Announcing Emacspeak-97
-----------------------
This is to announce Emacspeak-97 (code named Tennessee)
--a major upgrade to my speech output extension to Emacs.
Emacspeak 95 (code named Illinois)
was released on the Internet in May 1995 as the first complete
speech interface to UNIX workstations.
The subsequent release, Emacspeak-96 (code named Egypt) made
available in May 1996 provided significant enhancements to the
interface. Emacspeak-97 (Tennessee) goes further in providing a true audio
desktop.
Major Enhancements:
-------------------
Major enhancements in this release include:
1)Flexible user defined pronunciation dictionaries
2) Ability to run emacspeak remotely
3) Full support for speech style sheets as per the appendix to
the CSS1 specification from W3C.
4) Speech support for the newly introduced widget libraries in Emacs
5) A powerful table browsing mode
6) A fluent speech interface to a spread sheet application
7)Support for view-process-mode --a powerful front-end to UNIX ps
8) Support for editing and maintaining bibtex databases with
bibtex-mode
9) Support for the enhanced ediff package in Emacs 19.30 and later
10) Support for RMAIL --the default Emacs mail reader.
... and a lot more ...
Appended below are the contents of the Emacspeak home page --visit
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/emacspeak/emacspeak.html
Read
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/emacspeak/release.html
for details on what is new in this release.
You can also pick up emacspeak via anonymous ftp from
ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/raman/emacspeak
You can subscribe to the emacspeak mailing list
--emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu-- by
sending mail to the list owner
"greg e. priest-dorman" <priestdo@cs.vassar.edu>
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Emacspeak --A Speech Output Subsystem For Emacs
Announcing Emacspeak, a full-fledged speech output interface to Emacs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emacspeak is the first full-fledged speech output system that will allow
someone who cannot see to work directly on a UNIX system. (Until now, the only
option available to visually impaired users has been to use a talking PC as a
terminal.) Emacspeak is built on top of Emacs. Once you start emacs with
emacspeak loaded, you get spoken feedback for everything you do. Your mileage
will vary depending on how well you can use Emacs.There is nothing that you
cannot do inside Emacs:-)
Emacspeak Mailing List
There is a mailing list emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu that is being used to
disseminate information about emacspeak. If you use Emacspeak, you can
subscribe by sending email to greg e. priest-dorman. See the news pagefor
details on what's new in the latest release of Emacspeak.
Description
I currently use Emacspeak at work on my Sparc20 workstation running SUNOS4.1;
while at Digital I used Emacspeak on my DECALPHA workstation running Digital
UNIX. I also use Emacspeak as the only speech output system on my laptop
running Linux. As a useful addition, contains the necessary files to make
Emacs easier to use at the Linux console. Emacspeak currently supports the new
Dectalk Express speech synthesizer, as well as older versions of the Dectalk
e.g. the MultiVoice. On the DECALPHA, you can use it with the software
Dectalk. (If you have a DECALPHA and also have software Dectalk installed at
your site, please get in touch with "mangipudi@bgsdev.enet.dec.com"> Krishna
Mangipudi --Digital.
You need GNU FSF Emacs 19 (version 19.23 or later) and TCLX 7.3B (Extended
TCL) to run Emacspeak.TCLX --the executable is called tcl on most systems-- is
*not* plain tcl --typically called tclsh on most systems.See the Emacspeak
distribution for additional details.
See the latest release notes to see what is new in the latest release. You can
download Emacspeak (123K) from this page. Emacspeak currently provides
additional non-speech auditory cues if you have a sound card. The collection
of auditory icons used by Emacspeak are contained in a tar file (170K). You
need download this only if you have a sound card and intend turning on
auditory icons. The tar archive containing the sounds has been separated from
the main Emacspeak tar archive since the sounds remain the same across
versions.
For a list of frequently asked questions about Emacspeak along with their
answers, see the Emacspeak FAQ. Emacspeak comes with full source level
documentation. There is an online info manual as well, but this is still
incomplete.
Emacs Subsystems
Emacspeak currently has extensions for many popular Emacs subsystems
including:
o W3: A full-fledged W3 browser available by FTP. Emacspeak implements a
voice-lock mode analogous to Emacs' font-locking that allows it to speak
WWW hotlinks using different voice personalities.
o GNUS: The Emacs news reader. Emacspeak provides a fluent extension to
gnus that allows you to listen to Usenet news without taking your
fingers off the four arrow keys.
o VM: The Emacs VM mail reader. Emacspeak works with VM to present email
messages using different voices; Parts of a message that are cited from
a previous message are voicifiedto produce effective aural
presentations.
o Eterm: The Emacs 19 terminal emulator. (This will be part of Emacs
19.29).
I regularly use eterm on my laptop to login to my Sparc20 from
home
and interface with running applications on my office workstation
(including running Emacs sessions!).
Emacspeak also works well with Emacs addons like AUCTEX for editing TeX
documents, the Emacs Calculator (CALC --a symbolic algebra system) etc.
Emacspeak works fluently with all Emacs addons; writing an extension makes its
use even more pleasurable. If you would like to write an Emacspeak addon for
your favorite package please get in touch with me so we do not end up
duplicating work.
Support For Emacspeak
Emacspeak comes as is, please see the accompanying Copyright notice. See the
READMEfile for details about this release and how to install Emacspeak on your
system.
I work on Emacspeak in my spare time, and may not be able to answer questions
on Emacspeak immediately. If you do download and use Emacspeak, please
subscribe to the mailing list emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu by sending a message to
"greg e. priest-dorman" <priestdo@cs.vassar.edu>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T. V. Raman raman@adobe.com
-- Best Regards, --ramanAdobe Systems Tel: 1 (408) 536 3945 (W14-129) Advanced Technology Group Fax: 1 (408) 537 4042 (W14 129) 345 Park Avenue Email: raman@adobe.com San Jose , CA 95110 -2704 Email: raman@cs.cornell.edu http://labrador.corp.adobe.com/~raman/raman.html (Adobe Internal) http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/raman.html (Cornell) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and in no way should be taken as representative of my employer, Adobe Systems Inc. ____________________________________________________________
-- Best Regards, --raman
Adobe Systems Tel: 1 (408) 536 3945 (W14-129) Advanced Technology Group Fax: 1 (408) 537 4042 (W14 129) 345 Park Avenue Email: raman@adobe.com San Jose , CA 95110 -2704 Email: raman@cs.cornell.edu http://labrador.corp.adobe.com/~raman/raman.html (Adobe Internal) http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/raman.html (Cornell) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and in no way should be taken as representative of my employer, Adobe Systems Inc. ____________________________________________________________
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