I'm wondering though if there does exist a talking install for OpenSuSE though;but again, they probably don't think it necessary with all of the blindness-specific versions of Linux out there. Which, might I add, does indeed spread the wrong message to the open source community. -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 11:35 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessible boot loader There is a difference between a talking boot loader and an talking install. A boot loader is a program that loads a kernel. The boot loader allows you to pick different kernels or different options for a kernel. It comes up before the operating system is loaded. Once the kernel is loaded, you can do all kinds of fancy things. I'm not saying a boot loader with a screen reader doesn't exist but I'd be very much surprised if it does. It's hard enough to get a screen reader built into a kernel much less a boot loader. On the other hand, a boot loader that plays different sound files for different boot menu options is not at all far fetched. And I provided a link to a blog post that says that's what opensuse used to do. The reason that makes sense technically is that if the sound file is the right format, it would only require the boot loader to write it directly to the PC speaker device. No sound driver or speech synthesizer would be necessary. The grub boot loader has a similar feature. But it plays the pre-recorded sound file only once per boot. So I'm guessing that what opensuse did was make it possible to play a sound file for each item on the boot menu. The reason it would help with an accessible install is that it would allow you to select a talking install from the boot menu. When you do a linux install, you get this boot menu that asks what kind of install you want to do. Those menu items are defined by the developers so they could provide pre-recorded sound files that matched the text of each boot menu item. As you cursored through the items on the boot menu, it plays these sound files and it's just like a screen reader. On 11/07/13 09:26, Katherine Moss wrote:
What I was referring to is that the bootloader used to be able to talk. In other words, it used to have screen reader support. I mean, how is a generic sound file going to assist us in independently installing OpenSuSE?
-----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 10:24 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessible boot loader
Are you sure that opensuse doesn't still support that feature? According to the google, it just played a sound file through the PC speaker. And if you have the right format for your sound file, that is literally just a write operation. There would be little reason to remove such a feature because it wouldn't take any maintenance.
PS: Here is a script I wrote that kind of lets you hear your GRUB_INIT_TUNE before you update grub. It reads /etc/default/grub and plays the GRUB_INIT_TUNE via the beep command. It doesn't give exactly the right tempo but you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what you are going to hear at boot with this script.
#!/bin/bash if [ ! -z "$1" ]; then GRUB_INIT_TUNE=$1 fi if [ "$GRUB_INIT_TUNE" == "" ]; then GRUB_INIT_TUNE=`grep ^GRUB_INIT_TUNE /etc/default/grub | cut -d\" -f2 ` fi TEMPO="" FREQ="" TUNE="" for VAL in $GRUB_INIT_TUNE; do if [ "$TEMPO" == "" ]; then TEMPO=$VAL elif [ "$FREQ" == "" ];then FREQ=$VAL; elif [ "$TUNE" == "" ]; then TUNE=" -d $TEMPO -f $FREQ -l ${VAL}00" FREQ="" else test "$FREQ" == "0" || TUNE="$TUNE -n -f $FREQ -l ${VAL}00" FREQ="" fi; done; beep $TUNE echo "$TUNE"
On 11/07/13 08:49, Katherine Moss wrote:
Gosh, I love Open SuSE! It's my favorite Linux distribution. I remember that too, but for whatever reason they quit developing it. If you are a coder, you could always bring it back to life. I think what has happened is that most of the mainstream Linux developers are aware of blindness-specific versions of Linux, so they think, Oh, okay, the blind will just use what they know as accessible so that now we don't have to worry about it.
-----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of David Mehler Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 11:35 PM To: blind-sysadmins Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessible boot loader
Hello,
Does anyone remember a while back, maybe they still do, OpenSuse had an accessible boot loader? It would say via speech output what item you were on.
I'm wanting to get that or an alternative? I was wondering if anyone knew of one?
Thanks. Dave.
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-- --- John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu
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