Seeing Dog Puppy for Blind

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Keef
Posts: 987
Joined: Thu 20 Dec 2007, 22:12
Location: Staffordshire

#16 Post by Keef »

Evening All,

I'm a long-time lurker on this forum, but couldn't resist joining this thread as I work with visually impaired people. The type of interface that djringjr is aiming for sounds like 'Guide' from http://www.softwareexpress.co.uk/, which only works with Windows, but is very easy to use. Costs nearly £400 though...(but it's still cheaper than some other offerings).

I'd love to have a live CD to just chuck in someone's PC (or my laptop if they don't already have a computer) and show them what can be done. Even a dedicated CD that just did one thing would be great - I recently met a 99 year old with failing sight who just wanted to be able use a word processor and nothing else.

djringjr
Posts: 157
Joined: Sun 14 Jan 2007, 21:08

#17 Post by djringjr »

Keef,

What a pleasure for your first post going to this topic. It is a great honor.

The menu system that I've been speaking about was part of the link that Lobster gave us.

Here is the link for the page that shows the menu system.
http://www.ipsis.hr/gls/demo/TLB_Demonstration.htm

A developer (that doesn't mean me!) could take this idea and make a Puppy Seeing Eye Dog (bark bark) that could be used by blind, and visually impaired. Opera is wonderful for poor vision as you can preset the magnification and it does pictures and text - Firefox 3.0 does this also - but it is harder to change the zoom.

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#18 Post by Trobin »

Okay, I thought I'd play around with this idea for a while. All ready being partially blind, I may have need of it in the future. Far far future I hope.

Anyway I'm not a programmer, nor am I a Linus Guru. So my approach will be trial and error, and a whole lot of questions here, that I hope someone may be able to answer.

The start off point will be Puppy-OneBone-2.10-elinks
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 70&t=11361

A quick look at onebone shows that it does open up into the elinks browser, which does have a menuing stem.

Is here a tutorial for Onebone floating around?

djringjr
Posts: 157
Joined: Sun 14 Jan 2007, 21:08

#19 Post by djringjr »

It might be better to build a new Puppy from 2.14 or 2.17.

I'll burn a CD of the iso you mention soon and try it.

I'm not a programmer either - I do other stuff. I just saw the need and saw where it could be made with Puppy and made into a very lightweight distro with a speaking command line.

That's where emacspeak fails the non-expert user.

If a person is blind, they can easily remember to type: web or mail or music (mp3 player) or write (for a text editor with spellcheck) - all with simple and consistant key bindings.

CTRL Q for quit for example. CTRL S for save. Then have the system know that txt files go in the my-documents folder, mp3 save goes to my-music, if an eBook reader is made it gets saved in my-books. All without operator intervention.

When it boots - up and down key to navigate - everything as automatic as possible.

David

David

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#20 Post by Trobin »

I took a longer look at Onebone, and the menu isn't what I thought.

djringjr
Posts: 157
Joined: Sun 14 Jan 2007, 21:08

#21 Post by djringjr »

I can see now that a consistant system that can be used from program to program has to be used.

The M$ Windows keys would be a logical starting place.

TAB to go to up and down on the menu (SHIFT+TAB goes up).
CTRL+P print.

Also a way to go word and letter by letter is needed for word processing. CTRL+right cursor move right one word. and then holding the shift down highlights it and you can move so the synthesizer speaks word for word by going forward CTRL+right cursor or backwards CTRL+left cursor.

Some key - maybe F12 as it is easy to find being on the end, would read the line. CTRL X and CTRL C would cut or copy, etc.

We have to come up with universal commands used in each program and bind the keys so those commands work there.

We have to cover: highlighting, copy, cut, print section, etc.

I can see this coming about now - this is the way to do it.

Best
david

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#22 Post by Trobin »

Sounds good, but first baby steps.

I can remember way back when dinosaurs walked the Earth and DOS ruled the computers, I wrote simple batch files to act as a menu system. They weren't the most elaborate, but they worked.

My thinking at the moment is to use something like :
#!/bin/sh
echo "1. foo"
echo "2. bar"
read choice
case $choice in
1) ./shell_script_1
;;
2) ./shell_script_2
;;
*) echo "unknown choice"
esac
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forum ... D=13758691

To create a rudimentary menu system A modified form would look ile:
#!/bin/sh
echo "1. WEB"
flite "Press One to access the Internet"
echo "2. Mail"
flite "Press two to read your email"
echo "3. Audio"
flite "Press Three to play Audio"
echo "4. Editor"
flite "Press four to write letter"
echo "5. command Line"
flite "Press five to go to the command line"
echo "6. Quite"
flite "Press six to quit"
echo "7. repeat"
flite "Press seven to herar the options again"
read choice
case $choice in
1) ./shell_script_1
;;
2) ./shell_script_2
;;
*) echo "unknown choice"
esac
That should result in a rudimentary speaking menu system, that would work on a command line puppy.

Tomorrow I'll try to find the time to run through the script on 214rv1.01, then on OneBone-2.10-elinks.

djringjr
Posts: 157
Joined: Sun 14 Jan 2007, 21:08

#23 Post by djringjr »

DOS ruled the world! Nice it shows how powerful command line is and how it is accessable to many more people.

Your batch type files are exactly what I was thinking - but instead of numbers - why not simple words?

Have the synthesizer say when at the command line:

Type mail to read or write email, type write thaT'S W R I T E to write a letter, type ocr, to scan a document that you want to read,

Then after you get to email, the voice says type send or receive?

The number method offers a good way also - but it is more to remember when using a computer.

There are amazing things happening for software for the blind and those who are both blind and deaf: Look at this keyboard it uses bar codes and plastic letters that you can feel (braille) with your fingers for the newly blind:
http://www.tichnut.de/deafblind-keyboar ... yboard.jpg

There is a Linux program for reading barcodes for the blind:
http://www.tichnut.de/quikinfo/whatlinu.htm Barcodes are wonderful for labeling canned goods, or even different colored clothes so you can be color coordinated - no stripes and polka dots anymore. The bar code reader can also be programmed to translate the store bar code into "Del Monte French Cut String Beans" when you scan the can.

That page gives a link for yet another synthesizer called rsynth:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/so ... th-2.0.tgz

The same author has written a nice write program for blind and vision impaired people with giant block cursor and other features - but in Windows only.

He also has written a program that translates Roman letters and Hebrew letters to Morse code then to a electric toothbrush so that the deaf and blind can read.
http://www.tichnut.de/deafblind/

I also found an excellent editorial - but it is seven years old - on Fresh-meat about blind and Linux command line and X server that has links to programs
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/185/

if you download that ORCA.iso and when it says "do you want to change desktop" change to the 'easyspeak' desktop - that's the easiest. The emacspeak desktop - while extremely powerful makes very high demands on your ability to remember probably 50 key combinations with alt+key and ctrl+key - too much for anyone with short term memory loss which many of us get when getting older!

Best

David

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#24 Post by Trobin »

Replacing the numbers with words should be fairly simple. First though I want to see if I can get the script working. Both in Puppy 214Rv1.01, and then on OneBone.

The todo list now
1...get script working in 214rv1.01
2..find out how to get OneBone on the net.
3..install the flite.pet on OneBone
4..get the script working on OneBone
5..find out how to have OneBone start the script after booting.
It might be better to build a new Puppy from 2.14 or 2.17.
It may well be. The reason I went with Puppy-onebone-210-elinks is that it is a command line puppy, and has programs for browsing and email, as well as a text editor, mp3 player, and a few others. Also, I believe that 210 was claimed to be fairly stable.

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

onebone versions

#25 Post by raffy »

For onebone 2.01, see here:
http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/

And the 2.10 version is here:
http://puptrix.org/isos/

(Should a newer kernel be necessary, you may want to use barelypup based on 2.13: http://puppyisos.org/isos/2007-01-to-06/ )

The 2.10 version should have more applications:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=11232
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=11361
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#26 Post by Trobin »

Well the firststep works. |The menu script works in Puppy 214Rv1.01, and except for a g-dawflu squesl that came over my speakers I could understand what was being said.

User avatar
Lobster
Official Crustacean
Posts: 15522
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 06:06
Location: Paradox Realm
Contact:

#27 Post by Lobster »

I got Puppy to sing - but it was about a year ago and quite a process
you need symphony, miditcl and permission from these guys (which they readily gave)
http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/tts/flinger/
Festival is a text to speech utility

Download (11 MB):
http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Science/festival.pup

It is 34 MB extracted on your harddisk.
If you want it on another one, move and symlink /usr/local/festival

Then in a consolewindow type:

talk "this is a test. What do you think about it?"

it uses this synthesizer:
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola.html


flite (smaller)
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/wmd04r/puppy/flite-1.3.pet
(right click and save as)

restart x (not required if using icewm) and use flite test.txt from the console - where test.txt is a text file of what you want flite to say.
or direct from console
flite "A sentence to speak."
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

djringjr
Posts: 157
Joined: Sun 14 Jan 2007, 21:08

#28 Post by djringjr »

Just a comment for everyone's consideration.

One thing that many blind users need or would very much like to have is a braille driver. This outputs to a device like "Braille and Speak" or others and electronically raises "dots" to that blind can read. The "Braille and Speak" also has a braille keyboard which can input text.

Now much of this hardware is difficult to locate, but Ubuntu has drivers, probably Slackware also.

I don't know if generic *nix drivers are available - if so there is no problem, but if there aren't and they ARE available from the Slackware Softeware Reposity - perhaps it would be a good thing to make this out of Puppy 3.01.

I don't use a brailler - but others do - any comments?

Best

David

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#29 Post by Trobin »

Probably 301, either version, would be the better bet, more up to date kernel, I think the retro version uses the same kernel as 214. I certainly think that anything I am trying, at the moment, can be done on 301.

But I like the fact that OneBone saves a different file than the one I use for 214.

Maybe if I ran it as a multisession disk
Last edited by Trobin on Sat 22 Dec 2007, 07:20, edited 1 time in total.

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#30 Post by Trobin »

I tried 301 as a multisession. worked okay with the GUI running. As soon as I tried to run it in command line mode (puppy pfix=nox) it hung while trying to get the dhcp thing going.

It is possible that how the internet stuff is set up will depend on how the OS is run. Either with the GUI or as a command line version.

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#31 Post by Trobin »

Slackware comes with emacspeak as part of the base suystem. They also have a UMSDOS miniversion called zipspaeak. Won't work on a NTFS partition.

User avatar
ttuuxxx
Posts: 11171
Joined: Sat 05 May 2007, 10:00
Location: Ontario Canada,Sydney Australia
Contact:

#32 Post by ttuuxxx »

I Found this web browser for the blind, it works by voice.
here's the link http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-guidedog/
Merry Christmas & Happy New Years
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

just in time

#33 Post by raffy »

From the site :
eGuideDog Browser 0.57 December 23, 2007
Just in time for Christmas! :D
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#34 Post by Trobin »

I don't suppose some one could make a dotpup out of it.

Looks likere it could be run using Festival, which I've gotten to work in OneBone.

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#35 Post by muggins »

Trobin,

I tried making a .pet but, as it's perl based, "make install" leads to it going off to cpan & doing who knows what! Also, in your commandline puppy, will perl be available?

It would be good if someone else, that knows perl, can make a package, but otherwise, it does have links to other potentially useful CLI programs.

Post Reply