Emacspeak
Encyclopedia
Emacspeak is a free
computer application, a speech interface and an audio desktop (as opposed to a screen reader
) employing Emacs
, which is written in C
, Emacs Lisp
and Tcl
and developed principally by T. V. Raman
(himself blind since childhood, and who has worked on voice software with Adobe Software and later IBM
) and first released May 1995; it is portable to all POSIX
-compatible OSs
. It is tightly integrated with Emacs, allowing it to render intelligible and useful content rather than parsing the graphics (hence it is sometimes referred to not as a separate program, but a subsystem of Emacs proper); its default voice synthesizer
(as of 2002, IBM's ViaVoice Text-to-Speech (TTS)) can be replaced with other software synthesizers when a server module is installed. Emacspeak is one of the most popular speech interfaces for Linux, bundled with most major distributions.
Emacspeak achieves its integration by being written largely in Emacs Lisp
using "advice", enabling it to literally be a wrapper around most functions that change or otherwise modify the display. Auditorily, verbalizations are pre-emptible, and common actions like opening a menu or closing a file have a brief sound associated with that particular action; it also immediately verbalizes all insertions of characters, and attempts to speak as much of the context sentences around the cursor's present location as possible.
Emacspeak facilitates access to a wide variety of content, from the web to DAISY books
.
On Monday, April 12, 1999, Emacspeak became part of the Smithsonian Museum's
Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
.
s).
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
computer application, a speech interface and an audio desktop (as opposed to a screen reader
Screen reader
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen . This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device...
) employing Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
, which is written in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, Emacs Lisp
Emacs Lisp
Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used by the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors . It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C...
and Tcl
Tcl
Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
and developed principally by T. V. Raman
T. V. Raman
T. V. Raman is a computer scientist who is blind. His accessibility research interests are primarily auditory user interfaces and structured electronic documents. He has worked on speech interaction and markup technologies in the context of the World Wide Web at Digital's Cambridge Research Lab ,...
(himself blind since childhood, and who has worked on voice software with Adobe Software and later IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
) and first released May 1995; it is portable to all POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
-compatible OSs
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
. It is tightly integrated with Emacs, allowing it to render intelligible and useful content rather than parsing the graphics (hence it is sometimes referred to not as a separate program, but a subsystem of Emacs proper); its default voice synthesizer
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
(as of 2002, IBM's ViaVoice Text-to-Speech (TTS)) can be replaced with other software synthesizers when a server module is installed. Emacspeak is one of the most popular speech interfaces for Linux, bundled with most major distributions.
Emacspeak achieves its integration by being written largely in Emacs Lisp
Emacs Lisp
Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used by the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors . It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C...
using "advice", enabling it to literally be a wrapper around most functions that change or otherwise modify the display. Auditorily, verbalizations are pre-emptible, and common actions like opening a menu or closing a file have a brief sound associated with that particular action; it also immediately verbalizes all insertions of characters, and attempts to speak as much of the context sentences around the cursor's present location as possible.
Emacspeak facilitates access to a wide variety of content, from the web to DAISY books
DAISY Digital Talking Book
DAISY is a standard for digital talking books. DAISY books are typically used by people have "print disabilities," including blindness, impaired vision, dyslexia...
.
On Monday, April 12, 1999, Emacspeak became part of the Smithsonian Museum's
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...
.
Version naming
Emacspeak is currently at version 34.0. Each release was codenamed after a dog (probably named after seeing eye dogGuide dog
Guide dogs are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles.Although the dogs can be trained to navigate various obstacles, they are partially color blind and are not capable of interpreting street signs...
s).
- Emacspeak-3.0 (Illinois)
- Emacspeak-4.0 (Egypt) made available in May 1996
- Emacspeak-5.0 (Tennessee)
- Emacspeak-6.0 (AKA Emacspeak-97++)
- Emacspeak-7.0 (Labrador, AKA Emacspeak-98)
- Emacspeak-8.0 (BlackDog)
- Emacspeak-9.0 (BlackLab)
- Emacspeak-10.0 (WonderDog, AKA Emacspeak-2000)
- Emacspeak-11.0 (Aster)
- Emacspeak-12.0 (GoldenDog)
- Emacspeak 13.0 (YellowLab)
- Emacspeak 14.0 (TopDog)
- Emacspeak 15.0 (SmartDog)
- Emacspeak 16.0 (CleverDog)
- Emacspeak 17.0 (HappyDog)
- Emacspeak 18.0 (GoodDog)
- Emacspeak 19.0 (WorkDog)
- Emacspeak 20.0 (LeapDog)
- Emacspeak 21.0 (PlayDog)
- Emacspeak 22.0 (GuideDog)
- Emacspeak 23.0 (Retriever)
- Emacspeak 24.0 (LiveDog)
- Emacspeak 25.0 (ActiveDog)
- Emacspeak 26.0 (LeadDog)
- Emacspeak 27.0 (FastDog)
- Emacspeak 28.0 (PuppyDog)
- Emacspeak 29.0 (AbleDog)
- Emacspeak 30.0 (SocialDog)
- Emacspeak 31.0 (TweetDog)
- Emacspeak 32.0 (LuckyDog)
- Emacspeak 33.0 (StarDog)
- Emacspeak 34.0 (Bubbles)
External links
- Official homepage -(at SourceForgeSourceForgeSourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
)- Official list of Emacs applications that work with Emacspeak (~146); notably SawfishSawfish (window manager)Sawfish is an extensible window manager for the X Window System. Its aim is simply to manage windows in the most flexible and attractive manner possible. Formerly known as Sawmill, the name was changed because another software program had the same name....
, DiredDiredDired is a visual directory editor, a computer program for editing file system directories. Dired runs on any Emacs platform. Its commands are generally more modal than most Emacs commands because Dired is a specialized major mode on its own...
, w3mW3mw3m is a free software/open source text-based web browser. It has support for tables, frames, SSL connections, color and inline images on suitable terminals...
/lynxLynx (web browser)Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very configurable.-Usage:Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support...
, ercERC (software)ERC is a software package written in Emacs Lisp that enables the Emacs editor to act as an Internet Relay Chat client.It is an official GNU project, and is part of GNU Emacs...
, mplayerMPlayerMPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...
, OpenSSHOpenSSHOpenSSH is a set of computer programs providing encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol...
, ispellIspellIspell is a spelling checker for Unix that supports most Western languages. It offers several interfaces, including a programmatic interface for use by editors such as emacs...
etc.
- Official list of Emacs applications that work with Emacspeak (~146); notably Sawfish
- Emacspeak mailing list
- Paper on Emacspeak by T. V. RamanT. V. RamanT. V. Raman is a computer scientist who is blind. His accessibility research interests are primarily auditory user interfaces and structured electronic documents. He has worked on speech interaction and markup technologies in the context of the World Wide Web at Digital's Cambridge Research Lab ,...
- Blog by T. V. Raman, on using Emacspeak
- Emacspeak Installation HOWTO -(from The Linux Documentation Project)
- "Emacspeak Tutorial" -(by Nita Van Zandt; tgz file)
- "A Gentle Introduction to Emacspeak: a quickstart for normal people"
- Article on screen reading technology; focuses partially on Emacspeak
- Emacspeak on the EmacsWiki