Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 01:06:17 GMT
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Last-modified: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 21:44:12 GMT
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Emacspeak --A Speech Output Subsystem For Emacs
Emacspeak --A Speech Output Subsystem For Emacs
Announcing Emacspeak, a full-fledged speech output interface to Emacs.
Emacspeak is the first full-fledged speech output system that will allow
someone who cannot see to work directly on a UNIX system.
(Until now, the only option available to visually
impaired users has been to use a talking PC as a terminal.)
Emacspeak is built on top of Emacs. Once you start emacs with emacspeak
loaded, you get spoken feedback for everything you do. Your mileage will vary
depending on how well you can use Emacs.There is nothing that you
cannot do inside Emacs:-)
Publications describing the design philosophy and architecture of
Emacspeak
can be found at
in the publications directory.
Emacspeak Mailing List
There is a mailing list emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu
that is being used to disseminate information about emacspeak. If you use
Emacspeak, you can subscribe by sending email to
greg e. priest-dorman.
See the news pagefor details on what's new in the
latest release of Emacspeak.
Description
I currently use Emacspeak
at work on my Sparc20 workstation running SUNOS4.1;
while at Digital I used Emacspeak on my DECALPHA workstation running Digital
UNIX.
I also use Emacspeak as
the only speech output system on my laptop running Linux.
As a useful addition,
contains the necessary files
to make Emacs easier to use at the Linux console.
Emacspeak currently supports the new
Dectalk Express
speech synthesizer, as
well as older versions of the Dectalk e.g. the MultiVoice. On the DECALPHA,
you can use it with the software Dectalk.
(If you have a DECALPHA and also have software Dectalk installed at your site,
please get in touch with
Krishna Mangipudi --Digital.
You need GNU FSF Emacs 19 (version 19.23 or later) and TCLX 7.3B (Extended
TCL) to run Emacspeak.
TCLX --the executable is called tcl on most systems-- is *not* plain
tcl --typically called tclsh on most systems.
See the Emacspeak distribution for additional details.
For a list of frequently asked questions about Emacspeak along with their
answers, see the Emacspeak FAQ.
Emacspeak comes with full source level documentation. There is an online info
manual as well, but this is still incomplete.
Emacs Subsystems
Emacspeak currently has extensions for many popular Emacs subsystems
including:
W3: A full-fledged W3 browser
available by FTP
. Emacspeak implements a voice-lock mode analogous to Emacs' font-locking
that allows it to speak WWW hotlinks using different voice
personalities.
GNUS: The Emacs news reader.
Emacspeak provides a fluent extension to gnus that allows you to
listen to Usenet news without taking your fingers off the four
arrow keys.
VM: The Emacs VM mail reader.
Emacspeak works with VM to present email messages using different
voices; Parts of a message that are cited from a previous message
are voicifiedto produce effective aural presentations.
Eterm: The Emacs 19 terminal emulator. (This will be part of
Emacs 19.29).
You can obtain a beta copy of eterm
via anonymous FTP.
I have used Emacspeak and Eterm to successfully login to work from
my laptop and interface with running applications on my office
workstation (including running Emacs sessions!).
Emacspeak also works well with Emacs addons like AUCTEX for editing TeX
documents, the Emacs Calculator (CALC --a symbolic algebra system) etc.
Emacspeak works fluently with all Emacs addons; writing an extension makes its
use even more pleasurable.
If you would like to write an Emacspeak addon for your favorite package please
get in touch with me so we do not end up duplicating work.
Support For Emacspeak
Emacspeak comes as is, please see the accompanying
Copyright
notice.
See the READMEfile for details about this release and
how to install Emacspeak on your system.
I work on Emacspeak in my spare time, and may not be able to answer
questions on Emacspeak immediately.
If you do download and use Emacspeak, please subscribe to the mailing list
emacspeak@adobe.comby sending a message to
emacspeak-request@adobe.com.
T. V. Raman
raman@adobe.com
Last modified: Fri Nov 22 13:41:59 1996