Re: Please test brltty 6.6-4+exp1 from experimental

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

> Am 18.02.2024 um 19:41 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
> 
> 
> Sebastien reminds me that you need to take care, when installing the
> version from experimental, to also install other brltty packages such as
> brltty-x11, otherwise apt may want to remove them. You can also use:

Yes, some of this packages have been updated on my system while installing the 
new brltty version. With this packages installed all is fine too, no problems 
so far.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Please test brltty 6.6-4+exp1 from experimental

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 01:32:35AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>With Trixie supporting only merged-usr systems, we have to move files to
>/usr in the packages themselves. I have uploaded to experimental version
>6.6-4+exp1 of brltty that does so, it works for me but better get more
>tests before uploading to unstable, so please help with this :)

At first glance also for me still all is fine after the upgrade.

Ciao,

  Schöpp

Re: Accessible terminal output

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 08:40:07AM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
>Neils, I think what you are about to find is that individual preference
>generally dominates accessibility concerns here.

Yes.

All what I wrote is the prefered way I like to work because it is the most 
simplest way for me. This does not mean, and thats what I also wrote, that 
others do also like work this way. Its all a matter of personal taste.

Regarding accessibility piping content into a pager or reading out the 
screen with a braille device or the navigation functions of the screen 
reader is also fine ofcourse, everything can be read and no content is 
missing.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Accessible terminal output

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Nils,

On Sun, Jan 28, 2024 at 11:54:24AM +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
>In my case, my tool is not interactive. It generates text output and either
>emits all of it on standard out or pipes it to a pager. It is closer to a
>tool like ls than mutt in spirit. As far as I know, my tool cannot control
>the caret of the output in any meaningful way in this case.

Piping output into a pager is very uncomfortable for screen reader users 
IMHO. To navigate such content you either have to use the keys of a 
connected braille device or use the screen reader commands to go through the 
output. Both variants are much less good then piping the content into a 
programm where the user can navigate the output just with the normal arrow 
keys, like navigating through a file in an editor, or piping the content 
into a textbased browser like w3m where the content also can be navigated by 
using the arrow keys. At least I do avoid using pagers because I can not use 
the arrow keys to read the whole content.

So, instead doing a

ls -1 /dev/ | less

I prefere much more this, because in vim I easiely can navigate through the 
text just using the normal keyboard:

ls -1 /dev | vim -

Or also this:

ls -1 /dev | w3m

The same is with the output to the normal screen, not into a pager. Also 
this content has to be navigated using the screen reader functions which IMO 
is always much mor les comftable then using just the normal keyboard 
navigation.

But thats all my personal taste. I am much faster using the normal keyboard 
functions then navigating around with the screen reader or a braille 
device. Im sure other blind people work completely different...

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 09:57:25PM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Jason J.G. White, le mar. 14 nov. 2023 08:56:27 -0500, a ecrit:
>> On 14/11/23 08:35, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>> 
>> After installing the two gir packages with the fix from your personal 
>> repo
>> 
>> all things are good again:
>> 
>> You'll need to mark the appropriate libvte packages as on hold until Samuel's
>> patch is accepted upstream, and the upstream version enters Debian. 
>> Otherwise,
>> Samuel's packages will be replaced every time a new upstream version enters 
>> the
>> repository you're using.
>
>The debian package 0.74.1-1 does contain my fix as kindly patched by the
>debian maintainer, Jeremy Bicha.

Ah, OK, thats why it worked with the 0.74.1-1 package before.

>Christian, can you confirm by running
>
>zgrep libvte-2.91-0 /var/log/dpkg.log.
>
>that the libvte-2.91-0 package (which really contains the binary built
>with my patch) was upgraded before you noticed the issue? And thus it's
>really *exactly* the upgrade of the gir packages that brought the issue?

I' ve reinstalled and reconfigured all regarding packages  and everything 
seems to be fine again. Currently the 0.74.1-1 package is installed. I have 
no idea what was going on yesterday where the problems with screen 
refreshing suddenly occured again...

Sorry for the confusion...

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 08:56:27AM -0500, Jason J.G. White wrote:
>   On 14/11/23 08:35, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>
>   > After installing the two gir packages with the fix from your personal
>   > repo
>
>   all things are good again:
>
>   You'll need to mark the appropriate libvte packages as on hold until
>   Samuel's patch is accepted upstream, and the upstream version enters
>   Debian. Otherwise, Samuel's packages will be replaced every time a new
>   upstream version enters the repository you're using.

OK, thanks. I've pinned Samuels packages but removed this some weeks ago.  
Since then everything was working fine till gir was updated...

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 02:27:41AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>I have updated https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/88 with an
>improved patch. Could people try it? I have also uploaded patched Debian
>packages on https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/tmp/trixie-tmp/

I was using this patched packages and lately the packages for Debian Testing 
and it was perfectly possible to work in mate-terminal. However, a few days 
ago some packages where updated to an newer version and since then again the 
screen content is not longer refreshed in some situations.

This are the currently installed packages that again cause problems with 
the screen refreshing in mate-terminal:

cs@d5421:~$ dpkg -l | grep vte
ii  gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64   0.74.1-1
ii  gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64   0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-0:amd64 0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-common  0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-dev:amd64   0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-gtk4-0:amd640.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev:amd64  0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-common   1:0.28.2-6
ii  libvted-3-0:amd64   3.10.0-2+b1

After installing the two gir packages with the fix from your personal repo 
all things are good again:

cs@d5421:~$ dpkg -l | grep vte
ii  gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64   0.73.99-1+fix
ii  gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64   0.73.99-1+fix
ii  libvte-2.91-0:amd64 0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-common  0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-dev:amd64   0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-gtk4-0:amd640.74.1-1
ii  libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev:amd64  0.74.1-1
ii  libvte-common   1:0.28.2-6
ii  libvted-3-0:amd64   3.10.0-2+b1

These are the packages with vte that have been updated lately:

cs@d5421:~$ grep vte /var/log/dpkg.log
2023-11-10 10:28:28 upgrade libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2 3.10.0-2+b1
2023-11-10 10:28:28 status half-configured libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2
2023-11-10 10:28:28 status unpacked libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2
2023-11-10 10:28:28 status half-installed libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2
2023-11-10 10:28:28 status unpacked libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2+b1
2023-11-10 10:28:29 configure libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2+b1 
2023-11-10 10:28:29 status unpacked libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2+b1
2023-11-10 10:28:29 status half-configured libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2+b1
2023-11-10 10:28:29 status installed libvted-3-0:amd64 3.10.0-2+b1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 upgrade gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-installed gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 upgrade gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-installed gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 configure gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status installed gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 configure gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:06:31 status installed gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:32 upgrade gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:32 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:32 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:32 status half-installed gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:32 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 upgrade gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status half-installed gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.73.99-1+fix
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 configure gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1 
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status installed gir1.2-vte-3.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 configure gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1 
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status unpacked gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status half-configured gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 0.74.1-1
2023-11-14 14:13:33 status installed gir1.2-vte-2.91:amd64 

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello Samuel,

On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 07:59:44PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>What do you get when you paste into another graphical application such
>as pluma or gedit? And conversely when pasting into tmux?

When I am in a tmux session and copy multiline text with brltty's COPY_RECT 
command

* the text is inserted in reverse order and with broken lines in another 
terminal, no matter if there is a tmux session running or not
* is inserted correctly in pluma.

This does not happen if I copy the multiline text with brltty's COPY_RECT 
command when I am not in a tmux session.

>> I've also tested it with the new show flatview contents feature of orca 45 
>> during working in a tmux session. There the same issue is happening if I 
>> copy multiline text and insert it using different editors.
>
>I don't see the relation between flatview and copy? Are you using a copy
>feature from orca?

No. I just tested if the same thing occures if I do not use brltty's 
COPY_RECT feature to get multiline content into the clipboard.

If I open a tmux session and copy multiline content from this session with 
the new flatfview feature from orca and not with brltty's COPY_RECT feature 
it is also broken when I insert this multiline text  in an editor running in 
a terminal. Inserting the same content in pluma works fine. So it does not 
matter if copying content with brltty or with orca, but it seems to be 
related where the content of the clipboard is inserted.

I hope the problem is more clear now.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi again,

On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 04:58:12PM +0200, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>Hi samuel,
>
>On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 10:38:41PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>>Samuel Thibault, le dim. 22 oct. 2023 22:36:34 +0200, a ecrit:
>>> Christian Schoepplein, le mar. 10 oct. 2023 12:46:21 +0200, a ecrit:
>>> > The issue is with copying content via the cliphboard feature of brltty if 
>>> > I 
>>> > am inside a tmux session which I need to use very ofthen for my daily job.
>>> > 
>>> > The original content I like to copy looks like this:
>>> > 
>>> > borg_backup_client_exclude_host_specific:
>>> >   - /rpool
>>> >   - /tank
>>> 
>>> Does it happen with whatever kind of content, or is it specific to this
>>> kind of content? Is this showing up in an editor? (which editor?) or as
>>> output of a command?
>
>Its happening with any content and in different editors, e.g. vim or nano.
>
>>Also, I forgot: are you using COPY_LINE or COPY_RECT?
>
>I tried both.
>
>If I copy a multiline text with COPY_LINE and paste it the whole content is 
>inserted on one line. I think this is the expected behaviour, at least I 
>understand brltty's help this way. No line breaks are copied or the content 
>is inserted as one long line.
>
>If I use COPY_RECT, which is the way I normaly would copy multiline content, 
>the issue is happening and the content is inserted in reverse order and with 
>broken line breaks.
>
>I'll test if the internal tmux copy and paste function is working without a 
>problem if I've found out how to use it, currently I am to stupid to 
>understand how it works :-).

I've also tested it with the new show flatview contents feature of orca 45 
during working in a tmux session. There the same issue is happening if I 
copy multiline text and insert it using different editors.

BTW.: I am on Debian Testing and I am using the libvte packages from your 
package repository.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi samuel,

On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 10:38:41PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Samuel Thibault, le dim. 22 oct. 2023 22:36:34 +0200, a ecrit:
>> Christian Schoepplein, le mar. 10 oct. 2023 12:46:21 +0200, a ecrit:
>> > The issue is with copying content via the cliphboard feature of brltty if 
>> > I 
>> > am inside a tmux session which I need to use very ofthen for my daily job.
>> > 
>> > The original content I like to copy looks like this:
>> > 
>> > borg_backup_client_exclude_host_specific:
>> >   - /rpool
>> >   - /tank
>> 
>> Does it happen with whatever kind of content, or is it specific to this
>> kind of content? Is this showing up in an editor? (which editor?) or as
>> output of a command?

Its happening with any content and in different editors, e.g. vim or nano.

>Also, I forgot: are you using COPY_LINE or COPY_RECT?

I tried both.

If I copy a multiline text with COPY_LINE and paste it the whole content is 
inserted on one line. I think this is the expected behaviour, at least I 
understand brltty's help this way. No line breaks are copied or the content 
is inserted as one long line.

If I use COPY_RECT, which is the way I normaly would copy multiline content, 
the issue is happening and the content is inserted in reverse order and with 
broken line breaks.

I'll test if the internal tmux copy and paste function is working without a 
problem if I've found out how to use it, currently I am to stupid to 
understand how it works :-).

Ciao and thanks,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel and all,

there is another strange issue with the terminal, but I do not know if it is 
libvte, tmux or maybe brltty related.

I am using brltty in the terminal, the braille functionality of orca is 
turned of in the orca profile settings for mate-terminal. In 
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/90xbrlapi I have  replaced the original entry to start 
brltty like this:

"${brltty}" -b ba -s sd -x a2 --autospeak-threshold=good -Z on -N 2>/dev/null

The issue is with copying content via the cliphboard feature of brltty if I 
am inside a tmux session which I need to use very ofthen for my daily job.

The original content I like to copy looks like this:

borg_backup_client_exclude_host_specific:
  - /rpool
  - /tank

Outside a tmux session copying this content works quite well. But inside a 
tmux session I get this when inserting the textblock into another file:

M  - /tank
M  - /rpool
borg_backup_client_exclude_host_specific:

I do not have any special tmux settings configured.

Its clear to me that this is a very specific problem which might be related 
to what so ever is involved, tmux, brltty, lbvte, but maybe someone 
has an idea whats going on there and how to fix this. I am pretty sure that 
this behaviour is new, I use the copy-paste feature of brltty quite ofthen 
and I can't remember I had this issue in the past...

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Fri, Oct 06, 2023 at 11:03:01PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Which exact version are you testing? Please use
>
>dpkg -l libvte-2.91-0:amd64
>
>otherwise I cannot say anything about your results. My package with
>latest changes is versioned 0.73.99-1+fix, not 0.74.

I got version 0.74.0-2 while updating my system today. Thats why your 
packages got overwritten.

But I've managed to install the older packages with the fix from your repo 
now  and everything is fine again.

>> Whats the current state of the bug?
>
>We are waiting for feedback to make sure that things are fixed without
>introducing regressions.

OK, thanks for the update. Hope the fix will make it to the official libvte 
package soon.

>> Can I somehow install the old 0.73 packages from your repo,
>
>Sure, see the readme file.
>
>> Samuel, or can you provide the 0.74 packages with the fix please or
>> shall I try to build the new packages myself and include the patch?
>
>No need to build anything, just pick up my packages.

As said, I've managed to install the older packages now and everything is 
fine again. But the newer packages from the updates still want to be 
installed when running

apt upgrade

I gues I've to pinn the libvte package to the version from your repo to 
exclude this packages from the updates till the fix has made it into a newer 
debian package?

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel and all,

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 02:27:41AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>
>I have updated https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/88 with an
>improved patch. Could people try it? I have also uploaded patched Debian
>packages on https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/tmp/trixie-tmp/

I was on vacation for three weeks and updated my Debian testing system 
today. Also the libvte packages have been updated to a newer version, 0.74, 
and the packages with all fixes from your repo, Samuel, that worked so fine 
with the terminal have been overwritten. With this newer versions of the 
packages at least some problems that have been fixed before do occure again. 
E.g. the screen is ruptured again when using apt and the progressbar is 
displayed at the bottom of the screen. Also I was able to use vim perfectly 
with the 0.73 packages, with the new 0.74 versions the focus again is moved 
to the command line of the editor.

I took a look at the bug report and into the changelogs, but its not really 
clear to me, if the fixes are included in the 0.74 version now or if they 
are still not included. Whats the current state of the bug? Is the fix 
included in the 0.74 packages or are the problems, that I have now, new?

Can I somehow install the old 0.73 packages from your repo, Samuel, or can 
you provide the 0.74 packages with the fix please or shall I try to build 
the new packages myself and include the patch?

Ciao and thanks for your help,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 10:31:27PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Samuel Thibault, le mar. 12 sept. 2023 14:07:35 +0200, a ecrit:
>> Christian Schoepplein, le mar. 12 sept. 2023 10:38:02 +0200, a ecrit:
>> > But I noticed another thing. When I switch away from the terminal, e.g. 
>> > into 
>> > another terminal, and then switch back into the terminal with the 
>> > translate 
>> > command everything looks good and the output is in a seperate line. 
>> > Strange...
>> 
>> Ok, I guess I see what you mean.
>
>No, I had misunderstood, I didn't realize that you were saying that the
>command and its output were getting glued together on the same line.
>
>Apparently brltty gets a bit confused when removing the trailing '\n'.
>Better be safe with screen readers and keep it always, I have updated
>the patches and the built package.

Thank you very much. The new packages from yesterday evening are a big 
progress and IMHO the biggest issues I had with the terminal seem to be 
fixed now. This is so much better now, really great!

There is still an issue when deleting lines in nano, but unfortunately I can 
not reproduce this behaviour all the time and I only have it in mutt. I'll 
try to find out if this is related to some settings in mutt.

Also in nano sometimes empty lines are not always shown correctly on the 
brailledevice when navigating through a file. This seems also to be an issue 
with brltty I think, because it only occures if I navigate the text with the 
keyboard and not with the brailledisplay. I'll also try to find out more 
about it and report back if I have a way how to reproduce it.


Ciao and thank you so much again,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Seb and all,

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 10:52:39AM +0200, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
>May it be the case that translate adjusts its output to the size of the
>terminal?

I do have the problem not only with translate, this was just an example 
command to show the issue. I have the same problems with  apt and other 
commands too, so the issue IMHO is not related to translate only.

However, it seems to be related only to commands that return one line, but 
unfortunately not to all. E.g.

git version

works perfectly, the translate example or

helm version

show the output in the same line. Maybe there is something different how the 
programs crea te line breaks or whatever, I have no idea :-(.

I'll post more problematic examples if I stumple over them.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 09:10:56AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le mar. 12 sept. 2023 09:02:40 +0200, a ecrit:
>> The following command displays 
>> the output in a long line instead dividing it into seperate lines:
>> 
>> translate -i occure
>
>On my system it does output
>
>Vorkommen {n} (von etw.) [min.] | Erdölvorkommen {n} | Vorkommen [...]

On my system it looks like this:

cs@d5421:~$ translate -i occure Vorkommen {n} (von etw.) [min.] | 
Erdölvorkommen {n} | Vorkommen in Linsenform; linsenförmiges Vorkommen |  
schichtförmiges Vorkommen :: presence; occurrence (of sth.) | oil occurrence  | 
lens-shaped occurence; lenticularity | occurrence in strata
cs@d5421:~$

But I noticed another thing. When I switch away from the terminal, e.g. into 
another terminal, and then switch back into the terminal with the translate 
command everything looks good and the output is in a seperate line. 
Strange...

>So it's the output of the command itself which is a one-liner, mate
>can't do anything about it :)

I had the same behaviour also with commands that output more then one line, 
e.g. with apt. Maybe there is something wrong with refreshing the screen, 
because everything seems to be fine when moving to another window 
and back again in the window where the problem occured.

>> ls -1 /dev > test.txt
>> 
>> Open the test.txt file, scrol down some pages and then delete a line with 
>> ctrl+k.
>> 
>> On my machine I have to clear the screen with ctrl+l to see that the line 
>> has been removed on the braille display.
>
>You mean that the braille display is still showing the very line you
>wanted to remove?

Yes.

>I am not able to reproduce this. Just to be precise:
>
>- nano test.txt
>- press page down
>(get to some line shown on the braille display)
>- press control-k
>(the line is supposed to be replaced by the next line on the braille
>display)

Yes, thats exactly what I am doing.

>Do you perhaps have some particular configuration in nano?

No, I don't. But maybe I have some mate-terminal settings that cause this 
problems. I've resetted mate-terminal with the following command now to make 
sure that no mate-terminal settings cause this strange problems:

dconf reset -f /org/mate/terminal/

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 09:06:00AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le mar. 12 sept. 2023 09:02:40 +0200, a ecrit:
>> But there are still a few problematic things:
>
>Are these regressions over the previous state?

No. Its much better now, also with the other problems I still have.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 12:36:28AM +0200, Jérémy Prego wrote:
>for me, everything looks good compared to the version in debian testing

I've also installed the packages you build yesterday and did some testing.

The problem with the statusbar from apt seems to be gone, very cool, and 
also a ruptured console, that I had very ofthen after leaving mutt, did not 
occure so far. Thats a big improvement.

But there are still a few problematic things:

In some situations line breaks are not interpreted correctly. E.g. if
you install packages with apt and the triggers are processed you normaly get 
a seperate line for every trigger. With the new versions of the packages 
the output for all triggers are displayed in one long line. You can trigger 
this behaviour also with the translate tool. The following command displays 
the output in a long line instead dividing it into seperate lines:

translate -i occure

Also the problem that the screen content is not refreshed when deleting 
lines in a long text e.g. in the nano editor is still there. Just try the 
following:

ls -1 /dev > test.txt

Open the test.txt file, scrol down some pages and then delete a line with 
ctrl+k.

On my machine I have to clear the screen with ctrl+l to see that the line 
has been removed on the braille display.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: [orca] Re: (solved) orca's strange behavior in a crowded terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 09:25:44AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Ok, is it more problematic than the various erratic behaviors that the
>debian testing version has?

Yes :-(. For me also the new patch brings no real improvement but thank you 
so much to continue working on it.

A way to rupture the console is to update the packages on a system with apt. 
The progress line at the bottom seems to trigger the unwanted behaviour very 
reproducable :-).

Also with the new patch I had problems to quote e.g. your email in mutt 
using the nano editor. I deleted the lines I did not want to quote with 
ctrl+k, but the screen did not refresh and nothing happens on the braille 
display when using the shortcut to delete the lines. I had to press ctrl+l 
to clear the screen to get content refreshed.

Just out of curiosity: Is the problem related to libvte in general or is it 
related to the version in Debian? I am also using Debian testing. Because I 
have to use the terminal a lot I wonder if it could help to switch to 
another distro temporarily or on a second machine, which is really not what 
I want, but I need the system for my daily job...
Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: What's the most Accessible Linux VM Server Platform?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Al,

On Wed, Jul 12, 2023 at 01:09:43PM -0400, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
>I am thinking I'll run a Linux virtual machine and in that machine, I'll 
>run several small docker containers such as Pihole, Plex, and a few other 
>things.

No problem. This can be done with kvm / qemu and libvirt without any problem 
regarding accessibility. You can setup the VM via a virtual serial console 
connected and perform all  steps you would normaly do in the installer in 
this virtual terminal. Another approach is to use preseeding and let the 
installer perform all steps automaticaly. I am working with both aproaches 
very ofthen and I can provide instructions how to start the installer with 
serial console connected or with preseeding. Also I can provide a preseed 
file with all instructions for the installer.

If you have installed the virtual machine you can ssh into it and install 
docker and docker compose to get all applications you like to use up and 
running.

Thats the setup we have at work and it works very well. We install virtual 
linux machines more or less automated, configure them with ansible, ssh into 
the virtual machines and setup our docker based applications by providing 
the necessary docker-compose-yml files.

>I'll also want to be able to run a Windows environment with at least one 
>virtualized domain controller, so that will be its own full virtual machine.

Thats a little bit more tricky because you can't setup the Windows VM full 
automated. In this case I'd do the installation manualy on a local machine, 
e.g. your workstation or laptop and transfer the VM to a central server 
later, if everything in the VM is working and properly configured. the most 
difficult part to install a virtual Windows with kvm / qemu is to integrate 
the virtio drivers. Those drivers are not included in the Windows installer 
per default. It is possible to setup a Windows VM without those drivers, but 
the virtio drivers offer the best performance. You should use the virtio 
drivers for the virtualized harddisk, there a scsi disk is emulated, and for 
the network interfaces of the VM. The drivers are all stored on a ISO file 
which can be downloaded and added to the VM when it is started the first 
time for installation. After the Windows installer has started you can start 
Narrator, the Microsoft screen reader, and tell the Windows installer to use 
the virtio drivers for the harddisk and network interface. this is the most 
difficult part, but if this has been done the Windows installation can be 
finished with the Microsoft screen reader like on a normal computer.

When the VM is up and running localy you can configure your services and 
also install another screen reader, e.g. NVDA or Jaws. Also you can 
configure the remote access via spice. Spice is the technique to connect to 
virtual machines running with kvm / qemu. If this is working and you can 
connect from your local linux machine to the still localy running VM via 
spice and use the screen reader inside the VM, you can stop the VM and 
transfer it to your server. After the transfer is done you can connect to 
the remote VM either by its new ip or name, or you can configure the local 
management software for virtual machines running with libvirt to connect 
also  to the libvirt running daemon on your server.

I've done all those things without sigted help. The biggest issue was to get 
the Windows VM up and running and to include the virtio drivers, but this 
was more a problem because I am not so familiar with Windows, the Narrator 
screen reader and so on and not because it is a problem regarding 
accessibility. I've done all this things with Windows 10, but I think it 
should also work with Windows 11.

And of course you do not to use spice to connect to the remot VM, you could 
also use Nvda remote or the Jaws tandem technique or whatever you like and 
know and what is working with a screen reading software.

>Do I understand correctly that there's not much of a performance hit if 
>you run docker containers within a VM as opposed to on a bare metal host 
>system?

IMHO this depends on your hardware. If your host where the virtual machines 
are running on is powerfull enough you will not have any trouble regarding
performance. We sometimes have 20 docker deployments run inside a VM and 
this is OK as long as the host has enough RAM, fast disks (the best is to 
use ssds) and enough cpu power and as long you have configured enough 
ressources for the virtual machine. Especialy if you really want to use ZFS 
as the host filesystem the more RAM you have for the host system the better 
for the performance...

bTW.: We use ZFS for the data storage for our VMs and for the VMs itself we 
are using ext4 without LVM. If you make sure that the root file system is 
the last partition of all your VMs you can easily resize the harddisk, the 
root partition and the filesystem of the virtual machines without LVM. We do 
not have a seperate partition for the data 

Re: What's the most Accessible Linux VM Server Platform?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi all,

On Sun, Jul 09, 2023 at 10:31:29AM -0400, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
>I currently have a VMWare ESXI  host machine in my home lab. I’m considering
>alternative platforms and happy to experiment, but also don’t want to get part
>way down a rabbit hole and then realize I’m suddenly dealing with a bunch of
>hard to surmount accessibility issues.
>
>I’m also unsure about performing OS installs . is it possible to get audio over
>a VNC connection or something?
>
>The most popular solution seems to be Proxmox. However from what I can tell,
>There doesn’t seem to be an accessible Proxmox install option. I understand it
>can be installed over top of an existing Debian system but then you don’t get
>ZFS. Not sure how much that matters.

Thats not true. I am using Proxmox at work and we have installed it with ZFS 
on Debian. At least the data store for the VMs is on ZFS, not the root 
filesystem, but thats OK for us.

The Proxmox webinterface is not very useable, but all things regarding VMs 
and containers can be done via commandline when login to via ssh to one of 
your VM cluster nodes. Also everything regardin the vonfiguration of a 
Proxmox cluster itself can be done via commands or by editing textbased 
configfiles. It sometimes needs a bit more searching around to find the 
right commands, but I've really had no situation so far where I was not able 
to do my work or to perform the tasks to setup and configure VMs, configure 
replication, migrate VMs from one host to another, configure data stroes and 
so on.

We only run virtual machines with linux on our cluster, but I am very sure I 
will also be able to get Windows VMs up and running. I'd create such a VM 
localy with qemu / kvm and do the initial setup and then I'd transfer the 
image file of the VM to the cluster and import it into a VM.

If you need a cluster solution like Proxmox or if qemu / kvm is enough for 
your needs depdends on what you want. In my opinion Proxmox only makes sense 
when high availability is needed for the systems you need to run. If you 
do not need HA just using kvm / qemu is fine. And if you like to run pihole 
or similar applications you could use docker and run many of this kind of 
application on one host / vm only, that even easier.

If you tell more about what you like to achive and what are your needs and 
what applications you like to run on what operating systems I can tell you 
more about what software you can use.

In my daily job I do many things with virtual machines, linux containers or 
docker with or without Proxmox, on our Proxmox clusters or localy, so having 
more infos on your requirements can be helpfull to give better answers.
Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Cursor routing not longer working with kernel 6.3 on Debian testing

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel and all who replied to my request,

> Am 25.06.2023 um 18:12 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
> Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 23 juin 2023 16:37:45 +0200, a ecrit:
>> Is this a known issue with kernel 6.3?
> 
> Unfortunately, yes: TIOCSTI poses security problems so it got
> disabled by default. I had warned at that time that it was needed for
> accessibility and proposed solutions, but didn't hear back anything. Now
> that the regression is there and users complain, perhaps they'll
> listen...

Yes. I saw you opened a bug report, lets see what will happen. Thanks for 
opening the report!

For me it is OK to set 

dev.tty.legacy_tiocsti=1

in /etc/sysctlconf as a workaround like Rob suggested, thanks Rob for this hint!

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Cursor routing not longer working with kernel 6.3 on Debian testing

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

I am using Debian testing and today the kernel was updated to 
linux-image 6.3. Since this update the cursorrouting is not working 
anymore in the pure text console. In the graphical environment (Mate) 
and also in the settings menu of brltty the cursorrouting keys are 
working and everything is OK.


If the system is booted with the previous 6.1 kernel everything is 
working again without problems.


Is this a known issue with kernel 6.3? Are other users using the 6.3 
kernel and have the same problems or can this be related to my system? 
What can cause this issue?


Ciao and thanks for any hint,

  Schoepp

Re: How is unstable for dayly use?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

I am using Debian Testing for years on several systems, servers and 
workstations, without bigger problems.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello,


> Am 08.03.2023 um 01:18 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
> 
> I have updated the image above with the latest kernel from debian, which
> now includes sound drivers, could you download it again and try it?

I've also tried it and both installation with speech or braille worked on a M1 
Mac into a virtual machine.

Cheers and thanks,

  Schoepp

libvte gugs and Mate-Terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel and all,

do you know if the libvte problems have b een fixed in Bookworm that 
mess up the output in Mate- or XFCE-Terminal. Its still hard to use 
Mate-Terminal as a replace ment for the real textconsole, at least I can 
not use it for my daily job in many situations and still have to setup 
speech and braille for both environments.


Especialy for new users who do not know how to setup speech and braille 
for both environments a good working terminal would be esencial.


Can we do something that the libvte bugs to be fixed if they still 
exist? I guess they do, because I am using Debian Testing and I still 
have the problems in the terminal.


Ciao and thanks,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi again,

> Am 18.02.2023 um 10:48 schrieb Christian Schoepplein :
> One other big problem is again the not working caps lock key. AFAIK all key 
> shortcuts to read out the screen in the speech based installer do need this 
> key to navigate through the screen. So maybe I might have been able to 
> proceed with the installation if I were able to read what message the 
> partitioning tool disblayed or if I had know how to go back to the step 
> before and try it again, but I did not how to do that because I do not know 
> what keyboard shortcuts to use :-(.

OK, I tested a little more.

It is possible to use the CMD key as the screen readers key in the installer 
which works out of the box and where no further configuration is necessary to 
remap any keyboard key. That is also very good news.

The reason why I am not able to install the system is because of the missing 
kernel modules. The harddisk can not be found by the installer. But as 
mensioned before this seems to be because of a missmatch of the kernel in the 
installer and the mirror.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel, Frank and all,

sorry, had no time to work on this during the last days…

> Am 15.02.2023 um 00:21 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
> I have uploaded a test image, could you give it a try from:
> 
> https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/mini.iso
> 

Booting the ISO and start installation with speech support does work with this 
image.

However, during the installation process a error message that some kernel 
modules are missing in the kernel, that was downloaded from the mirror, came 
up. I was able to continue the installation till the disk partitioning dialog, 
then it crashed with an error or at least I was not able to proceed.

One other big problem is again the not working caps lock key. AFAIK all key 
shortcuts to read out the screen in the speech based installer do need this key 
to navigate through the screen. So maybe I might have been able to proceed with 
the installation if I were able to read what message the partitioning tool 
disblayed or if I had know how to go back to the step before and try it again, 
but I did not how to do that because I do not know what keyboard shortcuts to 
use :-(.

In general speech seems to work and this is very good news. Maybe the kernel 
module error message can be fixed or this message does not come up when the 
changes to the speech based installer has been integrated into the official 
installation ISO.

If I can do more tests, also with a newer ISO, or if you need more details, 
just let me know.

Ciao and thanks for all your support!

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi again,


> Am 13.02.2023 um 18:18 schrieb Frank Carmickle :
> Yet another thing likely needing work after I get something running, pc 
> speaker emulation. I'm guessing that we don't have it enabled in the appstore 
> build of utm. I hope to be wrong about this.

Yes, I think this does not work out of the box. But TBH I have also no pc 
speaker for years on all my other notebooks and although I missed it in the 
beginning now I am fine without it. But get it would be nice, of course.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Frank,

> Am 13.02.2023 um 18:18 schrieb Frank Carmickle :
> 
> The utm documentation at
> 
> https://docs.getutm.app
> 
> indicates that you can disable capslock, specifically for use with screen 
> readers. I have not figured out where you turn this setting on, as it isn't 
> in the app preferences on utm 4.1.5 (74), from the appstore, macos 13. I'll 
> keep digging.

Ah, thanks for this hint. I was not aware of this other settings before.

If you open the UTM preferences with cmd+,  you have a toolbar right before or 
above the program settings. I can’t tell you the English settings in this 
toolbar, because UTM is set to Germam, but per default the program settings are 
opened. Navigate to the place where toolbars are normaly and press the tab key. 
Then you will see that there are other items like display or input. In the 
input settings the caps lock preference can be changed, but a first quick try 
brought no success.

I am sure this will work, just have to find out how…

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Frank and all,

On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 03:05:50PM +0100, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>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.

OK, we took a look now.

When the installer is started, which happens very quick on a M1 Mac with 
UTM, the Accessibility Menu can be selected when pressing arrow down 4 times 
and then enter. Also a textbased installer is started when pressing "s".

But I was not able to get speechoutput working, no matter which sound card 
I've selected for the virtual machine configuration.

Braille is working when i start the normal installer, just press enter when 
the bootmanager has finished loading.

When a braille device is connected to the VM and "s" is pressed in the 
bootmanager menu nothing happens, no braille, no speech.

When a braille device is connected and the menu item for the accessible 
installer is selected there is also no braille and no speech.

So, the only working installation method for the arm64 installer is with 
braille at the moment it seems and there are sometimes big problems with the 
output on the braille device. In many situations only parts of the different 
installation items are displayed, e.g. only three times guided and one times 
manual in the section for partitioning the harddrive, nothing about LVM, 
encryption and these things.

I've used a braille device with 40 elements and I can test also with 80 
element, but I think in general the arm64 installer needs some more love to 
work as good as the installer for amd64 systems.

But if you have a braille device and if you know how to install Debian and 
know the substeps of the installationprocess a little bit, installing an 
arm64 system is possible.

I can also upload a preconfigured VM with speech support enabled and brltty 
installed onto one of my servers if wanted. UTM also offers preconfigured VM 
images, so why not ask them to upload a preconfigured virtual machine or a 
template there?

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

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  
>> 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 i

Re: debian installer accessibility for arm64

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 12, 2023 at 09:07:14PM -0500, Frank Carmickle wrote:
>I'm trying to boot the debian installer image for arm64 under the utm 
>wrapped qemu on Macos.

I've just installed Debian this way on a M1 Mac yesterday with braille.

>I've tried different emulated sound devices but the modules are not being 
>loaded for any sound cards.

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...

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.

If anyone has an idea what needs to be done for remapping capslock to e.g. 
the insert key please let me know. Maybe I can do the remapping in the linux 
VM and Karabiner-Elements is not needed, which would be much better.

Also I noticed some strange output on my brailledevice during installation 
and the different parts of the installer were somehow not displayed that 
good as using the installer on a normal PC. I'd like also to take another 
look into this issue, because the installer should be as good to use as on 
other architectures.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: installing Debian From Working Debian

[Christian Schoepplein]

On 12/1/22 03:19, K0LNY_Glenn wrote:

I'm wondering if there is a way to install a clean install of Debian x86,
same bullseye version that is on the machine, to an external drive, so 
I can boot to it?


You can use debootstrap to install Debian from another Debian or other 
already installed Linux system. This process is documented many times on 
the web, just google for "debootstrap install debian" or similar.


Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: replace pulseaudio with pipewire

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 06:37:43AM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:
>Thanks this worked.  Though it's possible either my sources.list is
>missing an entry or pipewire.pulse got deprecated and removed from the
>archives.

Sorry, maybe my last message contained a typo. The package is called 
pipewire-pulse... IMHO without this package no sound would be possible, so I 
am sure it is also installed on your system.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: replace pulseaudio with pipewire

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

Am 09.10.22 um 16:49 schrieb Jude DaShiell:

What should be done to replace pulseaudio with pipewire and have the
screen reader come up and talk?


I my case on Debian testing it was enough to remove the pulseaduio 
package and install pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber. After a 
reboot sound was still there in Mate and also in textbased console.


I know other users who had to select the right soundcard in the audio 
settings of Mate to get sound back, if you also work with a 
brailledisplay this should be possible also without sound.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: debian images to include non-free firmwares?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

Am 27.08.2022 um 21:00 schrieb john doe:




To me [1] makes perfect sense.

[1]  https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003#textb


+1

For me the non-free installer is the default. My priva te notebooks 
can't be installed without non-free firmware and also at work we need 
non-free firmware on our servers :-(. So including the non-free stuff 
into the installer by default will help in many situations and many 
people and make things much more easier very ofthen IMHO.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Some times no sound after login into Mate

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,


Am 02.05.2022 um 16:31 schrieb Samuel Thibault:

Christian Schoepplein, le lun. 02 mai 2022 08:40:35 +0200, a ecrit:

sometimes, when I want to use the laptop without the headset, no sound
is there after login into Mate.  To get sound back the only working
fix is to plugin the headset and plug it of again.


[...]

Is this another bad issue with pulseaudio and might a switch to
pipewire help?


I'd tend to believe so.


Yes, it is.

When I have no sound after booting the system

pacmd list-sinks

just shows the null device. I get sound back when I the current 
pulseaudio process for my session with


pulseaudio -k

Very strange. Pulseaudio really sucks :-(.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Some times no sound after login into Mate

[Christian Schoepplein]

Am 02.05.22 um 17:11 schrieb Didier Spaier:

Le 02/05/2022 à 16:31, Samuel Thibault a écrit :

Christian Schoepplein, le lun. 02 mai 2022 08:40:35 +0200, a ecrit:

Is this another bad issue with pulseaudio and might a switch to
pipewire help?

I'd tend to believe so.

Or use alsa, possibly through libao.



I think then I will have problems when connecting USB headsets which I 
have to do for work. One of the reasons for pulseaudio is automatic 
switching the output device, especialy when they are connected via USB. 
Will this work with   alsa or libao also?



Anything that helps me to get rid of the pulseaudio crap is wellcome :-).


Cheers,


  Schoepp

Some times no sound after login into Mate

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

with Debian 11, latest updates and backports enabled, I very ofthen have the 
problem that no sound is available after login into Mate. I normaly use a 
headset for work and when this headset is plugged in all is fine. But 
sometimes, when I want to use the laptop without the headset, no sound is 
there after login into Mate. Sometimes a reboot fixes this issue, very 
ofthen this does not help. To get sound back the only working fix is to 
plugin the headset and plug it of again.

Strangely this whole thing is totaly random. Sometimes its working wit or 
without a headset  for days, but e.g. this morning even two reboots did not 
bring sound back with no headset plugged in.

Is there a reproducable way or configuration I can have sound in Mate in 
all situations and where it does not matter if a headset is plugged in or 
not? Is this another bad issue with pulseaudio and might a switch to 
pipewire help?

Ciao and thanks for any helpfull hint,

  Schoepp

Re: Skipping disk erase on Debian text-based installation (fwd)

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,


> Am 01.05.2022 um 02:04 schrieb Nick Gawronski :
> Hi, I had to reinstall debian and like to encrypt my installations.  
> Regardless of what installation image I use I find that no choice exists to 
> not do the complete wiping of the disk before the LVM manager is setup.  I 
> get that it will be possible to press control and c to stop the process but 
> having an option like a choice in the last step asking if you wish to do this 
> complete wipe would be better.  If the system was already encrypted and all 
> you were doing was doing a reinstallation then going threw that process again 
> to me is pointless.  Is this something that could possibly be looked at 
> for a future release?

I’ve installed Debian with a crypted LVM a few times during the last two months 
with braille support and I was able to cancel the wiping process of the 
harddisk during installation without a problem. Do not know how it is when 
installation is done with speech support only.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian backports for bullsey?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 25, 2022 at 03:46:33PM -0400, ilovecountrymusic...@gmail.com wrote:
>Using Debian Bullsey and find that there doesn’t seem to be a backports for
>Debian 11 bulseye at least not for kepping the accessibility stack updated.  I
>am guessing that this is not available yet? 

I have the following in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bullseye-backports.list and 
can install e.g. newer orca or brltty versions and other actual 
accessibility packages:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-backports main contrib non-free

Just:

apt -t bullseye-backports update
apt -t bullseye-backports upgrade 

or

apt -t bullseye-backports install orca

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: HOw to get more than 6 consoles in Bullseye

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Sat, Mar 19, 2022 at 10:30:38PM +0200, Geoff Shang wrote:
>
>I like to use 24 consoles.  But I just installed BullsEye on a VM and I can't
>figure out how to get any more than the default 6.

Why not using tmux to get as many consoles you need?

I was also using more then the 6 consoles in the past but because I needed 
tmux for my job anyway I prefere this solution on current systems.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Crypted LVM and beep tones

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

I have to crypt my harddisk for my working laptop. Allthough it is no 
big problem to enter the encryption password some seconds after grub I 
wonder if a acustical signal could be played that tells me that the 
password prompt is displayed. Also a signal about successfully entered 
the password or not would be really cool.


Does anyone know if acustical signals are possible for the described 
situation? Beep tones like for grub would be absolutely enough.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: One of the latest Debian update broke speech output :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 11:44:42AM +, Jordan Livesey wrote:
>I was able to install it with the speech so it hasn't broken that, and. Plus
>olka works, so there's nothing wrong. , are you using version 11?


Yes, I am using the newest branch of Debian 11. Because I need speech in 
cosole and also for Orca in Mate desktop a standard setup of Debian does not 
work, at least I do not how. So its necessary that you configure the system 
after a fresh install to have speech in console and Mate and it might be 
that my problems are related to one of the changes I did to have speech in 
both environments.

However, restarting brltty after a reboot does enable speech again...

I'll research this further on during the next days...

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: One of the latest Debian update broke speech output :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 10:32:50AM +0100, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>Am 29.12.2021 um 09:30 schrieb Christian Schoepplein:
>> 
>> one of the latest updates for my system, latest Debian Bullseye,  broke
>> speech output on my system. I do have the normal Debian repos activated,
>> aditionaly I am using debian backports. Yesterday everything was fine but
>> today there is no more speech output for a normal user and I ha ve not
>> rebooted my systems.
>
>May it be that something has changed for brltty-speechd, speech-dispatcher
>and atspi?
>
>I am using the brltty-speechd module and if I open up brltty preferences menu
>I am seeing a new submenu for automated speech which IIRC was not
>there before...
>
>However, automated speech is enabled for brltty and all other settings
>releated to speech are also looking OK for me, but maybe this is something
>new and is releated to my problem.
>
>The Bullseye updates from yes terday contained new packages for
>speech-dispatcher, orca and so on, seems like there is something problema tic
>with them for my sys tem :-(.

OK. I did an

apt -t bullseye-backports reinstall brltty-speechd

After this command brltty is restarted and speech is back for a normal user 
and also root on the console.

However, rebooting the system results again in an environment without speech 
until I reinstall the package again...

Any ideas?

Cheers and thanks for your support,

  Schoepp

Re: One of the latest Debian update broke speech output :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Am 29.12.2021 um 09:30 schrieb Christian Schoepplein:


one of the latest updates for my system, latest Debian Bullseye,  broke 
speech output on my system. I do have the normal Debian repos activated, 
aditionaly I am using debian backports. Yesterday everything was fine 
but today there is no more speech output for a normal user and I ha ve 
not rebooted my systems.


May it be that something has changed for brltty-speechd, 
speech-dispatcher and atspi?


I am using the brltty-speechd module and if I open up brltty preferences 
menu I am seeing a new submenu for automated speech which IIRC was not

there before...

However, automated speech is enabled for brltty and all other settings 
releated to speech are also looking OK for me, but maybe this is 
something new and is releated to my problem.


The Bullseye updates from yes terday contained new packages for 
speech-dispatcher, orca and so on, seems like there is something 
problema tic with them for my sys tem :-(.


Ciao,

  Schoepp

One of the latest Debian update broke speech output :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

one of the latest updates for my system, latest Debian Bullseye,  broke 
speech output on my system. I do have the normal Debian repos activated, 
aditionaly I am using debian backports. Yesterday everything was fine 
but today there is no more speech output for a normal user and I ha ve 
not rebooted my systems.


Because I need speech in console and orca I am running pulseaudio in the 
not recommented daemon mode. My normal user and also the 
speech-dispatcher user are members of the pulseaudio and 
pulseaudio-access group. I can run a spd-say as root and speech is 
there, but as a normal user running spd-say produces no output and the 
program is hanging.


Has anyone an idea whats going on there?

If more information about my setup are needed just let me know.

Cheers and thanks for any idea to get a propper working system back,

  Schoepp

Re: Bootable linux cd iso image with ssh daemon activated

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 01:48:31AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>john doe, le jeu. 09 déc. 2021 08:45:41 +0100, a ecrit:
>> The last time I checked, the Debian Installer was using the ncurses
>> interface for the SSH server which was unaccessible.
>
>?
>It uses whatever interface was selected. If you boot with speech
>enabled, it will use a pure-text interface. If you boot with default
>ncurses mode, it will use the ncurses interface.

How can I enable a ssh server when booting a machine with a Debian 
installer ISO? I did not know that this ispossible at all...

And if it is possible to start sshd, how can this be automated? Do I have to 
modify the ISO to get this working?

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Bootable linux cd iso image with ssh daemon activated

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 08:45:41AM +0100, john doe wrote:
>In general, the router GUI interfaces are not screenreader friendly.
>That would be lovely if the DHCP client could send an hostname that is
>unic on the network making the hostname an alternative to using an IP.
Search for the host sysrescue, that is what the cd is using.

>The last time I checked, the Debian Installer was using the ncurses
>interface for the SSH server which was unaccessible.

thats not the case with the system rescue cd. If you login via ssh you have 
a normal shell, zsh I think.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Bootable linux cd iso image with ssh daemon activated

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello,

some weeks ago I've created a bootable linux cd ISO image which has ssh 
enabled and allows login remotely as root. Now I've created another image 
which has also included brltty. After booting this ISO you can still 
connect via ssh, but also a connected braille device should be detected and 
brltty should be started.

Both ISOs can be written to a USB stick and used as bootmedia e.g. to have 
a powerfull rescue system. Because the ISOs are based on the well known 
SystemRescue CD many usefull tools are included out of the box:

https://www.system-rescue.org

The cd contains many usefull tools for different administrative tasks, see 
here for more infos about the included tools, but the programms which need a 
grafical environment will not be useable and speech support has to be 
configured manulay if wanted:

https://www.system-rescue.org/System-tools/

If a package is missing it can be installed after booting the cd, the whole 
system is based on Arch linux. 

You can download the ISO files, with and without brltty included, here:

https://download.schoeppi.net/systemrescuecd-custom/

After booting the cd your computer will get a dynamic ip address in your 
network. You can get this address e.g. by scanning your network or via your 
routers webinterface. If you know the address you can connect via ssh with 
the following userdata, the ssh daemon is activated on both ISOs:

Username: root
Password: geheim

I am using the cd to install new linux machines or as a rescue system for my 
home server or virtual servers which I am administrating and which are 
running at a provider.

If you have questions or ideas regarding the cd just let me know!

Have fun with the ISOs! I hope you find the cd also that usefull and 
helpfull as I do ;-).

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Bootable linux cd iso image with ssh daemon activated

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello,

I've created a bootable linux cd ISO image which has ssh enabled and alows 
login as root. I thought this might be also usefull for you, because I was 
searching around the net for such a cd and did not find anything which was 
working out of the box. The ISO can also be written to a USB stick and used 
as bootmedia, but this I have not tested yet.

The ISO is based on the well known SystemRescue CD:

https://www.system-rescue.org

The cd contains many usefull tools for different administrative tasks, see 
here for more infos about the included tools, but the programms which need a 
grafical environment will not be useable:

https://www.system-rescue.org/System-tools/

If a package is missing it can be installed after booting the cd, the whole 
system is based on Arch linux. So it should be possible to also install and 
run brltty for example

You can download the ISO file with ssh deamon enabled here:

https://download.schoeppi.net/systemrescuecd-custom/

After booting the cd your computer will get a dynamic ip address in your 
network. You can get this address e.g. by scanning your network or via your 
routers webinterface. If you know the address you can connect via ssh with 
the following userdata:

Username: root
Password: geheim

I am using the cd to install new linux machines or as a rescue system for my 
home server or VServers which I am administrating and which are running at a 
provider.

If new versions of the SystemRescue CD will be available I'll update the ISO 
with the enabled ssh daemon on my server to always have the actual versions 
of the tools included on the cd.

If you have questions or ideas regarding the cd just let me know!

Have fun with the ISO, I hope you find the cd also that usefull and 
helpfull as I do ;-).

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

Am 12.05.2021 um 12:10 schrieb Samuel Thibault:


Normally if you install with speech, the levels during the installer
(which apparently with vmware may need to get bumped thanks to the
speakup shortcut) will get propagated.

So you were actually talking about the volume of the orca speech at the
lightdm session banner? Please always be really precise when reporting
bugs, otherwise it's a pain to try to divine which information we are
missing.


Sorry if that was not clear, I thought I was specific enough. I'll try 
to explain better in future ;-).



Now, after a reboot of the new installed VM, a file
/var/lib/alsa/asound.state does exist. But still volume is to low to
hear the speech output.


Sure, the file is just recording the level that you are getting by
default from the sound card driver.


OK. but why did I not have this volume problem before? I have not tested 
it, but I can't remember this problem with Debian Buster. I always got 
systems where volume was loud enough to start working with Orca without 
a problem and without the need to increase the volume manualy.


If you like I can install a fresh Debian Buster to reproduce if the same 
problem does occure or not.


Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

Am 12.05.2021 um 10:36 schrieb Samuel Thibault:


Mmm, were you actually using speech synthesis during the installer?  We
copy over the audio parameters only if speech was used.


I was not using speech during installation, only braille... Thats how I 
install and use Debian systems for years. I install only with braille 
support and start to use braille plus speech after the installation has 
finished.


Now, after a reboot of the new installed VM, a file 
/var/lib/alsa/asound.state does exist. But still volume is to low to 
hear the speech output.



Also, can you send me (privately since it contains installation-time
passwords) /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat ? It seems you get
an error at the localechooser step.


Will send you the file just after this message.

Ciao and thanks,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 10:23:30PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le sam. 08 mai 2021 15:03:54 +0200, a ecrit:
>> On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 11:40:49AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>> >Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 07 mai 2021 22:20:32 +0200, a ecrit:
>> >> > Am 23.04.2021 um 10:50 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
>> >> >> * espeakup:
>> >> >>- Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system.
>> >> 
>> >> I’ve installed two Bullseye systems with the rc1 installer. today While 
>> >> the installation with braille support worked perfectly, after the 
>> >> installation the sound volume was that low, aht no speech output was 
>> >> possible. 
>> >> 
>> >> Is this a known issue?
>> >
>> >No, on the contrary, the fix mentioned above is supposed to fix that
>> >kind of issue...
>> >
>> >Just to make sure:
>> >- Do you end up with the alsa-utils package installed?
>> 
>> Yes, the package is there after the installation
>> 
>> >- Do you end up with a /var/lib/alsa/asound.state file on the installed
>> >  system?
>> >- Please post the content of that file
>> 
>> The file ist also there. It looks like this:
>> 
>
>>  control.2 {
>>  iface MIXER
>>  name 'Master Playback Volume'
>>  value.0 63
>>  value.1 63
>>  comment {
>>  range '0 - 63'
>>  }
>
>So that's the maximum
>
>>  control.17 {
>>  iface MIXER
>>  name 'PCM Playback Volume'
>>  value.0 51
>>  value.1 51
>>  comment {
>>  range '0 - 63'
>
>So that's not the maximum, but that's already very large.
>
>Is the timestamp (see "stat /var/lib/alsa/asound.state") still dated the
>time of your installation, and not of your fixing the sound levels?
>
>I tried to reproduce the issue with vmware but didn't get the bug at
>all, at reboot I had completely onrmal levels. Which version of vmware
>are you using? Which VM profile did you tell vmware?

I've now installed a fresh system to reproduce the problem taht no sound is 
there after installation.

These are the packages related to alsa after installation:

root@debian:~# dpkg -l | grep alsa
ii  alsa-topology-conf1.2.4-1 all   
   ALSA topology
 configuration files
ii  alsa-ucm-conf 1.2.4-2 all   
   ALSA Use Case
 Manager configuration files
ii  alsa-utils1.2.4-1 amd64 
   Utilities for
 configuring and using ALSA
root@debian:~#

the file /var/lib/alsa/asound.state is not present directly after the 
installatio :-( :

root@debian:~# ls /var/lib/alsa/
root@debian:~#

Braille is working...

I've used the latest RC of Debian Bullsey. The system has been installed into a 
virtual machine in VMware Workstation Pro 15.5.7 running on a Dell XPS 13 
laptop with the latest Windows 10 Home edition as the host system.

If you need more infos or if I can test other things you like to know just let 
me know.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 10:23:30PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>> >- Do you end up with a /var/lib/alsa/asound.state file on the installed
>> >  system?
>> >- Please post the content of that file
>> 
>> The file ist also there. It looks like this:
>> 
>
>>  control.2 {
>>  iface MIXER
>>  name 'Master Playback Volume'
>>  value.0 63
>>  value.1 63
>>  comment {
>>  range '0 - 63'
>>  }
>
>So that's the maximum
>
>>  control.17 {
>>  iface MIXER
>>  name 'PCM Playback Volume'
>>  value.0 51
>>  value.1 51
>>  comment {
>>  range '0 - 63'
>
>So that's not the maximum, but that's already very large.
>
>Is the timestamp (see "stat /var/lib/alsa/asound.state") still dated the
>time of your installation, and not of your fixing the sound levels?

To be honest, I am not sure because I increased the sound directly after the 
installation. I'll do another installation later this evening or tomorow and 
reporort back if the problem with the volume still occures and I'll post 
asound.conf file directly from after the installation.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Problems when using brltty in the terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Sebastian,

On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 04:50:56PM +0200, Sebastian Humenda wrote:
>
>BRLTTY uses `-x a2`, i.e. it uses the at-spi2 screen driver. This is the way
>for BRLTTY to capture the output of the MATE terminal.
>BRLTTY supports these days a few more controls which is why it shows something
>on the display, even if Orca is turned off.

OK, thats the reason why content in graphical applications is spoken even when 
Orca is turned off and brltty is running with speech support enabled in the 
Mate terminal.

>Why is this a problem? Ora has in non-terminal windows a priority and will 
>outrule BRLTTY on the at-spi bus.

The problem is that content is spoken twice if Orca and brltty with speech 
support is running athe same time. E.g. if I open the application menu the 
entry for Internet is anounced with "Application Internet Graphic Internet". 
the same for all other content. This is anoying and makes the system unuseable 
till the instance of brltty in the terminal is turned off. I can record the 
speech output to demonstrate the problem better if you like.

Seems like the priorization of Orca and brltty is not working  in my case. 

On the other hand I know people with an Ubuntu system and an older version of 
brltty who have this setup up and running perfectly.

So maybe something is wrong with my setup or with the packages and versions in 
Bullseye.

@Sebastian: Have you a working configuration with the packages from the 
Bullseye installer where speech support is working at the same time for Orca 
and for a brltty instance in the Mate terminal without getting content spoken 
twice?



Cheers,

  Schoepp

Problems when using brltty in the terminal

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello,

I have a fresh Bullseye installation and Orca and brltty are working fine in 
the Mate environment.

To have also a working environment which is good to use in the textbased  world 
I've installed brltty-x11. The idea was to start another brltty in the Mate 
terminal. which runs seperated from Orca.

For the setup I

1. Installed brltty-x11 and brltty-speechd.
2. Enabled speech-dispatcher support in /etc/brltty.conf.
3. Edited the file  /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90xbrlapi and removed the "-s no" 
parameter for the startcommand of brltty.
4. Disabled speech and braille support in the Orca profile for the Mate 
terminal.

When I now open a new Mate terminal a new instance of brltty ist started  with 
speech support, so far so good.

But it seems, and that is totaly not understandable for me, that the brltty 
also is able to read things in ghe graphical environment. Wehn I open the 
application menu for example with Alt + F1 the entries are also outputed by the 
speech system, when no Orca and also only the brltty in the terminal with 
speech support is running.

It sems that when brltty is used with the "-x a2" parameter, which I have to 
use in the Mate terminal, something is also send or read by the atspy2 layer 
which should be IMHO not the case.

Does someone have one idea how I can prevent this behaviour? Is this a known 
issue or a bug with brltty, atspy or whatever?

I hope I was able to explain my problem in a understanddable way. the goal is 
to have speech support for brltty in the Mate terminal totaly seperated to the 
speech support from Orca. this seems to work basicaly, but I do not understand 
why elements of the Mate environment are read also by the brltty instance which 
is running in the terminal...

Any hint would be helpfull. If more infos are neede, please let me also know.

Cheers and thanks,

  Schoepp

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 11:40:49AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 07 mai 2021 22:20:32 +0200, a ecrit:
>> > Am 23.04.2021 um 10:50 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
>> >> * espeakup:
>> >>- Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system.
>> 
>> I’ve installed two Bullseye systems with the rc1 installer. today While the 
>> installation with braille support worked perfectly, after the installation 
>> the sound volume was that low, aht no speech output was possible. 
>> 
>> Is this a known issue?
>
>No, on the contrary, the fix mentioned above is supposed to fix that
>kind of issue...
>
>Just to make sure:
>- Do you end up with the alsa-utils package installed?

Yes, the package is there after the installation

>- Do you end up with a /var/lib/alsa/asound.state file on the installed
>  system?
>- Please post the content of that file

The file ist also there. It looks like this:

---
state.AudioPCI {
control.1 {
iface MIXER
name 'Master Playback Switch'
value true
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.2 {
iface MIXER
name 'Master Playback Volume'
value.0 63
value.1 63
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
range '0 - 63'
dbmin -9450
dbmax 0
dbvalue.0 0
dbvalue.1 0
}
}
control.3 {
iface MIXER
name 'Phone Playback Switch'
value false
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.4 {
iface MIXER
name 'Phone Playback Volume'
value.0 0
value.1 0
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
range '0 - 63'
dbmin -3450
dbmax 6000
dbvalue.0 -3450
dbvalue.1 -3450
}
}
control.5 {
iface MIXER
name 'Mic Playback Switch'
value false
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.6 {
iface MIXER
name 'Mic Playback Volume'
value.0 0
value.1 0
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
range '0 - 63'
dbmin -3450
dbmax 6000
dbvalue.0 -3450
dbvalue.1 -3450
}
}
control.7 {
iface MIXER
name 'Mic Boost (+20dB)'
value false
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.8 {
iface MIXER
name 'Line Playback Switch'
value false
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.9 {
iface MIXER
name 'Line Playback Volume'
value.0 0
value.1 0
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
range '0 - 63'
dbmin -3450
dbmax 6000
dbvalue.0 -3450
dbvalue.1 -3450
}
}
control.10 {
iface MIXER
name 'CD Playback Switch'
value false
comment {
access 'read write'
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.11 {
iface MIXER
name 'CD Playback Volume'
value.0 0
value.1 0
comment {
access 'read write'
   

Re: Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hello,

> Am 23.04.2021 um 10:50 schrieb Samuel Thibault :
> 
> Cyril Brulebois, le ven. 23 avril 2021 07:21:43 +0200, a ecrit:
>> The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first
>> release candidate of the installer for Debian 11 "Bullseye".
> 
> And notably for this list:
> 
>> * brltty:
>>- Updated to version 6.3
>>- Update udev rules.
>> * espeakup:
>>- Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system.

I’ve installed two Bullseye systems with the rc1 installer. today While the 
installation with braille support worked perfectly, after the installation the 
sound volume was that low, aht no speech output was possible. 

I was able to  turn up the volume because I had a braille display, with ot 
braille support the system would have been unuseable :-(.

Is this a known issue?

I’ve installed the new system into a virtual machine (VMware) on two different 
hardware.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Thunderbird wil become a webbased application in near future :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi and again sorry for the X-posting,

Am 08.02.2021 um 12:32 schrieb Sebastian Humenda:


Christian Schoepplein schrieb am 08.02.2021, 11:26 +0100:

regarding to a presentation at FOSDEM 2021 it is planed to make Thunderbird
more and more a webbased application based on Electron.


I have only read secondary sources, but AFAIU it is going to be web-based as
the Firefox GUI already is. For instance, the settings dialog in Firefox is a
HTML/CSS/JS interface and Thunderbird should become alike. Did they explicitly
say Electron?


Sorry, I have also heard it via secondary sources, but now I was 
searching for myself to find out if Electron will be used or not..., and 
it will not be used.


Instead a mixture of ES6-javascript/HTML5 will be the code to build the 
new interface and that is already used for the settings dialog IMHO.


I ahve no idea if thats better then Electron  or if it will cause more 
problems regarding accessibility..., we will see.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Thunderbird wil become a webbased application in near future :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi and sorry for the X-posting...,

regarding to a presentation at FOSDEM 2021 it is planed to make 
Thunderbird more and more a webbased application based on Electron.


I wonder what that means regarding to accessibility in Thunderbird in 
general and what graphical mailer will be available for Linux if 
Thunderbird might become inaccessible or at least very inefficient 
regarding to useability when it is a full webbased program. Also it is 
very unclear how good Thunderbird will be accessible on other plattforms 
when they change the UI that much..., so it is not only a question how 
good Thunderbird will be useable on Linux in future...


Is anyone in touch with the Thunderbird developers and can find out more 
about their plans and how much they will have accessibility in mind?


I fear they do not care much about accessibility, so the next question 
is what can we do to bring this isue more into the public?


It would be really sad to loose the only really free and good to use 
graphical mailer for Linux, and also for Windows there are not much 
alternatives left...


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 04:38:03PM +0300, Geoff Shang wrote:
>On Fri, 5 Jun 2020, Christian Schoepplein wrote:
>
>> I unfortunatly have to use Debian in a virtual machine on a Windows 10
>> system. The virtualitation software I am using is VMware Workstation 15.
>> 
>> Since the latest update of VMware Workstation to the version 15.5.5 the
>> sound output and therefore also the speech output is stucking. It sounds
>> like the system is under heavy load and speech is only outputed in
>> fragments with little breaks in between... Its a little bit difficult to
>> explain...
>
>I also use Debian in VMWare Player 15 under windows 10 for work.
>
>Fortunately, I've not updated to 15.5.5 and I won't now thanks to your
>warning.

VMware has released VMware Workstation 15.5.6 and VMware Player 15.5.6 and it 
seems that the update has resolved the sound problems, at leas my systems are 
running fine again after upgrading to this newest release...

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Geoff,

Am 05.06.2020 um 15:38 schrieb Geoff Shang:


I also use Debian in VMWare Player 15 under windows 10 for work.

Fortunately, I've not updated to 15.5.5 and I won't now thanks to your 
warning.


I've also tested VMware player 15.5.5, unfortunatly with the same bad 
result :-(. Its not as bad as with VMware Workstation, but its also not 
as good with the version before.


Seems you aren't alone: 
https://server.vpnwp.com/vmware/vmware-distorted-choppy-audio-windows-host-linux-kubuntu-vm/ 


Cool, thanks for the link!


This probably makes it more likely that VMWare will fix it.


Yes, lets hope it!

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Alex,

Am 05.06.2020 um 13:41 schrieb Alex ARNAUD:


If a VMware update broke your sound system, couldn't be easier to 
contact them directly?


I will try and ofcourse I tried to find other users that have reported 
similar problems with the latest VMware update, but I do not have much 
hope that VMware support is able to help :-(. but lets see


Cheers and a niche weekend to all!

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Am 05.06.2020 um 12:36 schrieb Samuel Thibault:

Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 05 juin 2020 12:08:24 +0200, a ecrit:

speech-dispatcher 0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins:amd64 0.9.0-5+deb10u1


Ok, so this includes the latest fixes.

Just wondering: did you try to play e.g. some music to see if the
problem is specific to speech-dispatcher, or more general?


Sorry, that I forgot to mension. It is more general and also afects 
playing music, e.g. So it is not speech-dispatcher related.


I will try another aproach for soundoutput without pulse and maybe I'll 
quickly install a new Debian VM to see if that helps and if it is 
something related to my current installation. Also I'll see if I can get 
help from VMware, but there I do not have much hope :-(.


Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 12:15:37PM +0300, Всеволод Попов wrote:
>How did you manage to install debian on a vmWare workstation? Each time when I 
>tried to do that with the text installer I didn't get any luck. The sound was 
>disabled in some point. Right after I started the instalation.

I was able to install the VMs with braille support. Attaching the usb braille 
device to the machine and start it with an installation iso was no problem. I 
have not tested an installation just with speech output...

Do you have a braille device you can use with Linux?

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Didier,

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 11:46:17AM +0200, Didier Spaier wrote:
>Maybe OT, but very possibly Qemu does a better job than VMware Workstation 15.
>
>At least its audio is very good, with a choice between several sound cards.

I know Qemu and I use it on other systems to run Windows or Linux systems as 
guests on linux servers. Everything is fine and maybe another way to go is to 
switch from Windows to Linux as the hostsystem, but as already said this will 
not be possible for my computer I need for my job because of security policies 
:-(.

I did not use Qemu on a Windows host and I wonder how hardware integration is 
working. Can usb braille displays easily be switched between the host and the 
guest system? How good is this working? Is anyone using Qemu on Windows already?

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 10:01:44AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein, le ven. 05 juin 2020 09:44:14 +0200, a ecrit:
>> the sound output and therefore also the speech output is stucking. It
>> sounds like the system is under heavy load and speech is only outputed
>> in fragments with little breaks in between.
>
>Just to be sure:
>
>- what is your environment? text console with speakup? graphical with
>  orca? Which speech synthesis?

I have configured pulse audio to run in daemon mode because I do not know 
another method to have speech enabled in the graphical environment and also 
with brltty in the text console. I know that is not recommended but I do not 
know another way to setup a system if you need textbased and graphical 
environment at the same time :-(. I can post more details on my config if 
needed.

>- what is your distribution? what is the version of speech-dispatcher?

Debian 10.4 with buster backports enabled and mate 1.20.2. The other 
interesting packages are IMHO:

brltty6.0+dfsg-5~bpo10+1
brltty-speechd6.0+dfsg-5~bpo10+1
espeak-ng-data:amd64  1.50+dfsg-6~bpo10+1
libespeak-ng1:amd64   1.50+dfsg-6~bpo10+1
gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64 1.14.4-1
libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64 13.0-3~bpo10+1
libpulse0:amd64   13.0-3~bpo10+1
libpulsedsp:amd64 13.0-3~bpo10+1
pulseaudio13.0-3~bpo10+1
pulseaudio-utils  13.0-3~bpo10+1
libspeechd2:amd64 0.9.0-5+deb10u1
python3-speechd   0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher 0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins:amd64 0.9.0-5+deb10u1
speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng   0.9.0-5+deb10u1
orca  3.36.2-1~bpo10+1

Everything worked perfectly before the VMware update with VMware Workstation 
15.5.2, the problems started with the latest version of VMware 15.5.5. Wndows 
is warning because the older version of VMware Workstation that I have to use 
now, so not doing the update will be no good choice for a longer periode of 
time and also not because of security policies of my employer :-(.

Cheers and thanks for any hint or help!

  Schoepp

Re: Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Sebastian,

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 10:50:31AM +0200, Sebastian Humenda wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein schrieb am 05.06.2020,  9:44 +0200:
>>I unfortunatly have to use Debian in a virtual machine on a Windows 10
>>system. The virtualitation software I am using is VMware Workstation 15.
>>
>>Since the latest update of VMware Workstation to the version 15.5.5 the sound
>>output and therefore also the speech output is stucking. It sounds like the
>>system is under heavy load and speech is only outputed in fragments with
>>little breaks in between...
>[…]
>
>It might be unrelated, it might be similar. I'm using VirtualBox with a
>console-only, pulse-disabled Debian stable. If this doesn't match your set up,
>skip this e-mail :).

How did you get rid of pulse-audio? What are the necessary steps to configure 
this?

I do not think that we have the same problem because before the VMware update 
everything worked perfectly. In my case I think it is VMware related, 
unfortunatly :-(. Switching to another virtualizer is not possible because to 
security policies of my employer :-(.

Cheers,

  Schoepp

Audio problems with Debian, speech output and the latest VMware Workstation release :-(

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

I unfortunatly have to use Debian in a virtual machine on a Windows 10 
system. The virtualitation software I am using is VMware Workstation 15.


Since the latest update of VMware Workstation to the version 15.5.5 the 
sound output and therefore also the speech output is stucking. It sounds 
like the system is under heavy load and speech is only outputed in 
fragments with little breaks in between... Its a little bit difficult to 
explain...


I have to systems with the same configuration and on both systems the 
problem occures. I've changed nothing in the virtual linux system and on 
the host system itself, only VMware Workstation was updated to the 
latest version (15.5.5). So I am very sure it is a problem with VMware 
Workstation


I just want to ask if anyone here is also using VMware Workstation on 
Windows 10 and has the same problems after the last update. And maybe 
anyone has an idea how to solve the problems, maybe I can do something 
on the linux system or in the settings of the VM. I downgrated the 
system to an older version of VMware Workstation and anything is good 
again, but if there is a solution for Workstation 15.5.5 it would be 
good to know.


Ofcourse I will contact VMware and ask for a solution, but I am sure 
they will not be able to help because they do not know enough about 
working with a screen reader, speech output, e.g..., but I will try anyway.


Cheers and thanks for any help or idea,

  Schoepp

Re: Window focus on Debian 10

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Mon, July 15, 2019 11:45 pm, dhof...@att.net wrote:
> I notice in Debian 10.0 32 bit that when accessing the Mate desktop
> Terminal
> through the menu system that the terminal comes up but not in focus.  I
> have to use the Alt plus tab key to get focus. Is this normal? --

I can confirm this behaviour on my system, Debian Buster 64 bit with all
updates.

When opening mate-terminal via Alt + F2 everything is fine and the
terminal is focused.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

Re: Linux 9 stretch What to do about reviving speakup?

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Samuel,

On Mon, Apr 01, 2019 at 05:45:55AM -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
>Samuel:
>
>I just want to thank you for many critical contributions to Linux
>accessibility over the past 15 years or more, and especially for your
>contributions to Speakup.

+1! Also a big THANKS from me. I am using Debian for more then 15 years 
for my job, without the good accessibility features of Debian it would 
be much harter :-).

Best regards,

  Schoepp

Re: pulseaudio and espeakup

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Sebastian,

Am 2018-05-04 10:25, schrieb Sebastian Humenda:
Could we get a similar behaviour for brltty(-espeak)? In the current 
setup, I
have to disable pulse completely, just to be able to use sound both on 
the

console with BRLTTY and Orca.


I do have a setup where this is not necessary and where I can use speech 
and braille (brltty, brltty-speechd, espeak-ng, speech-dispatcher and 
orca) in the console and mate at the same time with different users 
without removing pulse. Pulse is running as a systemwide daemon and orca 
and brltty are using speechd.


I can post more details about the setup and the necessary steps for the 
different configuration tasks if you like. Maybe they are helping to 
find a better solution for the bullshit with pulse and speech output for 
the future, allthough running pulse as a daemon is not recommented :-(. 
But its the only solution I know and its the only solution without 
removing pulse...


Cheers,

  Schoepp

--
Christian Schoepplein  -  chris (at) schoeppi.net  -  
http://www.schoeppi.net

Re: wireless configuration

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Alex and all,

On Di, Mai 16, 2017 at 11:11:37 +0200, Alex ARNAUD wrote:
>Le 16/05/2017 à 03:03, Mark Peveto a écrit :
>> Using debian with mate desktop, what are folks doing as far as wireless
>> configs...
>
>I use the Mate wireless icon from the top panel.
>To access it you can do those steps :
>1) control+alt+tab until you hear top panel (or something like that, I'm 
>in French locale)
>2) Do shift+tab until you hear network : it's between battery and sound
>3) Press enter on it and after use the list with down arrow

Sorry, this does not work on my system, current Debian testing.

I can get into a pannel when pressing strg+alt+tab, but the only button 
I can access in this panel is to activate the desktop when tapping 
through the panels elements. Seems like it is the button and not the top 
panel.

How can I get into the top panel via a keyboard shortcut?

Regards from Munich,

  Schoepp

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: wireless configuration

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Michelangelo,

On Di, Mai 16, 2017 at 09:27:18 +0200, Michelangelo Rodriguez wrote:
>On Mon, 15 May 2017, Mark Peveto wrote:
>> Using debian with mate desktop, what are folks doing as far as wireless
>> configs...what is best to use that works well with mate and orca?
>> Commandline utils that work with speakup would be fine, too.
>
>I personally prefer wicd, that is usable either in console than in 
>desktop.

Thanks for this great tip. I was not aware of wicd before and had also
problems accessing wireless networks easily, wicd seems to be the tool 
that solves this issues.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: Debian Installer Stretch RC 3 release

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hej,

On Mo, Apr 10, 2017 at 10:50:40 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>This is notable for blind people:
>
>Cyril Brulebois, on lun. 10 avril 2017 07:07:22 +0200, wrote:
>> - Add speech synthesis entries for expert, rescue, and automated
>>   install; and make shortcuts point to them.

This is very cool, great new feature IMHO!

I've updated two systems from Debian 8.x to Stretch during the last two 
weeks, both laptops, and everything went fine, especialy regarding to 
accessibility.

Thanks for all the work and efforts that has been done regarding to 
accessibility for Debian, and a special big thanks to you, Samuel!

Ciao,

  Christian

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: tips for a new qemu user

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

On So, Nov 27, 2016 at 01:11:09 +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>Odd Martin Baanrud, on Sun 27 Nov 2016 00:20:43 +0100, wrote:
>> I know this is off-topic for this list, but I also know that people here
>> has used/are using qemu in an accessible way.

Yes, I am using Qemu very ofthen to virtualize Linux or Windows systems.

>> For me, building/using a VM looks like a huge mess.
>> If someone would like to share some tips, please reply off-list.
>
>Why making it off-list?
>There is a wiki page for it:
>https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility#Virtualization

I've not yet read the wiki page, first of all I'd like to know more 
about what are the problems and questions regarding Quemu.

Also another hint: If you like to play around with other Linux distros 
and also like to virtualize them in an easy way, lxc is a very good and 
very accessible aproach. I use lxc very ofthen for my daily work to test 
and setup new services in our server environment'.

Ciao,

  Schoepp

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: MATE chosen by default instead of gnome for blind people [Was: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release]

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

BTW., I'd like to give GNOME3 a try. But because I need my machine for 
daily work it would be interesting if I can install the gnome packages 
without making my MATE environment unuseable. Is this working?

Ciao,

  Christian






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Description: Digital signature

Re: MATE chosen by default instead of gnome for blind people [Was: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release]

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 09:56:00PM +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
>Samuel Thibault  writes:
>
>> Cyril Brulebois, on Sat 21 May 2016 23:13:17 +0200, wrote:
>>>  * brltty:
>>> - Install MATE desktop by default when brltty is used in d-i.
>>>  * espeakup:
>>> - Install MATE desktop by default when espeakup is used in d-i.
>>
>> This change has triggered discussion on the debian-boot IRC channel. To
>> summarize, gnome people are surprised that MATE would be preferred by
>> blind people and wonder what they need to improve in gnome. I answered
>> that it was more a problem of general trend towards visual ways of
>> using the desktop, which can't be made really usable, but that's only a
>> sketchy answer, they need more precise examples.
>>
>> Could blind people here comment on this: why you don't use gnome and
>> prefer MATE instead? (or the converse of course, the idea is not to
>> blame gnome, we just want to select by default what is best for users,
>> according to their situation.

I'm using MATE for my daily job because I started with GNOME 2.x in the 
past and therefor it is more familiar to me than GNOME3. Maybe I should 
give GNOME3 a chance and see how things work, but to be honest I've 
heard nothing good about accessibility and I know some blind people 
switching from GNOME3 to MATE because they find it better and easier to 
use.

But I must also mension that I am no power user regarding to graphical 
desktops. I use MATE to work with Iceweasel, gajim, and mumble and 
sometimes pluma or writer and calc from the libreoffice package, 
without this tools I can't stay in contact with my colleagues, browse 
modern websites or quickly edit or read office documents, but the 
main work I still do inthe textbased terminal where I use mostly mutt 
for mailing and ofcourse ssh, vi and all the textbased linuxtools for 
the systemadministrative tasks I need to get done for my job.



Cheers,

  Christian



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Re: OCR

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

I'd be also interested in OCR for linux. OCR is one of the less reasons 
why I still have to use Windows or the Mac.

Cheers,

  Schoepp


On Mi, Apr 27, 2016 at 07:35:26 -0500, Nick Gawronski wrote:
>Hi, Yes I would very much be interested in such an option.  Not just for 
>the GUI but for small systems like the raspberrypi and the camera module 
>having a program that could snap the image then run the OCR engine then 
>read and save the text into a text file of course keeping the image.  If 
>tools already exist for the console to do the OCR I would like to know 
>about them.  Nick Gawronski
>
>On 4/27/2016 1:01 PM, MENGUAL Jean-Philippe wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> After test of various OCR, I feel that Tesseract, the most advanced OCR
>> engine on Linux, hasn't noawadays all ways to be as performant as
>> commercial utilities. Even if it's wrapped in some tools like Lios
>> or gimagereader, the performance is still difficult to use for "basic"
>> users (I mean, the Windows users who don't have any technical knowledge
>> or who use computer just for needs).
>>
>> That's why I had a look at what provide proprietary world, waiting for
>> having money enough to create a full OCR suite, free and based on
>> Tesseract. Create or improve, as Lios and gimagereader are
>> excellent points of beginning, but some things are hard to understand
>> for our users in GUI (after tests).
>>
>> And we needed a quick solution, so that the GNU/Linux OS could be usable
>> by everyone now, including OCR matter, so that they buy service and
>> finance our devs projects for free software. But I wonder now if some
>> usual GNU/Linux users here could be interested by such a product. What
>> we reach now is a suite for 200E, including:
>> - Abbyy FindReader 11, unlimited in number of pages thanks to an
>> agreement between Abbyy and Hypra based on the fact we do a free program
>> and designed for blind people with specifific needs in OCR,
>> - A package to run it on MATE. 2 ways:
>> * from an image file, right-click, choose the proper option
>> * from a scanner: we give a command to create a binding (as ours in
>> linked against Compiz).
>>
>> I precise that the utility could also use Tesseract if FindReader is
>> missing, but in such case, it will be free.
>>
>> Would some users interested by such solution? I "like" it as it
>> introduces OCR on GNU/Linux and enable some unusual users to come.
>> Waiting for a full "libre" solution, accessible for such people.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: Pluseaudio, speech-dispatcher, and console + graphical screen readers

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Luke,

On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 08:49:07AM +1100, Luke Yelavich wrote:
>Currently work is ongoing to refactor the audio code in Speech
>Dispatcher. However, this probably could be done even now, and is likely
>the way to go given that the new code in Speech DIspatcher has no ETA on
>release, as there are other improvements also being made.

Can you tell a bit more about the things that will be changed in 
speech-dispatcher please?

And please have inmind, that there are users who are working in parallel 
in the console and in desktop environments, and have to use speech 
output in both worlds...

Thanks and all the best from Munich,

  Christian


-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: Pluseaudio, speech-dispatcher, and console + graphical screen readers

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi Tobias,

On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 11:35:42AM +0200, Tobias Platen wrote:
>I also had problem with pulseaudio when I installed speech-dispatcher and SBL
>for testing purposes on my Olinuxino while working at the Blindenzentrum of
>the University of Applied Sciences. Many other audio applications do have
>similar problems, such as praat which I do use while working on speech
>synthesis software. In praat I don't hear any sound when pulseaudio is
>active.

have you tried the setup I described a few days ago? I use pulseaudio 
and speech-dispatcher in system mode which is not the prefered way to run 
both services, but it is working fine and I do not have any latencies in 
speech output anywhere...

@Halim: Would you describe more detailed your setup with alsa please? 
Wich steps did you perform after a fresh installation of Debian?

Cheers,

  Schoepp


-- 
Christian Schoepplein -  - http://schoeppi.net

Re: Pluseaudio, speech-dispatcher, and console + graphical screen readers

[Christian Schoepplein]

Hi,

sorry, late answer, but this weekend I've installed a new laptop and 
I again needed to configure all the things necesary to have speech 
support in console and graphical environment, so now I can write all 
things together...

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 05:11:27PM +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
>Christian Schoepplein <ch...@schoeppi.net> writes:
>> On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 12:33:41AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>>>As discussed during DebConf15, we target enabling the accessibility
>>>stack by default.  I've studied that a bit more, here are my thoughts:
>>
>> Diskussing accessibility of Debian should not only be reduced to the 
>> issues you mensioned, Samuel, there are a few more things that need to 
>> be worked out, I think.
>
>> For example the fact, that the way pulseaudio, speech-dispatcher and all 
>> this stuff needs to be configured to work propperly, when orca and a 
>> console screen reader is used.
>
>Of course, there is a ton of issues that need to be worked out.

Sorry, I did not like to hijack the thread and good to know, that the 
other issues are also in mind.

>> I've installed a fresh Debian 8 a few months ago and it wasn't really
>> easy and especialy for beginners this stuff isn't manageable IMHO. Now
>> pulseaudio and speech-dispatcher are running in system mode and
>> everything is working well, but that kind of setup is not wanted for
>> security reasons.
>
>I am tempted to agree with you that we need far too much manual
>configuration interventions for certain accessibility features to
>cooperate, just by my own experience.  However, could you be a little
>bit more specific?  Particularily:
>
> * What sort of setup were you aiming to achieve?

I like to use the graphical environment, in my case Matte Desktop, and 
also a console screenreader with braille support, e.g. brltty or, in my 
case, sbl which can be downloaded on http://www.openblinux.de. the 
problem is the speech support which only is working well in Mate after a 
fresh installation, for the speech support in the console some things 
have to be configured which I will describe later.

> * What was particularily difficult to figure out?

IMHO the problem is that console screenreaders still can be used in user 
mode and have to be executed with root permissions, otherwise they don't 
work. For speech support for the console screenreaders also pulseaudio 
and speech-dispatcher have to be run in system mode. Installing the 
screenreader is not difficult and can be done easily via the package 
manager or by compiling it, but the way pulseaudio and speech-dispatcher 
have to be configured to work with the screenreader was not easy to 
figure out.

> * What did you have to change, from the default, to get what you want?

OK, here is a step by step description the way I did it, but I know 
there are other solutions like Halim allready wrote a few days ago:

1. Change the file /etc/default/speech-dispatcher to use the 
service in system mode:

RUN=yes

2. Change the file /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf to have the 
following variables set different to the default. I'm not sure, if all 
variables have to be set this way, but for me this settings are fine:

AddModule "espeak"   "sd_espeak"   "espeak.conf"

Because I want the German language to be used by espeak, I changed also 
the following variable accordingly:

LanguageDefaultModule "de"  "espeak"

3. To have pulseaudio running in system mode, insert or change the 
following things in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:

daemonize = yes
allow-module-loading = no
allow-exit = no
system-instance = yes

4. To enable anonymous authentification to the pulseaudio daemon change 
the following setting in /etc/pulse/system.pa:

load-module module-native-protocol-unix auth-anonymous=1

5. Pulseaudio has to be started when the system is booted, so I put the 
following line in /etc/rc.local to do this automaticaly after the next 
reboot:

/usr/bin/pulseaudio

6. Ofcourse all needed packages, for example espeak and / or brltty or 
another console screenreader have to be installed and configured 
accordingly, to have speech support for console, the speech support for 
the graphical environment has been configured by the Debian installer 
already.

The following steps have to be performed to test the setup without 
booting the machine after all things described above have been done, but 
if you like to reboot speech support hopefully is working now.

Without a reboot do the following:

1. Stop speech-dispatcher and kill all still running processes which 
are not stopped by the start / stop script:

# service speech-dispatcher stop

2. Kill all pulseaudio processes:

# killall pulseaudio

3. Start pulseaudio with the new settings:

# pulseaudio

4. Start speech-dispatcher in system mode:

# service speech-di

Re: a11y and pulseaudio in debian squeeze???

[Christian Schoepplein]

On So, Jul 26, 2009 at 08:34:57 -0500, Kenny Hitt wrote:
Hi.  The only feature I liked with pulseaudio is independent control 
of output volume.  If I change the
volume in mplayer using alsa as output, the system wide volume 
changes.  If I change the volume in mplayer
using pulseaudio it only changes volume for mplayer and leaves the 
system volume alone.

Just put the setting

softvol=1

into your ~/.mplayer/config file, then the internal softmixer of mplayer 
is used and you can change volume indipendently from your systemwide 
sound settings.

Regards,

  Christian

-- 
Christian Schoepplein chris at schoeppi.net



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Re: Make syslinux beep?

[Christian Schoepplein]

On Do, Jul 17, 2008 at 08:22:52 +1000, Daniel Dalton wrote:
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 07:15:38AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
 On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
  Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
   It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
   boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux
   beeps when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?
 
  So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
  a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
  in the menu title for instance.
 
 IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to 
 annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.

Erm, why? One beep at the boot prompt of the installer? Not even every
time your system boots, just every time you do an installation. How is
that annoying?

I also can not understand why this could be annoying. 

For example a beep is generated everytime gdm gets started during the 
bootup of a machine. I do not know anyone who would complain of that 
beep allthough it happens more ofthen then a beep during 
installation

Cheers,

  Christian

-- 
Christian Schoepplein chris at schoeppi.net


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