Hello Karen, see my answers below. This might not be the best place for this topic, though. I wouldn't want to annoy the list, especially since it is not strictly FreeDOS related. If you'd like to take this offlist, or would know a more appropriate list or forum, I'd be happy to oblige.
>First question, is this emulator something you personally wrote? >If so, is the source code available for others? Yes and yes. Emubns is a Braille 'n Speak emulator that I created 4 years ago. I announced it back then on this list. The project has its web page at https://emubns.sourceforge.net Please note that the version available on the web page uses espeak. The Piper version is a work in progress thing I have yet to publish. >> and connected it to a virtual machine running SvarDOS. >Next set of questions. >Connected it how? >For example for those running well anything in a virtual environment, Linux, >mac and so forth, the challenge is setting the virtual serial port. Did you >create a different method for this assignment? VirtualBox and QEMU both allow to redirect the serial port of the guest system to a TCP port on the host. That's what I used. I load emubns on my Linux host so it listens on the TCP port 7333 and then I run SvarDOS in a VirtualBox VM configured to redirect its serial port to 127.0.0.1:7333. >Of importance for me too, is just where is the speech coming from? your sound > card for example? >From the sound card of my Linux host. From the point of view of the DOS system >there is no sound involved, there is only a provox screen reader there that >scans the DOS screen and sends text to the serial port using the BNS protocol. >All the BNS decoding and speech synthesis is handled on the Linux side by >emubns and Piper. > The >> SvarDOS system has a screen reader that outputs speech in the BNS format. >May I have a link to this edition of DOS? Sure. http://svardos.org > Is it using Provox for the screen reader, or something else? The BNS edition of SvarDOS comes with Provox pre-installed. The SvarDOS installer also makes some modest efforts to be screen-reader friendly. >> This BNS speech is received by emubns, >Which is what exactly? comparative to espeak, or speech dispatcher, as it >serves as a channel for the virtual synthesizer? emubns is the software that fools DOS into thinking that a BNS synthesizer is connected to it so the screen reader detects a BNS device and sends text to it. When emubns receives data to be spoken, it relays it to Piper (prototype) or espeak (old version). >All this runs virtualized at this moment, so it is >> likely not a setup that is desirable for blind people. >I will resist pointing out some considerable confusion by the above >statement, simply asking why you believe this is true? I tried at several occasions to use a computer being blindfolded. I am able to create a simple text file, answer a short email and consult a wikipedia article. All this came with a huge strugle, took a long time and inevitably led to frustration. I would certainly not be able to perform any kind of complex configuration or system setup. I am sure that blind people are much more agile than me in such environment, hence my experience is hardly comparable to a real blind person using a PC, but still I doubt that it is reasonable to expect from a blind user to setup a DOS virtual machine, configure its serial port in an unusual way, compile and load emubns, and fiddle with the Piper installation. All this on a Linux host. Of course if one wishes to jump over all these hoops, he is free to do so. The Pi idea is only a more convenient "plug and play" scenario for people running hardware PCs. >That is before you touch on pi factors, no keyboard, screen, speech, and so >forth to configure the item. None is needed, because the user will not be supposed to interact with the Pi. He will only have to write an image to a SD card and insert the card into the Pi. Mateusz _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
