Getting Started
by Richard Wells
Hello: My name is Richard wells. I have been hearing about this
environment for many years but have never investigated it for myself.
For someone like me who has no idea at all where to go to get started,
how would you suggest I begin learning? My experience with computers has
been diverse with some Linux, but mostly Microsoft Windows and Apple
Macintosh. Please be gentle with a user with absolutely no idea of what
emacspeak is and how to get productive using it.
3 months, 1 week
emacspeak list host memory testing
by Greg Priest-Dorman
Hi Folks,
We are doing some testing on the emacspeak mailing list virtual machine.
In the worst case this testing might cause a reboot. We will of course try
to avoid that outcome, but we wanted to give you all a heads up in case
that does happen and you notice the system disappears for a few minutes.
Again, we do not anticipate an unplanned reboot, but we wanted to let you
know that it might happen. If you do notice the system is not responding
for 10 minutes or more, please write to me directly.
That's it. But if you want to know more here is what is going on:
We originally brought up emacspeak.org as a virtual system with one gig of
ram. In 2021 we had some issues with the system reporting it was short on
memory. At that time we doubled what it was allocated from one to two gigs
of ram. This eliminated the issues we were seeing but had the side effect
of doubling the monthly cost for the host. We have since tried a few
things and we have reduced its memory footprint. Now we will be testing
to see if the system will run happily again on just one gig of ram.
The plan is to create a ramdisk, and slowly increase its size monitoring
for any issues. So over the next few weeks we will be running it with a
reduced amount of available ram. If we can get to a simulated maximum of
one gig of ram, then we will leave it there for a few weeks and continue to
monitor.
The testing might itself cause some problems. If there are any, we should
be able to free up the blocked memory. But there is a chance we may need
to reboot the system to fully restore things. If so, we want to do that
without much warning. There is also a very small chance the system could
reboot itself. A reboot will cause it to revert to its full amount of
ram. If either of these types of reboots happen, the system would be
offline for just a few minutes.
If all goes well and the system is running happily when restricted to one
gig of ram, then we will schedule a migration back to a one gig
configuration. That will of course be announced here before it happens.
More when we know more,
Greg
10 months, 1 week
[PATCH] 2 minor code fixes
by Tim Cross
Hi Raman,
attached are two minor patches to fix a missing quote on select-object
in emacspeak-windmove.el and a missing cl-declare for
emacspeak-last-message in dtk-speak.el
Noticed these because they kept causing a warnings buffer to be opened
when you start emacs. After applying these patches, this does not
happen.
10 months, 2 weeks
Ema speak in Org-mode speaking path to subtree
by Devin Prater
Hi all. This only started happening recently, but on my version of
Emacs: GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.24,
cairo version 1.16.0) of 2021-03-27, modified by Debian, when I move into
an Org-mode heading, Emacspeak speaks the path to that heading, like "slash
tree / subtree / subtree". How can this be disabled? It doesn't show up in
the messages buffer, so it seems like something internal to Emacspeak, or
some Org package.
Devin Prater
r.d.t.prater(a)gmail.com
10 months, 2 weeks
finer control of auditory icons
by prayner＠unimelb.edu.au
I like auditory icons but I perhaps don't like them as much as TVR :-)
For example in the attached mail under vm I get an icon with every
cursor movement. That's probably because the body is an html
attachment. forward-paragraph also produces an icon which I probably
wouldn't do by preference. Is there any way I can fine-tune which
icons get played or where when? I can imagine a hack where I remove
various sound files and replace them with silence but I suspect there
might be nicer ways of doing this. Is there also a function where I
can train myself on the meainings of the various sound icons in a
theme? I suspect part of my ambivalence is not yet learning to get the
most out of them.
thanks in advance
Peter
--
Peter Rayner (he/him), Room 371, Building 200, University of Melbourne
Academic Lead - Climate & Energy College <https://www.climatecollege.unimelb.edu.au>
mobile +61 402 752 379, skype: petermorag
zoom id 4431343191, join at <https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/4431343191?pwd=a1E5Z3JEOTRVQUJsaVdRbVUvR1QyZz09>
mail-to: prayner(a)unimelb.edu.au TWITTER: @raynerstrings
google scholar
<https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=H3up71wAAAAJ&hl=en>
profile: <https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/59812-peter-rayner>
I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to their Elders, past and present
I am sending this email when convenient for me, please only respond when convenient for you
10 months, 2 weeks
Mac OS Monterey upgrade causes emacspeak to not load
by Jeff Dittel
Hello,
My name is Jeff Dittel and I use emacspeak everyday on my job as a senior software engineer. I have a serious problem because emacspeak is no longer working.
I recently upgraded my Mac to Monterey 12.31, and when I start emacs the init.el file crashes at the line:
(load-file "~/Sources/emacspeak-master/emacspeak-master/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el”)
The “emacs —debug-init” command gives the following output:
File Edit Options Buffers Tools Debugger Help
|Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Buffer *scratch* has no process")
| process-send-string(nil "tts_sync_state all 0 0 1 100 \n")
| tts-configure-synthesis-setup()
| emacspeak()
| eval-buffer(#<buffer *load*-447347> nil "/Users/jeffdittel/Sources/emacspeak-master/emacspeak-master/lisp/emacspea$
| load-with-code-conversion("/Users/jeffdittel/Sources/emacspeak-master/emacspeak-master/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el" "/U$
| load("/Users/jeffdittel/Sources/emacspeak-master/emacspeak-master/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el" nil nil t)
| load-file("~/Sources/emacspeak-master/emacspeak-master/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el")
| eval-buffer(#<buffer *load*> nil "/Users/jeffdittel/.emacs.d/init.el" nil t) ; Reading at buffer position 493
| load-with-code-conversion("/Users/jeffdittel/.emacs.d/init.el" "/Users/jeffdittel/.emacs.d/init.el" t t)
| load("/Users/jeffdittel/.emacs.d/init" t t)
| #[0 "^H\205\262^@ \306=\203^Q^@\307^H\310Q\202;^@ \311=\204^^^@\307^H\312Q\202;^@\313\307\314\315#\203*^@\316\2$
| command-line()
| normal-top-level()
|
|
Can someone help fix the emacspeak-setup.el file?
Thanks,
Jeff
Jeff Dittel
~~~~~~~~~~~
jeff(a)britlan.com
(414) 248-2292
10 months, 3 weeks
CTRLF Config Snippet
by Hendursaga
Hello fellow Emacspeakers!
No question this time, just wanted to share a snippet from my (unpublished) personal config, dealing with the CTRLF[1] package, to make `ctrlf--prompt` (original here[2]) work better with my TTS server. You should check the package out sometime!
```elisp
(use-package ctrlf
:config
(defun ctrlf--prompt ()
"Return speech-friendly prompt to use in the minibuffer."
(concat
"Search "
(if ctrlf--backward-p "backwards" "forwards")
" "
(plist-get (alist-get ctrlf--style ctrlf-style-alist) :prompt)
" ")))
```
~ Hendursaga
[1] https://github.com/radian-software/ctrlf/
[2] https://github.com/radian-software/ctrlf/blob/master/ctrlf.el#L714
10 months, 3 weeks
Using Emacspeak with straight.el as Package Manager?
by Hunter Jozwiak
Hello,
Has anyone had any luck with running Emacspeak with straight.el? I've tried
the recipe from the emacsmmirror, but that didn't seem to work on its own
(I had to do a :post-build ("make" "espeak") to compile the speech server
which wasn't too bad, but that's as far as I managed to get). Also, I
think that Emacspeak is confused since Straight symlinks the elisp files to
~/.emacs.d/straight/build/emacspeak and some of the variables are expecting
the root directory of the emacspeak repository itself, namely this variable
definition:
;;;###autoload
(defvar emacspeak-directory
(expand-file-name "../" (file-name-directory load-file-name))
"emacspeak directory")
which I'm fairly certain should be something along the lines of:
;;;###autoload
(defvar emacspeak-directory
(expand-file-name "../" (file-name-directory (file-truename
load-file-name)))
"emacspeak directory")
Furthermore, the autoloads file doesn't appear to be correct, so I wound up
changing (load "emacspeak-loaddefs") to (load "emacspeak-autoloads") in
emacspeak-setup.el
Up til now, these are the approaches I've tried, so I am wondering if
anyone has had any success in getting emacspeak to work with straight.el,
and if so, what approach did you take?
Thanks,
Hunter
10 months, 4 weeks
