Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and screen readers for blind users
Hi Joseph, > On May 11, 2021, at 1:37 PM, Joseph Norton wrote: > Jerome, if you’re seeing this, can I still follow the same instructions to > update my build to the latest RC? Mostly... Since RC3, the Release Build Environment (RBE) has been redone. You will need to pull the latest RBE source. Then run install again as super user. Put (or leave) your assistance packages in the same place. After that as a normal user, Just run “make clean” then just “make" (or… run the just run the build script) Everything else should be the same. Since I don’t personally use the assistance stuff built into the RBE, there may be a few minor issues I’ll need to correct. Just let me know if you have any problems, let me know. We will get them sorted out. :-) If you only want it building a couple types of media instead of the entire set, let me know and I’ll add a custom make command for that. :-) Jerome ___ 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 Felix: Wish I could chime in on this with a great solution, but, I’m still stuck in about the same place. When I talked with Jerome Shidell, he pointed me to the build environment and told me how to do the build. The only option was to build 1.3 RC2, I believe. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea, since there were some weirdnesses with the “stable” version, which the release candidate fixed. Jerome, if you’re seeing this, can I still follow the same instructions to update my build to the latest RC? On a totally unrelated thing, I’ve been in communication with some developers of a different project based on DosBOX, and one of the folks there is talking about incorporating adding speech support which would be configurable as a serial port, but, that isn’t here yet, and, there’s no hurry on the person’s side I’m talking with. Still, that doesn’t get you native support. If your box has a physical serial port on the motherboard, or through an ISA card, I know ASAP can work with that. I don’t think anyone’s made a DOS driver that works with one of those USB adapters. However, it might work with a VM, since Windows will make the USB device into a comport which the VM will see as if it’s an old-style port—I think. Someone was going to ship me his old DoubleTalk, but, he hasn’t done that yet, so I cannot do testing on that. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but, I am wanting to update my ISO image, which I will ask Jerome about. Thanks! Sent from Mail for Windows 10 From: Felix G.Sent: Monday, May 10, 2021 6:06 AMTo: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.Subject: [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 mightremember me as a blind text adventure enthusiast trying to get veryold DOS text games to run in a blind-accessible manner. Long storyshort, I made it.Long story long: Joseph Norton put together a FreeDOS bootableinstallation ISO with a DOS screen reader, becoming my hero in theprocess, and using this I was able to install FreeDOS on a virtualmachine using a Windows-hosted speech synthesizer emulator listeningon a virtual serial port. ASAP, from deep within DOS, sends its outputto a serial port of my vm which is mapped to one end of a pair ofCOM0COM ports. On the other end I have a speech synthesizer emulatorpicking up that output and transforming it into actual speech usingESpeak. It's a wild construction but it works beautifully. If anybodyelse here would like to try it and is running into problems, pleasecontact me and I'll try to help.Two follow-ups:1. My installation is based on FreeDOS 1.3 RC3. Is there a stableversion incorporating ASAP somewhere?2. I'd love to go native with DOS, preferrably booting from a USBflash drive. Of course insodoing I lose my speech synthesizer emulatoras 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 contemporaryon-board sound hardware?Thanks in advance for any clues, and all the best,Felix ___Freedos-user mailing listFreedos-user@lists.sourceforge.nethttps://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ 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 Felix, > The primary reason is that I want to keep Windows on my hard > drive and I don't feel confident about using a boot manager. Disclaimer: The following only works if your Windows C: drive is NTFS! It does not work with ancient Windows on FAT C: drive. You could try the following: Use Windows itself to resize the NTFS Windows partition and add a FAT16 or FAT32 one for DOS, which you format also using Windows. Note that the FAT partition should be a primary one if you want it to be bootable. You can now boot a DOS installer and verify that it only sees the empty FAT partition, but not the Windows drives. Make sure that the installer does NOT change partitioning or MBR boot settings. You can also skip formatting steps. Once you have installed DOS in that way, you can either use a boot manager on USB, floppy, CD, DVD or similar to start the installed DOS, or you can use a simple DOS boot disk (for example USB stick again) and enjoy having all the apps and space on your DOS C: drive, which you will also be able to access from Windows. Note that it will be called another letter, not C:, when you access your DOS drive from Windows. This avoids possible speed and stability issues which you would get by working only with USB. It also avoids having to push a boot manager before Windows, risking that Windows would not start properly. Of course the "recipe" above only works for the newer Windows versions: Those use NTFS for themselves, which is conveniently invisible to DOS, so it will not mess with your Windows files. And they already include the tools to resize and add partitions, so you can insert a FAT partition with less risk of damaging your Windows. As Linux user, I would probably use a bootable CD, DVD or USB distro and the graphical gparted tool to resize my existing partitions and add new ones. Not sure whether that can be done in a screen reader friendly way, but of course I do not know whether the tools included with the newer Windows versions are screen reader friendly either. >> that is what your ASAP app does. > > Yes, that's exactly what it's for. It's the Automatic Screen Access > Program, a sophisticated tsr for blind users that actually lets me > navigate graphics memory like a text file, and that also intercepts > console output in many cases. It's a masterpiece of assembly language Cool, thanks for the explanation! Best, Eric ___ 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 Eric, Am Di., 11. Mai 2021 um 14:08 Uhr schrieb Eric Auer : > given that you have a hardware serial port speech synthesizer, > there is a lot more optimism now! By the way, why do you want > to boot from USB? While many PC can boot from USB, the access > speed can be quite low and a few BIOS fail to support writes. The primary reason is that I want to keep Windows on my hard drive and I don't feel confident about using a boot manager. > I assume you also have the right DOS software to fetch the > on-screen text and send it to the serial port, but I guess > that is what your ASAP app does. Yes, that's exactly what it's for. It's the Automatic Screen Access Program, a sophisticated tsr for blind users that actually lets me navigate graphics memory like a text file, and that also intercepts console output in many cases. It's a masterpiece of assembly language programming. 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 Felix, given that you have a hardware serial port speech synthesizer, there is a lot more optimism now! By the way, why do you want to boot from USB? While many PC can boot from USB, the access speed can be quite low and a few BIOS fail to support writes. I assume you also have the right DOS software to fetch the on-screen text and send it to the serial port, but I guess that is what your ASAP app does. Eric ___ 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
Yay! I knew why I posted here. That's exactly the kind of data I'm collecting. I'm going to try and create a FreeDOS bootable flash drive with the help of Rufus or some such, and put a screen reader on it. Then I'm going to dig out my old Juno speech synthesizer, connect it to COM1 of my old pc, and see if I can get it to speak. From there, the sky's the limit. It'll probably fail in a dozen unexpected ways and if you folks are interested I can keep you updated. In any case it's nicely adventurous. Best, Felix Am Di., 11. Mai 2021 um 13:16 Uhr schrieb tom ehlert : > > > > Two follow-ups: > > 1. My installation is based on FreeDOS 1.3 RC3. Is there a stable > > version incorporating ASAP somewhere? > as ASAP seems to have commercial license: no. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screen_readers > > > > 2. I'd love to go native with DOS, preferrably booting from a USB > > flash drive. > good luck with that. > > > 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? > yes. every BIOS for the last 15 years can. > however, good luck if you have to tweak some BIOS options should this > be needed. > > in some cases the BIOS does not allow to boot from USB automatically > (to prevent booting from (intentionally?) forgotten USB sticks), and > you have to press some key first, then select the USB disk from a > menu. good luck with that either. > > > b) Can it subsequently have write access to that drive? > most likely, yes. > > > c) Is there a software speech synth for FreeDOS for contemporary > > on-board sound hardware? > almost definitively no. there is exactly zero support for contemporary > anything in anyDOS (that is not supported by the BIOS itself), > > > > Thanks in advance for any clues, and all the best, > > > Tom > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ 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
> Two follow-ups: > 1. My installation is based on FreeDOS 1.3 RC3. Is there a stable > version incorporating ASAP somewhere? as ASAP seems to have commercial license: no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screen_readers > 2. I'd love to go native with DOS, preferrably booting from a USB > flash drive. good luck with that. > 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? yes. every BIOS for the last 15 years can. however, good luck if you have to tweak some BIOS options should this be needed. in some cases the BIOS does not allow to boot from USB automatically (to prevent booting from (intentionally?) forgotten USB sticks), and you have to press some key first, then select the USB disk from a menu. good luck with that either. > b) Can it subsequently have write access to that drive? most likely, yes. > c) Is there a software speech synth for FreeDOS for contemporary > on-board sound hardware? almost definitively no. there is exactly zero support for contemporary anything in anyDOS (that is not supported by the BIOS itself), > Thanks in advance for any clues, and all the best, Tom ___ 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
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
