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Re: [orca-list] the speakupmodified dists from speakupmodified.org

hi,

I most be one of the wierd ones when i started to use linux about 5 years
ago i refused to learn the gui. I I am in the webhosting and it field so
used a lot of command line tools in windows i am profesient in jfw nvda and
using the gui with orca under linux but perfure the cli any day. Just my two
cents worth.

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2012 4:43 PM
To: ORCA-LIST gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] the speakupmodified dists from speakupmodified.org

I actually think we agree more than we disagree. I don't think the problem
is that the learning curve is too steep for Emacs but, as you say, there are
a lot of alternatives that work in a way more similar to what people are
used to, so why would they put up with the frustration of learning to use
Emacs just for text editing when Gedit does what they want, and it looks and
feels like the editors they're used to. I agree, in this case, they won't
learn Emacs, they'll stick with Gedit. As we both said, I think a lot of it
has to do with whether you think it's worth going up that learning curve or
not. I might not learn Emacs just for text editing, but when I figure in
DirEd mode, the shell buffer, Org mode and so on, I think it's well worth
it.

I think of some of the applications I've learned to use over the years, like
Qwitter, VI, mutt and probably more and these all are not conventional or
standard interfaces, but I learned them anyway. Also, moving from JAWS to
NVDA to Orca required some serious adjustments, but again I thought it was
worth it. I don't have anything but anecdotal evidence, but I don't think
learning Emacs was any harder than some of these other applications.

I agree people get used to conventions like control+x, control+c and so on,
but I claim they aren't any more intuitive than control+y, control+w and the
Emacs equivalents. In fact, I think once you get used to marking and cutting
and pasting text in Emacs, it's hard to understand why other editors and
operating systems don't follow similar conventions.

It's interesting that you mention the alt key, but on my Ubuntu system, the
alt key doesn't do anything for me. I use the F10 key which brings up the
menu in my GUI applications as well as the menu in Emacs.
Granted, this is the exception and not the rule, and the menus work a bit
differently in Emacs than they do in GUI applications, but you can still use
it to find a command you didn't know existed or remind you how to use a
command you forgot how to use.

On 09/07/12 15:35, Alex Midence wrote:

Oh, sure it's more suitable.  Unfortunately, pc novices today are not 
taught how to use a computer with text-based applications.  It's all 
Windows and mostly Jaws.  So, they come to Linux from either there or 
Mac OSX both of which are graphical environments.  Cases where you get 
someone who is completely new to computers and can be taught first how 
to use text based apps and then moved to gui stuff are very rare.  
Perhaps, in places like India where Linux is much more common you may 
find this but I don't think so.  Maybe, Krishnakant or Balaram can chime

in on this if they are lurking.

Blind users *are* taught to use hot keys, however but, with completely 
different values.  To them, c-n means new document, c-p means print 
document, c-c means copy text, c-v means paste text, c-f means find, 
c-b means bolded text, c-x means cut text to clipboard and so forth and so

on.

If you get stuck, type alt and hit your right arrow to go through the

menus.

Anything that uses these values and these key strokes i.e. Libre 
Office, Gedit and a whole lot of other applications besides will be 
easier for people to gravitate to than something like Emacs where not 
one of those values I mentioned means the same thing.
Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: robhill es co nz [mailto:robhill es co nz]
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2012 3:19 PM
To: Alex Midence
Cc: 'Christopher Chaltain'; 'orca-list'
Subject: Re: [orca-list] the speakupmodified dists from 
speakupmodified.org

Hello Alex and list,

Actually, no.  The GUI is overwhelmingly the norm in the sighted 
world, so VI users think that is the only way of doing things- or 
perhaps they learned the GUI whilst they still had sight.  But text, 
e.g. in the form of emacs, is far more suited to blind use.  It's 
linearity fits with speech and Braille so much better than the 2D 
nature of the GUI.  I suggest a VI novice who had been exposed to 
neither the GUI nor text interfaces would find the learning curve of each

about the same.


Rob



Alex Midence writes:
 > Disagree all you like.  The facts speek for themselves.  Ask around 
and find  > out how many people use Emacs or Emacspeak.  It's depressingly

few.

Compare  > that to how many use Gedit and Libre Office.  A simple poll 
on any list you  > like should suffice to give you an idea.  I'm an 
avid Emacsoid myself and I  > wish it were otherwise.  I've even gone 
so far as to spend several hours of  > my time writing an introductory 
guide to it for novice users of Linux in an  > effort to increase the user

base somewhat.

People just seem to find it  > easier to master Libre Office and Gedit 
than they do Emacs.  Part of the  > reason is that unconventional 
interface you mentioned.  It introduces  > complexity and difficulty 
or the perception thereof.  The harder something  > is to master, the 
fewer people will want to master it.  Their need for the  > software 
has to be high enough to justify the extra time and effort.  If  > 
they find out there's something out there that does the same thing but 
with  > less effort on their part, they're gone.  The only thing that 
will  > counteract this phenomenon is if they are required to use it 
by some outside  > entity like their job or something like  that.
 >
 > Alex M
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: orca-list-bounces gnome org 
[mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On

Behalf Of Christopher Chaltain  > Sent: Monday, July 09, 2012 9:56 AM  



To: 'orca-list'
 > Subject: Re: [orca-list] the speakupmodified dists from 
speakupmodified.org  >  > I don't agree that the Emacs learning curve 
is so steep it can only be  > mastered by a few. It doesn't use the 
the standard conventions found in a  > lot of Windows and GUI 
applications, but that's true of a lot of the  > applications embraced 
by the blind, especially on Linux. To me, it just  > comes down to 
whether it's worth climbing that learning curve, but that's  > true for

all applications.

 >
 > On 09/07/12 08:07, Alex Midence wrote:
 > > How would the GUI stuff interfere?  Ubuntu comes with all the gui  

bells and whistles you could want and yet, it has a talking installer.

 > > And, the reason they don't make Xemacs the default is that people  

wouldn't be able to use it as easily as they can LIbre Office or 

Open  > > Office.  The learning curve for Emacs is too steep for 
adoption by  > > more than a small specialized and commited user base.  
For the types  > > that just want to get in there and get things done 
coming at the  > > system cold, it's a major turnoff.  That stuff has 
to be included in  > > there.  I don't think it's the GUI stuff.  I 
think it's more that it  > > just is not a priority for a lot of 
distributions or that it just  > > doesn't get that much attention.  
Besides, the GUI stuff isn't a  > > factor in Speakup modified

installations with software speech.

 > > There's absolutely no GUI on a Debian Business card iso.  It's a 
real

slimmed down bit of Linux and it is pure text.

 > >
 > > Alex M
 > >
 > >
 > >
 > > -----Original Message-----
 > > From: Jude DaShiell [mailto:jdashiel shellworld net]  > > Sent: 
Monday, July 09, 2012 2:51 AM  > > To: Alex Midence  > > Cc: Thomas 
Ward; orca-list

Subject: Re: [orca-list] the speakupmodified dists from  > >

speakupmodified.org  > >  > > It's all the G.U.I. stuff that gets put 
on systems.  The openoffice  > > suite with all of its dependencies is 
one piece that can be stripped  > > from initial distribution and 
added in later.  Probably xemacs could  > > replace openoffice at a 
huge space savings too.  Probably not so many  > > dependencies and 
most of the functionality of openoffice will be there  > > too. On 
Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Alex Midence wrote:
 > >
 > >> You are absolutely right.  I'd forgotten about the talking Arch  

option.  To me, Debian's example is the most impressive.  The  > 

business card sized iso which is like 30 or 40 megs or something 

like  > >> that has software speech built in to it.  goes to show you 
that it  > >> doesn't take up much space on an image and that it's 
most likely  > >> something else that prevents more distributions from

making this option  > available.

 > >>
 > >> Alex M
 > >>
 > >>
 > >>
 > >> On 7/8/2012 4:14 PM, Jude DaShiell wrote:
 > >>> Add archlinux to that list please.  There's a talkingarch 
version  >

that had espeak added to it. On Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Alex Midence wrote:

 > >>>
 > >>>> The only distros I know of that have speakup with software 
speech  >

functionality out of the box are Debian and grml.

 > >>>>
 > >>>> Alex M
 > >>>>
 > >>>> On 7/8/2012 4:24 AM, Thomas Ward wrote:
 > >>>>> Hi Mattias,
 > >>>>>
 > >>>>> To the best of my memory yes. The distributions from the 
Speakup  >

Modified website are only configured for hardware synths. I'm not  

aware of any speakup modified distributions that use ESpeakup 

or  > something like that for software TTS. :D  > >>>>>  > >>>>> 
On 7/7/12,

mattias <mj mjw se> wrote:
 > >>>>>> will them only work with hardware tts?
 > >>>>> _______________________________________________
 > >>>>> orca-list mailing list
 > >>>>> orca-list gnome org
 > >>>>> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
 > >>>>> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
 > >>>>> The manual is at
 > >>>>> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.
 > >>>>> html The FAQ is at
 > >>>>> http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
 > >>>>> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org 
Find  >

out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

 > >>>>
 > >>>> _______________________________________________
 > >>>> orca-list mailing list
 > >>>> orca-list gnome org
 > >>>> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
 > >>>> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
 > >>>> The manual is at
 > >>>> 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.ht
 > >>>> ml The FAQ is at
 > >>>> http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
 > >>>> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org 
Find out

how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

 > >>>>
 > >>>>
 > >>>>
 > >>> 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 > >>> Windows Pants: made entirely of patches on patches each with a  

picture of a Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner; a computer mouse, or a 

dollar  > > sign.
 > >>>
 > >>> Jude <jdashiel-at-shellworld-dot-net>  > >>> 
<http://www.shellworld.net/~jdashiel/nj.html>
 > >>>
 > >>
 > >>
 > >>
 > >
 > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
 > > Windows Pants: made entirely of patches on patches each with a 
picture

of a Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner; a computer mouse, or a dollar sign.

 > >
 > > Jude <jdashiel-at-shellworld-dot-net>  > > 
<http://www.shellworld.net/~jdashiel/nj.html>
 > >
 > >
 > > _______________________________________________
 > > orca-list mailing list
 > > orca-list gnome org
 > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
 > > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
 > > The manual is at
 > > 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
 > > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
 > > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find 
out  >

how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

 > >
 >
 >
 > --
 > Christopher (CJ)
 > chaltain at Gmail
 >
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > orca-list mailing list
 > orca-list gnome org
 > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
 > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
 > The manual is at
 > 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
 > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
 > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org  > Find 
out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
 >
 >
 >





--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail


_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
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