[Inx] CLI Distro - Seeing Dog Puppy for the Blind !!!

[David Ring]

Hello Everyone,

I love your INX project - it is one of the most beautiful distros I
have EVER seen.  Congratulations to all for what I truly think is
simple, elegant and beautiful

I've been working on a parallel project in some respects - but it is
no where as beautiful and polished as INX.  I wish it was!

Here is the Seeing Dog Puppy for the Blind (based on Puppy Linux)
project discussion thread - you're invited to read and to join in!:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24571

I am really sold on this Speak Pup for the Blind - and I'm looking for
people who can help.  I don't want fame, I just want a distro that the
blind and others can use.

If you can help, if you know anyone who could help, if you know anyone
who would be interested, give them this information.  I've contacted
all the people who have started similar projects - NONE of them have
ever been finished - we are still going on but we lack some skills in
our workforce :-)

It is a shame none of these distros have been produced - I have dozens
of blind friends (I work with the disabled) who would LOVE to be
connected to others.

People - from Carroll Center for the Blind to Perkins School for the
Blind and other have told me my idea is "very well thought out". - but
unfortunately (perhaps?) I am not a programmer, but I just know my way
around a bit doing simple things like compiling programs and browsing
the Internet looking for useful things.

Having lost my vision at one point at mid-life and having it restored
somewhat, I know some of the blind users face when using X Windows (or
the "other" OS systems).

Here is the basic concept - and the menu letters aren't engraved in
stone.  It is just what I came up with.  But they should be easy to
remember.

Why not a command line interface (CLI) driven distro for the blind?

The first premise is to help the blind person NOT GET LOST - as so
often happens with WindowEyes or JAWS - two very popular (and for
those disabled and without money, expensive) screen programs.

The distro should give you the CLI prompt and read your options:

Hello this is Speak Pup - this is the main menu.

If you ever get lost or just want to return here, press the escape key
in the upper left top of your keyboard. This will work except when you
have exited the menu and are using just the command line interface.

Press i for browsing the Internet
Press g to get your email
Press w to write your email
Press m to play cd dvd or files (then a submenu)
Press r to listen to Internet Radio
Press e to edit a new or existing file which you can save, send or print.
Press f for the FINCH chat program
Press s for a spreadsheet or calculator (submenu)
Press o to perform optical character recognition with your scanner
Press c for configuration including Internet connection, email
configuration, data backup configuration (submenu)
Press h for help at any time
Press x to go to command line, type " m e n u " to return.

So far we haven't gotten everything in as we had problems with some
programs compiling or other reasons.

Our program line up is:
bc-1.06.95.pet.................calaculator
cdp-0.33.13.pet................cd player
cdw-0.2.4.pet..................cd writer
ctorrent-dnh3.3.pet............torrent client
e3-2.7.0-1.pet.................text processor
dotpuphandler-0.0.4-2.pet......dotpup installer
ncurses-5.6.pet................ncurses libraries
sane-backends-1.0.19.pet.......scanner programs
gocr.pup.......................Optical Character Reader
herrie.pet.....................MP3 player
yafc.pet.......................FTP client
ytree.pet......................filemanager
index.zip......................flat filer
irssi.x.pet....................irc chat client
java1506.pup...................java
freetts........................speech engine
yasr...........................screen reader
brltty-3.10....................soft brailler
clacct.........................Command Line Accountant
aspell.........................spell checker
alpine 1.10.pet................email client
links-2.2.0....................text web browser
firelog........................Internet Utilities
Simplebashbu...................Backup script
various scripts to handle menus, scanning, gocr, and voip.

One that does all of the following.

Web browser including support for SSL - so can do on line banking etc.

eMail - including support for SMTP/POP and IMAP.

audio, CD and DVD player - even play video DVDs - with optional X
video support so a blind person can "watch" with a friend.

Calculator - command line

Chat - like Finch - AOL, ICQ, etc. IRC etc.

eBook reader - including DAISY support.

Support for Voxin with includes the IBM ViaVoice Text to Speech (TTS)
See http://voxin.oralux.net/

Festival, eSpeak Yasr or other speech synthesizer with other languages
and ability to customize.

Britty support for braillers.

OCR so that blind users can take a printed book, put it on the scanner
and produce text files that they can "read" with the software speech
engine.

Here is what we have so far:

The line up is:
bc-1.06.95.pet.................calaculator
cdp-0.33.13.pet................cd player
cdw-0.2.4.pet..................cd writer
ctorrent-dnh3.3.pet............torrent client
e3-2.7.0-1.pet.................text processor
dotpuphandler-0.0.4-2.pet......dotpup installer
ncurses-5.6.pet................ncurses libraries
sane-backends-1.0.19.pet.......scanner programs
gocr.pup.......................Optical Character Readervoxin oralux
herrie.pet.....................MP3 player
yafc.pet.......................FTP client
ytree.pet......................filemanager
index.zip......................flat filer
irssi.x.pet....................irc chat client
java1506.pup...................java
freetts........................speech engine
yasr...........................screen reader
brltty-3.10....................soft brailler
clacct.........................Command Line Accountant
aspell.........................spell checker
alpine 1.10.pet................email client
links-2.2.0....................text web browser
firelog........................Internet Utilities
Simplebashbu...................Backup script
various scripts to handle menus, scanning, gocr, and voip.

I know this is a very worthwhile project and I welcome any support
(please via the forum I mentioned earlier) that anyone might give, and
I welcome anyone interested in this project to join the forum and give
ideas or even mild criticism (or skins are getting thicker do to our
own stupid errors!)

Be well and thanks,

David J. Ring, Jr.
Green Harbor, MA
USA

-30-

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