Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hey Felix and co, can I suggest an avenue such as a boot manager like Plop https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html to get around booting into FreeDOS from USB? I haven't tried it this way myself, but I have used Plop in the past to boot into Puppy Linux using native USB 1.0 in an old laptop that didn't permit such a method via its BIOS. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to boot via the USB 2.0 ports I had with a PCMCIA adapter in that laptop - I understand PCMCIA functionality has been dropped altogether in the latest version of Plop, unfortunately. HTH ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hello Felix! Not sure what the license of the ASAP screen reader is? If I understand you correctly, it sends the text or an encoded version over a serial port to the host OS, in your case Windows? What is the license of the text to speech tool on the Windows size? Have people tried to do the same with Linux? There are free blind-friendly tools for Linux, such as Braille (BRLTTY) and text to speech output, Some distros make it easy to activate those. Once you have those, either use the general feature to make the contents of your DOS window audible (e.g. dosemu2 or dosbox). You can also run dosemu2 in terminal mode, so you can use the default settings for making the contents of any Linux terminal window audible. If I understand you correctly, you like the navigation and user interface of the DOS ASAP screen reader and would prefer to use that to decide which text should be sent to a separate text to speech in the host OS. That could be for example MBROLA, eSpeak, Festival, or FreeTTS. I remember having configured dosemu1 to capture printer port data while I was developing the "graphics" screen print tools for FreeDOS (ESC/P, HP PCL, PostScript) so I guess redirecting serial port data to some TTS would also be feasible with dosemu2. Whether ASAP can be included with FreeDOS depends on whether it is free and/or open source. Please tell. Yes, you can boot FreeDOS from USB flash drives on many computers which can boot from USB storage media. Whether you have write access to the USB stick from which you have booted depends on your BIOS: There have been reports of computers where no writes were supported or writes have been slow. Normally, I do expect it to work, with limited performance. Note that you must not change USB sticks after booting. If you use DOS USB drivers, you get more flexibility than when using BIOS USB boot drivers, but you will need a driver which supports your specific hardware. The biggest problem will be that you wanted a DOS text to speech system which can run as a driver and access HDA or AC97 sound hardware. This is highly unlikely to exist: Modern text to speech needs a lot of RAM and only a few apps such as MPXPLAY do have the complex sound drivers needed for HDA etc. So the text to speech would have to live in some protected mode ecosystem, making it DOS instead of the speech synthesizer being the background task. Which in turn would be similar to the more obvious option of using a Linux or Windows speech synthesizer and letting DOS run inside a window, which also avoids having to port a synth to DOS. Of course you could also work with 2 computers: One running plain DOS and the other, connected via serial or bidirectional parallel port, would run some text to speech system on any other OS. That could even be a Raspberry Pi, for example. Regards, Eric > Long story long: Joseph Norton put together a FreeDOS bootable > installation ISO with a DOS screen reader, becoming my hero in the > process, and using this I was able to install FreeDOS on a virtual > machine using a Windows-hosted speech synthesizer emulator listening > on a virtual serial port. ASAP, from deep within DOS, sends its output > to a serial port of my vm which is mapped to one end of a pair of > COM0COM ports. On the other end I have a speech synthesizer emulator > picking up that output and transforming it into actual speech using > ESpeak... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hi! > You're going to get different answers. Empirically, yes it works fine > in some cases. Theoretically, however, it is apparently impossible. Made my day. Story of my life. > I think, the most important question here is, if the BIOS of your computer > does handle USB in the way you want. Otherwise it will be a long ride, I > guess. ... It was at that moment that he knew he'd stick with a vm. ;-) > Hope that helps in some way, Everything helps at this stage of data collection. Best, Felix ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hi, I am much impressed by Felix’ blind-accessible DOS setup!! > Am 10.05.2021 um 12:20 schrieb Tomas By : > >> a) Can FreeDOS boot from a flash drive? > > You're going to get different answers. Empirically, yes it works fine > in some cases. Theoretically, however, it is apparently impossible. I am not an expert, it just happens that I had installed DOS 1.3 on an ITX hardware Harddisk, and the BIOS of this machine allows for booting from the harddisk and writing/reading to a USB Disk, when already plugged in before booting the System, without any extra utils. (Seems that this BIOS allows for it). It doesn’t work the other way round, and also it does not recognize a second USB Stick in this case case 2) I unplugged the Harddisk and use 2 USB Disks, one with FreeDOS System on it, the other one just a data storage. I can boot from the flash (=USB Stick) and go easily back and forth between C: or D: to read/write or start any program from either USB Stick. I think, the most important question here is, if the BIOS of your computer does handle USB in the way you want. Otherwise it will be a long ride, I guess. I have also the same „issue“ in that some helper software I would want (ex.: Hotkeys) only works on Windows, so I don’t know, how to solve this on DOS. My simplest approach is it to use hardware that does, what DOS cannot do. (In my case using a programmable keyboard.) Is anyway the moste stable solution and takes no precious RAM/computing time. Hope that helps in some way, regards, Thomas D___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
On Mon, 10 May 2021 12:05:06 +0200, Felix G. wrote: > 2. I'd love to go native with DOS [...] I lose my speech synthesizer > emulator as this is Windows-hosted. You could use two machines? > a) Can FreeDOS boot from a flash drive? You're going to get different answers. Empirically, yes it works fine in some cases. Theoretically, however, it is apparently impossible. /Tomas ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hello dear community! It's been a long time since I contributed here. Some of you might remember me as a blind text adventure enthusiast trying to get very old DOS text games to run in a blind-accessible manner. Long story short, I made it. Long story long: Joseph Norton put together a FreeDOS bootable installation ISO with a DOS screen reader, becoming my hero in the process, and using this I was able to install FreeDOS on a virtual machine using a Windows-hosted speech synthesizer emulator listening on a virtual serial port. ASAP, from deep within DOS, sends its output to a serial port of my vm which is mapped to one end of a pair of COM0COM ports. On the other end I have a speech synthesizer emulator picking up that output and transforming it into actual speech using ESpeak. It's a wild construction but it works beautifully. If anybody else here would like to try it and is running into problems, please contact me and I'll try to help. Two follow-ups: 1. My installation is based on FreeDOS 1.3 RC3. Is there a stable version incorporating ASAP somewhere? 2. I'd love to go native with DOS, preferrably booting from a USB flash drive. Of course insodoing I lose my speech synthesizer emulator as this is Windows-hosted. This leads to the following sub-problems: a) Can FreeDOS boot from a flash drive? b) Can it subsequently have write access to that drive? c) Is there a software speech synth for FreeDOS for contemporary on-board sound hardware? Thanks in advance for any clues, and all the best, Felix ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
