Re: `woman' can't be used outside emacs?

[Dieter Wilhelm <dieter@duenenhof-wilhelm.de>]

Tim Cross <tcross@rapttech.com.au> writes:
>
> Possibly I misunderstand your point, but under X, you can set the font
> size either through xrdb or the emacs command line or through
> customize. Under the virtual consoles on Linux, you can reduce the
> font size as well - you don't have the same choices as under X, but
> you can change it so that instead of an 80x25 display, you can have a
> (I think it is) 180x32. At one stage Redhat Linux actually had this as
> the default. From memory, you do this via an option in lilo (not sure
> what the procedure is with other boot loaders like grub). 

You are right, I had a blackout, at this stage I'm already under X, It
is only the window manager which is suppressed, there is no need to
configure the font size of the virtual consoles.  I will give it a try
with Emacs as my window manager.

>
> One of the features of emacspeak which makes it stand out from
> commercial screen readers is that it has a different philosophy.
> Rather than just providing "dumb" speech feedback, emacspeak uses an
> approach called voice-lock, which is like font-lock, but instead of
> using different colours, it uses different voices or changes the
> tone/pitch of a voice to provide more information. For example, cited
> text will be spoken in a different voice, capital letters at the
> beginning of a word causes the word to be spoken in a higher pitch,
> words that are all capitals are spelt out (as they are often an
> acronym) etc. You can set the system to ignore punctuation, speak some
> punctuation or speak all punctuation - so, if I'm reading text, I
> might set it to no punctuation or perhaps some punctuation. If I'm
> programming, I will set it to speak all punctuation. 

This is very interesting.  Can you skip to the end of cited text
during the playback, what happens when there is text in parentheses or
3 subsequent full stops (as continuation or omitting sign), is the
dash considered as a punctuation?

>
> In addition to using different voices, emacspeak also uses auditory
> icons - a blank line causes a specific tone to be generated, opening a
> new window causes another sound to be played, etc. I also take
> advantage of features in programs like gnus which will allow me to
> "fold" cited text, so that the buffer is narrowed just to the new text
> etc. 

Are there any guidelines, for example, from the emacspeak package for
making email responses to visually handicapped people more efficient
and clear.

-- 
    Best wishes

    H. Dieter Wilhelm
    Darmstadt, Germany