Hi Frank, On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 07:56:04AM -0500, Frank Carmickle wrote: >> On Feb 13, 2023, at 3:50 AM, Christian Schoepplein <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> What do I have todo to test speech based installation where sound is needed? >> As said, I am using braille, for that reason I've never installed a system >> where sound was needed during installation. However, I'd like to test it... > >Maybe this is where I'm having trouble. The instructions seem to indicate >that it is the same for all architectures. One should be able to press 's' >at the boot prompt, given that this should be emulated EFI. Even that >doesn't seem to be working, but it's hard to tell as my sighted assistant >isn't great about giving me all the information. It seems as though you >still can arrow down to the accessibility menu option after having pressed >'s'. In either case, after booting many times, I have never been able to >get sound running.
Ah, OK. I think the arm64 installer behaves not the same like e.g. the amd64 installer. If I install amd64 machines I get a beep tone when the bootmanager is ready. At this point pressing "s" will chose speech based installation or, in older days where braille devices were not regognized automaticaly, one has to enter install brltty to get braille support during installation. When using the arm64 installer no beep tone was played, but this might be because the whole system is running in a VM. So either pressing "s" does not work in the arm64 installer or we just don't know when to press the key :-). I'll ask my girlfriend if she can take a look or what to press to get into the menu to have the accessible installer started. If a braille device is connected its OK to press just enter when the bootmanager is loaded. Because the device is connected via USB the normal installer can recognize the braille device and the textbased installation will start automaticaly. However, one points differ from a normal installation on amd64 systems. During software selection no grafical environment and therefore also no Mate desktop was selected, but this is the default on amd64 installations IIRC. I don't know if this an issue of the installer or if its related to some hardware settings for the VM, e.g. the RAM. >I did confirm that booting a x866-4 debian installer does appropriately >bring up speech in the installer. OK, then it really seems like the bootmanager on the arm64 installer behaves not like the amd64 installer. I'll take a look with my girlfriend. BTW.: I did not change any sound settings when creating the VM. The default sound card works after installation is finished. >> BTW.: I was able to get a amr64 based Debian installed on my M1 Mac with >> UTM and braille support. After installation sound was presend and I was able >> to use Mate out of the box. Also braille was working when the braille device >> was connected to the VM. The only problem is the capslock key which is used >> as screen reader key for Orca and VoiceOver on the Mac. For VoiceOver >> capslock has to be disabled as the screen reader key to not overlap with >> Orca >> keystrokes when working in the VM. But the bigger problem is, and thats also >> the case with Windows VMs, that capslock on a Mac uses another keyboard >> code and therefore the capslock key is not recognized by the virtual >> machine. There are tools like Karabiner Elements which can remap capslock >> on the Mac to behave like e.g. the insert key in the VM, but I had no >> success to get this working so far, will look in this later. > >I'm thinking that I will disable capslock from being capslock in Macos as >I never use it, and it just gets in the way. that does not work, at least not for me. I had the same idea but still no success with using the caps lock key inside the VM as screen reader key for Orca. I'll do more tests later, but in the past, when I was working with Windows VMs on a Mac, I had to use tools like the already mensioned Karabiner-Elements to remap the caps lock to e.g. the insert key in the VM. I was hoping that this not longer necessary for a linux VM, lets see. >How did you pass the braille display to the VM? Connect your braille device to your Mac. If you do this the first time Mac OS will ask if connecting the device is OK, just allow it. Then create the VM or boot it for the first time. The VoiceOver cursor will be placed in the Window with the output of the VM and tells something like to press Option+CMD to grap the input. If you navigate left a toolbar is displayed. Interact with this toolbar and chose the USB submenu. There all devices which are connected to your Mac should be listed. Mark your braille device and it should be connected. Maybe it will also work if you connect your braille display while the VM is already running. I remember a situation where UTM was asking if I want to connect the new USB device to the VM or the host. However, if you are not sure if your braille device has been connected to the VM when the installer was starting the first time, just reboot the VM after you have attached your braille device. Just rebooting the VM will not unattach the device. Also in some situations brltty will be started if the installer is already running and the braille device is attached to the VM. This is also working with an already installed system. In general a installed system is working fast and snappy and I think the installation on my Mac Book Air M1 from 2020 with 8 GB RAM was the fastest Debian installation I've ever seen, even faster as on most servers I am administrating. I'll keep you posted of my experiments with the bootmanager for the arm64 installer and please let me also know if you manage to install a system or when you have more ideas what todo with the caps lock key... Ciao, Schoepp
