAVOICE. Starting with version 10.0, Dr. Raman has rewritten the documentation files. Approximately 100 commands are described there, compared to over 800 in the documentation shipped with the previous release. Therefore, the user should pay particular attention to the section "Using Online Help". Many command-line applications can be run under emacs, and can therefore be made accessible with emacspeak. Much of this is explained in the documentation entitled "Running Terminal Based Applications". However, it is worth emphasizing this point: "For regular shell interaction just use M-x shell instead of using the terminal emulator." The example file "tables.html" was supplied by Dr. Raman in a separate email. It may be found in /usr/share/doc/emacspeak/examples. It includes a sample table with three columns (labeled "item", "date", and "amount"), and three rows. For a discussion of the support for tables in emacspeak and w3, see NEWS (or NEWS.gz) in /usr/share/doc/emacspeak. The Emacspeak-HOWTO contains additional documentation. The plain text form of this can be found in the Debian package doc-linux, and is installed as /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/Emacspeak-HOWTO.gz. Other formats are also available. For example, these can be found at sunsite.unc.edu: /pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/dvi/Emacspeak-HOWTO.dvi.gz /pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html/Emacspeak-HOWTO-html.tar.gz /pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/ps/Emacspeak-HOWTO.ps.gz /pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/sgml/Emacspeak-HOWTO.sgml.gz There is also an Emacspeak mailing list. To subscribe, send a message to: emacspeak-request@cs.vassar.edu with a subject of: subscribe James R. Van Zandt , Mon Jan 30 21:36:59 EST 2006 -- James R. Van Zandt , Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:50:43 -0400