"Speakup" Promoted Out Of Staging For Linux 5.9

[phoronix]

Phoronix: "Speakup" Promoted Out Of Staging For Linux 5.9

The Speakup screen reader that is built into the kernel and allows for speaking all text printed to the text console from boot-up to shutdown for assisting blind individuals is now being promoted out of staging with Linux 5.9...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-Screen-Reader

[sandy8925]

This should be in userspace IMO and not the kernel. I wonder what happened to that idea to move VT into userspace from the kernel?

[chuckula]

Screen readers are nice but kernel bloat isn't. I'd rather see ways to shrink the kernel or, while we are on the topic of audio, work on actually fixing Linux's audio stack than trying to tack yet another feature into kernel space.

Imagine if Microsoft pushed a feature like this into the Windows kernel? Who would be applauding THAT move?

[oiaohm]

Screen readers are nice but kernel bloat isn't. I'd rather see ways to shrink the kernel or, while we are on the topic of audio, work on actually fixing Linux's audio stack than trying to tack yet another feature into kernel space.

Imagine if Microsoft pushed a feature like this into the Windows kernel? Who would be applauding THAT move?

Same ones who developed this feature for Linux. The blind. Please note this is not a new feature added to the Linux kernel at all. This feature was added to the Linux kernel in the staging section the Linux kernel tree in 2010. So its finally lost the staging tag 10 years latter. We are talking 10 years of development from the Blind community to have this feature.

Of course the blind still have the issue that boot loaders like grub so you have to set there systems up with petitboot yes this is Linux kernel being bootloader so using this Linux feature of speakup of course this does not support booting windows. Yes Windows bootloader also has zero blind accessibility features..

Now UEFI/bios issue blind are really stuffed at that point as most UEFI and BIOS have basically zero accessibility features.

Please note I am not joking around most of the developers who coded up this Linux kernel feature are truly blind so they developed Speakup feature out of need. Of course since the blind depend on the audio stack so much they also work on it a hell of a lot fixing issues. So part of the price here to fix up Linux kernel audio issues is having Speakup support so I really cannot call Speakup bloat. Speakup is a feature we need early Linux kernel to have. We need more firmwares and bootloaders to support it as well.

I know its a little hard to think of blind people using computers when you are not blind and have not experienced being blind. Please note the blind are just like everyone else in the sense they want to-do as much as they can by themselves of course missing accessibility features don't help them and is highly annoying to them.

[tildearrow]

Same ones who developed this feature for Linux. The blind. Please note this is not a new feature added to the Linux kernel at all. This feature was added to the Linux kernel in the staging section the Linux kernel tree in 2010. So its finally lost the staging tag 10 years latter. We are talking 10 years of development from the Blind community to have this feature.

They should have moved the feature to userspace and start it on the init ramdisk or something. Because what if the TTS system crashes. It would cause bugs and panics in the kernel. But as an userspace application it can be merely restarted and things will be fine. It has to be very well tested otherwise. This might be the case considering how long it took to enter mainline.

Of course the blind still have the issue that boot loaders like grub so you have to set there systems up with petitboot yes this is Linux kernel being bootloader so using this Linux feature of speakup of course this does not support booting windows. Yes Windows bootloader also has zero blind accessibility features..

And what about Mac. Yes Mac is the most accessible computer ever. The bootloader does not support text to speech also.. Petitboot. What is that. There is a part in your sentence that I cannot understand. Your sentence lacks connection and feels incoherent. I am not sure why this the case is slightly and nuisance. Lorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet.

Now UEFI/bios issue blind are really stuffed at that point as most UEFI and BIOS have basically zero accessibility features.

That is an issue that should go to the firmware manufacturers. Not Linux. Also this is not possible on BIOS firmware. Like it or not you have no space to fit in text to speech synthesizer and code to initialize the audio hardware. BIOS is extremely small.

Please note I am not joking around most of the developers who coded up this Linux kernel feature are truly blind so they developed Speakup feature out of need. Of course since the blind depend on the audio stack so much they also work on it a hell of a lot fixing issues. So part of the price here to fix up Linux kernel audio issues is having Speakup support so I really cannot call Speakup bloat. Speakup is a feature we need early Linux kernel to have. We need more firmwares and bootloaders to support it as well.

Yes I know you are not joking yes the developers of this kernel feature are blind and therefore developed this thing. Exactly. Yes that is a problem. Audio is never initialized early nowadays unlike old computers where audio is present from boot time. Not all computers or motherboards have a beeper anymore so it is not a viable solution either. It would be because it is present at boot but no. This is why I say it is best to have it in userspace. However I am sure you want it in kernel for reasons. Are you perhaps in need of it too. Maybe. I am curious.

I know its a little hard to think of blind people using computers when you are not blind and have not experienced being blind. Please note the blind are just like everyone else in the sense they want to-do as much as they can by themselves of course missing accessibility features don't help them and is highly annoying to them.

Yes I am aware of that precisely right correct exactly typing to oiaohm is hard because you have to insert filler text because I go to the point and not waste time. I have noted that. The problem is usage share. Few people are blind. Just like Linux is used by few. Therefore most applications do not support accessibility features just like most application developers are not willing to port to Linux.

[loganj]

i had no clue that linux has this feature

[zeehio]

Yes I am aware of that precisely right correct exactly typing to oiaohm is hard because you have to insert filler text because I go to the point and not waste time.

When I was reading him it felt like he was using a speech recognition system to "type". Maybe not, but given the topic...

[sandy8925]

Same ones who developed this feature for Linux. The blind. Please note this is not a new feature added to the Linux kernel at all. This feature was added to the Linux kernel in the staging section the Linux kernel tree in 2010. So its finally lost the staging tag 10 years latter. We are talking 10 years of development from the Blind community to have this feature.

Of course the blind still have the issue that boot loaders like grub so you have to set there systems up with petitboot yes this is Linux kernel being bootloader so using this Linux feature of speakup of course this does not support booting windows. Yes Windows bootloader also has zero blind accessibility features..

Now UEFI/bios issue blind are really stuffed at that point as most UEFI and BIOS have basically zero accessibility features.

Please note I am not joking around most of the developers who coded up this Linux kernel feature are truly blind so they developed Speakup feature out of need. Of course since the blind depend on the audio stack so much they also work on it a hell of a lot fixing issues. So part of the price here to fix up Linux kernel audio issues is having Speakup support so I really cannot call Speakup bloat. Speakup is a feature we need early Linux kernel to have. We need more firmwares and bootloaders to support it as well.

I know its a little hard to think of blind people using computers when you are not blind and have not experienced being blind. Please note the blind are just like everyone else in the sense they want to-do as much as they can by themselves of course missing accessibility features don't help them and is highly annoying to them.

Ah so it was already in staging. Well, the kernel developers do know their job, so there must be a good reason it's in the kernel and not userspace.

I agree, it's important to improve accessibility for blind (and other differently abled) people.

[caligula]

Ah so it was already in staging. Well, the kernel developers do know their job, so there must be a good reason it's in the kernel and not userspace.

Don't know how the blind use computers, but in case you have multiple sound sinks and/or wireless headsets, external sound cards and decoders, it's not obvious at all. Those require plenty of configuration and initialization to work. I can imagine how you'd like all sources to speak the console output before Pulseaudio takes over, but after that it sounds like a mess. Apparently one needs some sort of kernel mode mixer at least.

FWIW, I can see how this helps some minorities, but maybe the long term solution shouldn't work like this.

[zamadatix]

They should have moved the feature to userspace and start it on the init ramdisk or something. Because what if the TTS system crashes. It would cause bugs and panics in the kernel. But as an userspace application it can be merely restarted and things will be fine. It has to be very well tested otherwise. This might be the case considering how long it took to enter mainline.



And what about Mac. Yes Mac is the most accessible computer ever. The bootloader does not support text to speech also.. Petitboot. What is that. There is a part in your sentence that I cannot understand. Your sentence lacks connection and feels incoherent. I am not sure why this the case is slightly and nuisance. Lorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet.



That is an issue that should go to the firmware manufacturers. Not Linux. Also this is not possible on BIOS firmware. Like it or not you have no space to fit in text to speech synthesizer and code to initialize the audio hardware. BIOS is extremely small.



Yes I know you are not joking yes the developers of this kernel feature are blind and therefore developed this thing. Exactly. Yes that is a problem. Audio is never initialized early nowadays unlike old computers where audio is present from boot time. Not all computers or motherboards have a beeper anymore so it is not a viable solution either. It would be because it is present at boot but no. This is why I say it is best to have it in userspace. However I am sure you want it in kernel for reasons. Are you perhaps in need of it too. Maybe. I am curious.



Yes I am aware of that precisely right correct exactly typing to oiaohm is hard because you have to insert filler text because I go to the point and not waste time. I have noted that. The problem is usage share. Few people are blind. Just like Linux is used by few. Therefore most applications do not support accessibility features just like most application developers are not willing to port to Linux.

Spend more time thinking about what the other person said and less being an insufferable dick. Petitboot is a kexec bootloader that is accessible, the bit you insulted is the part that tries to explain this. A hit on Google does some good instead of making fun of their writing.

As part of kernel instead of per OS init image is important for the reason you end with, it's hard to get everything to have support so put it in the common place. It also can't log anything before init or before init ends since it has to start after and end before.

That other things are inaccessible says nothing about this needing to be inaccessible, those things suck too. Maybe one day they'll be open and we can add similar support.

If you're worried some TTS code which requires a hardware synth on a serial port so people can easier interact with the bootloader is going to cause you panics disable it as you seem extremely comfortable customizing already. Doesn't seem much of a concern and certainly makes things easier for others.