Seeing Dog Puppy for Blind

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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Trobin
Posts: 968
Joined: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 03:16
Location: BC Canada

#661 Post by Trobin »

There's been a lot of chatter about special glasses for te blind, using microchips to stimulate neurons to restore vision to the blind. As for the OS they'd use, I have no idea, and really doubt that I'll ever come close to haveing the kind of expertise needed.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#662 Post by Trobin »

Vinux is ubuntu based, but pretty much the best Linux for Blind distro I've tried. It uses gnome, orca, yasr, and depending on your monitor, 2x or 3x magnification.

http://vinux.org.uk/
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#663 Post by Trobin »

In another thread, Lobster asked if there would be a SFS file, of Speak-Pup. No there won't be. However, there is an SFS file that, when added to Puppy, will add accessibility functions to Puppy.

This does work with Puppy 410 Retro.

What you need:

1 - Mu's KDE sfs file from
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 44&t=26151
It includes KDE's accessibility stuff.
Rename the file to kde_version.sfs I used kde_410.sfs as I was using Puppy 410.

2 - Flite
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/wmd04r/puppy/flite-1.3.pet
Festivial or freetts can be used.


Configuring the system

Open a terminal and type kttsd.
Click on ADD and Talker and select the speech system.
Close the kttsd window.

From the Menu, select utilities and ksayit
Click on configurte
Close the window.
A red mouth should appear on the lower left corner.

Copy anything you wish spoken to the KLIPPER program.
Click on the red mouth and then on say.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

big_bass
Posts: 1740
Joined: Mon 13 Aug 2007, 12:21

#664 Post by big_bass »

Trobin

Its great that you are working on this project
two thumbs up

from big_bass

*some personal info

during the time I built the fat free series
I had lost vision in my left eye due to a sudden accident
so the all those ISO's where built with much care
and they are small and easy to update I focus on stability


that accident left me out of action for several months
I decided quickly to keep busy

at that time I was in the USA and the one of "best" Doctors there
told me there was no chance of recovering my vision

so .......I went to Mexico had 2 more surgeries and
yes I can see !!!


I don't follow all the threads but if anyone PM's
me I would be glad to help
I really have no Idea what was fixed and what still needs fixing
I would need a "quick needs done list" of pending problems
and or a wish list



I have all my original unleashed builds on CD/DVD
could easily patch in special support if needed
or compile needed packages


:arrow: I am glad Trobin someone is doing this a much respected work



big_bass

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

#665 Post by Trobin »

:arrow: I am glad Trobin someone is doing this a much respected work



big_bass[/quote]

Thank you.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

mcewanw
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Joined: Thu 16 Aug 2007, 10:48
Contact:

speech-dispatcher compiles okay on Puppy 4.2.1

#666 Post by mcewanw »

Trobin wrote: I'm working with Freetts becasue speech-dispatcher does not compille correctly.
I haven't been developing anything on Puppy for a while, in fact I haven't been developing anything for a while!

Recently, however, I've produced an espeak extension for the Tiny Core repos and also yasr (moving towards another foksyf Eye R release).
I find Freetts too heavy - needs java.

Unfortunately, I'm currently having trouble compiling speech-dispatcher on tiny core, or I'd be home and dry... I think I'm missing some development headers, but struggling to find out what.

I have however previously successfully compiled speech-dispatcher on Puppy 4 series (assuming you have alsa), though I don't have a dotpet of that compile. Let me know what your problem is though and I'll see if I can figure out the problem you have. I've managed to also compile it on the latest Pup 4.2.1

mcewanw
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is this thread dying?

#667 Post by mcewanw »

Doesn't seem to have been any activity related to this thread for some months or are you waiting on Woof?

I'll certainly produce a Pup 4.2.1 speech-dispatcher dotpet soon (in one month, I'm currently bogged down with family matters).

I just finished compiling, optimising, and configuring yasr and speech-dispatcher extensions for the official tiny core repos (based on the key-bindings I used in foksyfeyer). The new release option Microcore is very interesting since no X or GUI and only a 7 MB download.
http://tinycorelinux.com/forum/index.php?&topic=1747.0
http://tinycorelinux.com/forum/index.ph ... sg9702#new
My espeak, libportaudio, yasr, speech-dispatcher and libdotconf extensions only add an extra total of 900kBytes onto that, so there you have a basic commandline blind/visually-impaired accessible Linux in a less than 8 MByte download! And of course most commandline apps are very small in size.

I hope this thread or a more general-headed substitute remains active though, since one of its main useful purposes, I feel, is to provide a focus testing/report ground for screen reader compatible commandline apps (along with X applications useful for the visually impaired). I've never downloaded Speech Pup itself, but I have compiled, tested and used many of the same apps (along with a few others) in my own projects, since that is what is out there. So I've tended to share my results and idea and fixes here too.

Hopefully, it will be possible to produce a commandline Puppy with Woof soon? Having said that, I think a simple X environment on top is more general-purpose, since many are visually-impaired but not blind and screen magnifiers can help in such cases. Certainly, with Woof, speech-dispatcher, yasr and espeak will all be available (albeit somewhat bloated versions) from the official Ubunto repos I imagine.

TheProphet
Posts: 174
Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22

#668 Post by TheProphet »

I just had to post to get rid of the Number...

the one prior to this was six hundred and sixty... well you know the last digit.
He who skydive without parachute, jumps to own conclusion.

TheProphet
Posts: 174
Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22

#669 Post by TheProphet »

I must have missed posting in this particular thread but, I got knoppix 6.0.1 LiveCD downloaded.

Didn't install worth a bucket of warm spit but it runs from the CD very well.

Using the A.D.R.I.A.N.E. boot option you can run everything from an orca-based screenreader.

It's named for Klaus Knopper's wife Adriane who is you guessed it Blind.

I tried it from a gui and reading the desktop it only read wherever the mouse was positioned.

Reading from a firefox page it reads every link on the page before reading the main body of text.

Including the names of the image files.

One of the suggestions is to use Lynx or MC as the browser from the command line and give the GUI a miss to get the full function of it.

With gpm console mouse you can get all the goodies of a GUI browser without the scripts and without the image files showing, by default.

You could even turn off the monitor and save a few Planetary Resources.

I think I was looking for an orca dotpet when I posted about that.

But the subject matter is best suited for this thread.
He who skydive without parachute, jumps to own conclusion.

TheProphet
Posts: 174
Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22

#670 Post by TheProphet »

One I just thought of, the code-whiz dudes can work this out I guess.

Have a line or two adapted from the same type of function on the calibration window for a joystick, but a quick way to find your cursor in orca, right or middle click the mouse and have it report the position relative to the center and the nearest corner of the screen.

Double click for the exact x,y coordinates.
He who skydive without parachute, jumps to own conclusion.

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

#671 Post by Trobin »

It has been on the back burner for a while, but not forgotten.

As for woof, I tried that, and it screwed up my internet. To the point that I had to wipe out my regular puppy install and reinstall to get it working again.

I've tried with Puppy 4.x series, and very nearly had one going, albeit somewhat unsatisfactory. I did put up a remastered version but the changes I'd put in did not make the transition.
think a simple X environment on top is more general-purpose, since many are visually-impaired but not blind and screen magnifiers can help in such cases
The Speak-pup versions do still have the Xwindows system, though not used or accessible. Except by typing "xorgwizard" in at the command line. I did add a magnifier to the last version should any one care to use it.

I'll probably try a 4.x version this weekend, if just to get my hand back in it.

One thing that led to the current slump is an inability to get psjua, voip, working to my satisfaction. I put in a script that allows the user to make a call. But the speech system will speak everything that appears on screen, including a bunch of garbage that, in my view, would be distracting.

Another thing is that I have no real focus on where to go with this. Other than a portable multisession os, either on cd/dvd/usb, that can be used to provide a system that the user is familiar with.

I look forward to seeing what was done with Tiny core.
Last edited by Trobin on Fri 12 Jun 2009, 15:25, edited 1 time in total.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

TheProphet
Posts: 174
Joined: Mon 18 Feb 2008, 06:22

#672 Post by TheProphet »

But the speech system will speak everything that appears on screen, including a bunch of garbage that, in my view, would be distracting.
That's the part that got me, with the Adriane.

That and the "zero work necessary" 0wn installer doesn't work exactly as advertised.

Would a frame-by-frame user preset variable cut out the additional noise?

Instead of orca trying to read the whole webpage at once...

And then tie it in with gpm so it only does the frame with the cursor.

Perhaps a hot-key sequence to center the cursor, or move it to bottom/top left/right corners.

like c+m to center it, both keys pressed simultaneously. t+r b+r t+l b+l

Or the language specific equivalent.

I didn't even try to open Yahoo! home page with orca running.

Way too many scripts.
He who skydive without parachute, jumps to own conclusion.

mcewanw
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pjsua

#673 Post by mcewanw »

Trobin wrote: One thing that led to the current slump is an inability to get psjua, voip, working to my satisfaction. I put in a script that allows the user to make a call. But the speech system will speak everything that appears on screen, including a bunch of garbage that, in my view, would be distracting
Funnily enough it is exactly one year to the day since I came across the pjsua program and first brought it to the attention of the Puppy community with the suggestion that someone might like to try building a gtkdialog frontend for it, which subsequently happened of course.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 121#206406

I would have worked on a gtkdialog frontend myself, but I had family matters to deal with that have occupied me solidly for pretty much the whole year since.

I also suggested the use of pjsua on this thread around the same time because, of course, it would be ideal for Speak-pup, foksyfeyer and similar. Not with gtkdialog, of course, but with a tailored commandline UI frontend instead; one that is carefully designed to be compatible with whatever screen reader is being used. For that latter purpose, pjsua itself, which is written in C I believe, may possibly need some customising.

I may well look into that eventually, but it will be a few months before I can do so because I'm moving country in order to start a new job in August (I'll have lots of technical resources and potential new developers to help me there). But thereafter, expect FokSipEyeR, which may appear in several forms (a suite of dotpets, an all-inclusive sfs, and a 10-15 MB live or frugally installable iso) with a design aim of absolute simplicity (maybe just edbrowse and modified pjsua along with the speech components and some user friendly commandline interface) and pretty much "no garbage" being read out at all. Too early to talk about really, since I don't envision any release until early 2010 because I'll be busy for some months settling into the new job/location - for the moment I'm just brainstorming.

The speech engine components (yasr, speech-dispatcher, espeak) I've compiled (specially configured to work well with each other and created as official tinycore extensions) all work fine with the new microcore 7MB downloadable commandline version of tinycore though; modifying pjsua will probably be the biggest job thereafter. For Puppy, I prefer creating an addon system for full Puppy releases, and since these include X, I like adding the facility of magnified text in xterms (or rxvt consoles), as I did for foksyfeyer previously.

Oh, I suppose a "garbage free" streamripping radio/mp3/ogg player would be a particularly useful addition.

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

#674 Post by Trobin »

I made a tiny step in using 4.x. I found a cd with older epeak and speech dispatcher .pets on them and they seem to work well. I won't go any higher than 4.00 as 4.10 and up can't find the eth0 card on the computer I'm using.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#675 Post by Trobin »

I've started on a project that I'm calling Speak-3-Pup.

Basically what I'm aiming for is a puplet that can be used one of three ways.

1 - with the GUI.

This will have all the features that usually comes with Puppy 2.17. I've
installed JWMSPEAK as the windows manager. Menu items will be spoken as they
are moused over. So will window titles as they are activated. A magnifier
will be added.

I've tried adding programs to the menu but that doesn't seem to be working
for me. Any thing saved in the /root/.jwmrc file doesn't appear to be there
the next time I I boot up the system. However by mousing to the desktop and
clicking the left mouse button, a menu listing all the command line programs
I'm adding will appear. Jwmspeak will read out the menu items as they are
moused over.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 407#323407


2 - with a menu system

Basically what I've been trying to up til now.


3 - with Edbrowse.

Steep learning curve but an excellent program. If I were black blind I think
that's the way I'd go.

Problem 1 would be activating the choices.

Choice 1 would load the GUI and be the default.

Choice 2 would delete /usr/x11R7/bin/x symlink. This would run the profile
modifications to run the menus.

Choice 3 would delete the /usr/X11R7/bin/x symlink and add a flag that would
run edbrowse.

Problem 2 would be getting the cli programs talking while running in an RXVT
window. I believe the answer to that may be in this thread somewhere.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#676 Post by Trobin »

I managed to kludge together a possible solution to selecting the three mode.
Speak-3-Pup will load to the menu by default. A new entry to the main menu wil;l call the following:
#!/bin/bash
let "loop=0"
while test $loop == 0
do
clear
echo "Please choose the letter of the selected option"
echo "------------------------------------------------------"
echo "a. JWMSPEAK Mode"
echo "b. MENU MODE"
echo "c. ESPEAK MODE"
echo "------------------------------------------------------"

echo "choice?"
read choice

case $choice in a)
rm /etc/profile
cp /usr/profile /etc/profile
xorgwizard
esac
case $choice in b)
rm /etc/profile
cp /usr/profile /etc/profile
rm /usr/X11R7/bin/X
esac
case $choice in c)
rm /usr/X11R7/bin/X
rm /etc/profile
cp /root/profile /etc/profile
esac
done
Option A will run xorgwizard. Select Xorg or Xvesa to set up which ever system you want. The computer does not have to be rebooted.

Option B will run the menu ststem. It will remove ~/usr/X11R7/X symlink. It will also remove the ~/etc/profile file and replace it with ~/usr/profile. The computer will need to be rebooted.

Option C will remove ~/etc/profile and replace it with ~/root/profile. The computer will have to be rebooted.

In the gui, open an RXVT window and run ./rboot

In Edbrowse type !./rboot
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#677 Post by djringjr »

Trobin,

Is there a particular links for Speak-3-Pup?
Speak-3-Pup
I cannot find it.

Also which version of Puppy does it work with? I'm guessing version 3.

Is there a discussion - other than this one - for Speak-3-Pup?

I didn't get a message that there'd been a reply to the forum so I didn't check for a few months.

Be well

David

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

#678 Post by Trobin »

No, Speak-3-Pup is still based on Puppy 2.17, and is not yet available anywhere. I don't know if I will be using any newer versions of Puppy.

The three refers to three modes of use

1- command line

2 -full Puppy with GUI using Jwmspeak

3 -using edbrowse

It's been on the back burner for a while, but I hope to get it out in the next few weeks.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#679 Post by Trobin »

It's been a while and this is off the back burner.

1 - Install Fresh copy of Puppy 2.17

2 - Install Jwmspeak
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 08&t=27287

3 - Install Espeakedit
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 13&t=52026

4 - Install Lynx
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 19&t=44702

5 - Install CLInet
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 98&t=51097
note - my ethernet settings were not saved.

6 - Compile and Install Speech Dispatcher
http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd

7 - Compile and Install yasr
http://yasr.sourceforge.net/
note yasr.conf needs to be edited and saved to /root and hidden

8 - Install Alpine
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 65&t=30544

9 - Install - Noob
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 77&t=49117

10 - Install IRSSI
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 43&t=30207

11 - Install Edbrowse.
note The new version did not compile without errors, so am using an edbrowse pet file I had saved. I don't know if it is still available anywhere.

This version will, if I can get it working

1 - Act as a normal Puppy 2.17 with enough speech to assist those that want it.
Espeak will not work with programs such as Abiword, other than as programmed into Jwmspeak. Another menu will point to the cli programs used. These will open in console windows and speech will be available for those.

2 - Act as a normal Puppy 2.17 using NOOB as a menu interface for those that like the size.

3 - Similar to Number 2 but the NOOB menu will open a console window and use cli programs. Espeak will be running.

4 - Run from a menu system with espeak enabled.

I've tried other versions of Puppy Linux and keep coming back to Puppy 2.17. Because it just works. At least for me. Others might have more luck with more modern Puppy versions. However I'm laying claim to the Speakxpup name. :}

Any suggestion will be welcomed.

If any one dislikes my using their work, please let me know.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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

#680 Post by Trobin »

I've added Chipmunk Basic to the mix.

http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/


Okay, it hearkens back to the 1980's when GWBasic was the king of BASICS, but, as I said when I started working on this, I'm not a programmer. Puppybasic, wbasic, freebasic, I don't comprehend. Chipmunk Basic I do understand. At least to the point of beiong able to use it. What I want it for isn't all that complicated anyway.
[url]http://speakpup.blogspot.com[/url]

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