LinuxSpeaks

Linux for the blind and visually impaired

An easy to learn aural interface to the Linux operating system for the blind and visually impaired.

Download:

Current Version is 1.10 04/05/2008

• Tarball Installer (2.5MB): linuxspeaks-alpha-1.10.tar.gz (ver. 1.10)

• Tarball Installer (2.2MB): linuxspeaks-alpha-1.10.tar.bz2 (ver. 1.10)

• Live CD Rom ISO (306MB): linuxspeaks-live-alpha-1.10.iso (english ver.1.10 i386)

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• Tarball Installer (2.5MB): linuxspeaks-alpha-1.08.tar.gz (ver. 1.08a)

• Tarball Installer (2.2MB): linuxspeaks-alpha-1.08.tar.bz2 (ver. 1.08a)

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• Older Archived Versions of LinuxSpeaks

The LinuxSpeaks project is a collection of scripts and library modules that 
aspire to be a comprehensive vocal, sight-free user interface to the Linux 
operating system.

So far LinuxSpeaks includes:

       File Manager
       Text Editor (copy, cut, paste, spell check and many other features)
       Web browser
       Email Client
       File reader (formats include: text; html; rtf; pdf; daisy; Open Office;
        MSWord)
       Sound Mixer
       Calender With Notepad
       Clock
       Calculator
       Weather Conditions and Forecast
       Command Shell
       Font Configurator
       Printer Configurator
       PPP Dialer and Configurator
       Media Player
       CD Player
       CD to MP3 Ripper
       Help Documentation
       Game of Consentration
       Blackjack Game
       Voice Configurator
       Auto Update
       Pager
       Voice Recorder
       Time Configurator
       Installer


Change Log:

    Version 1.01

Initial translation of prompts from english to german.
Fixed broken readfile.pl script.


      Version 1.02

Initial translation fo prompts from english to dutch; italian; french;
portuguese. This adds to german and spanish totaling 7 different languages available.
Fixed bugs in concentration game.
Fixed bugs in voice config script.


      Version 1.03

Added support to shell out to bash by entering bash in the command line shell.
Changed the default behavior for reading files, returning results from commands, 
reading email, etc. Changed from using mplayer to play converted audio, to putting 
them into the text editor, speaktcledit. To return to original behavior run command 
echo use_editor=no > $HOME/.readfilerc from the command line shell. 


      Version 1.08

Fixed even more bugs in several apletts and install script.
Changed speech to be non blocking in several places.  This speeds up menus and 
editors making the system much more usable.
Integrated a pager applett into the system and made it the default for reading files etc.
Added a voice recorder applett.
Added a time configure applett to set time and date either by ntp or manually.


     Version 1.10

Fixed broken prompts.
Fixed Tcl8.4 install bug in install script.
Cleaned up some of the code.


INSTALLING:
    If you have a Debian distribution or similar (eg. ubuntu) just run the
    install.sh script as root or via sudo. This script attempts to install
    the dependencies for you, using apt-get, as well as installing the
    LinuxSpeaks binaries, shared files, and configuration files.  It has been
    tested on debian 4.0r1 i386 and had no problem with it.

    If you have a Fedora Core or Redhat like system with yum installed you can
    try to run "install.sh yum", although I've had some problems because there is
    no mplayer package on which Linux Speaks relies. I have had some luck installing
    totem and making a symolic link pointing to it named mplayer.
        cd /usr/bin
        ln -s totem mplayer
    There is also problems because no package for lame is in the yum repository.
    This breaks the program that rips and encodes CD audio to MP3 files. No easy
    workaround is known at this time.