Re: linux with sighted help?

[Aaron Leventhal <aaronl chorus net>]

I agree sort of.
Eventually, people will want ubiquitous wearable computing.
Which means built in speech.
Rather than just he kernel, I think speech will be built into the super
integrated office-web apps being developed now, like StarOffice. I read on
the net where the StarOffice developer said it will be used in smart
phones, which is essentially a wearable computer.
But people want want to walk around just running text command line shell
stuff, they'll want to use the same gui apps. And those same gui apps are
built with object orientation, so speech and braille could be built into
them more elegantly, in my opinion.
Of course this stuff is long way off. But at least open source allows
developers like me to dream.
Aaron leventhal

At 12:25 PM 12/2/99 +0100, Hans Zoebelein wrote:
>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!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
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