Re: linux with sighted help?

[Hans Zoebelein <hzo goldfish cube net>]

The request to 'put  speech into the kernel' came up here before. 
Again it may be interesting to read what people ,who are working on
the kernel are saying about such design decisions.

The following stuff is from "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source
Revolution". Linus Torvalds explains some of the key architectural
decisions he made in bringing the Linux kernel to its present state.

[begin citation]
Keeping the kernel healthy

With a monolithic kernel such as the Linux kernel, it's important
to be very cautious about allowing new code and new features into
the kernel. These decisions can affect a number of things later on
in the development cycle beyond the core kernel work.

The first very basic rule is to avoid interfaces. If someone wants
to add something that involves a new system interface you need to be
exceptionally careful. Once you give an interface to users they will
start coding to it and once somebody starts coding to it you are stuck
with it. Do you want to support the exact same interface for the
rest of your system's life?

Other code is not so problematic. If it doesn't have an interface,
say a disk driver, there isn't much to think about; you can just add
a new disk driver with little risk. If Linux didn't have that driver
before, adding it doesn't hurt anyone already using Linux,
and opens Linux to some new users. 
[omitted...]
[end citation]

The complete article is available online at
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-03/lw-03-opensources.html

Please check the Blinux mailing list archive for that discussion about
speech into kernel.

Seaching blinux list for 'speech;kernel' will show up 11 postings.
Searching in blinux-develop will give you even 17 matches.

Enjoy!
--Hans

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Tommy Moore wrote:

> 
> Yeah, I agree with ya there Buddy, but as you can tell most of the people
> on the list here are in to emacs speak which doesn't read the stuff that
> really matters. Heh. I can't wait for the day that someone compiles a
> kernel and can't figure out why their system didn't boot because the
> speech program doesn't come up til after the user has logged in. I hate
> this concept enough with windows. I feel that if possible the computer
> should speak from start to finish and the way that emacs speak and windows
> screen readers do it is a half way job. Anyways. I better stop rambling
> before someone gets upset. heh.
> 
> See ya laters!
> 
> 
>