speechd-el is an Emacs client to speech synthesizers, Braille displays and other alternative output interfaces. It provides full speech and Braille output environment for Emacs. It is aimed primarily at visually impaired users who need non-visual communication with Emacs, but it can be used by anybody who needs sophisticated speech or other kind of alternative output from Emacs. speechd-el can make Emacs a completely speech and BRLTTY enabled application suitable for visually impaired users or, depending on its configuration, it can only speak in certain situations or when asked, to serve needs of any Emacs user. For more information about speechd-el features see the Texinfo manual or the project web page http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd-el (you can also find some comparison with Emacspeak there). Installation: - If you use Emacs older than 23.2 then install the `eieio' Elisp library, available from http://cedet.sourceforge.net/eieio.shtml or perhaps from your favorite operating system distribution. - Copy the speechd-el *.el files somewhere to your Emacs load path. This may be typically the directory /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/. - It is recommended to byte compile the *.el files, otherwise you may experience performance problems. You can compile the files by running make compile Then copy the resulting *.elc files to your Emacs path as described in the previous step. - Make sure all the installed files are world-readable at their target location, e.g. cd /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp chmod 755 *.el *.elc - If you want to build online manual, run make info You need makeinfo from Texinfo package for this. Then you can install the resulting *.info files by copying them to the location where *.info files reside on your system (typically /usr/share/info) and editing `dir' file there. Alternatively you can open the manual directly in Emacs using `C-u C-h i'. In case you'd like to print the manual, run make pdf You need Texinfo to produce PDF version of the manual. - Add the following line to your ~/.emacs: (autoload 'speechd-speak "speechd-speak" nil t) - Install the `speechd-log-extractor' script somewhere to your shell PATH (this step is optional, the script is used only for bug reporting). - Start Speech Dispatcher and/or BRLTTY. - Start Emacs and call the commands M-x speechd-speak RET In case you do not use both speech and braille outputs and you'd like to get rid of the corresponding error messages, customize the variable speechd-out-active-drivers. Now, your Emacs should speak and/or output to your Braille display. See the Texinfo manual for complete documentation. You can send bug reports, patches, suggestions, etc. to the mailing list speechd@lists.freebsoft.org. -- Milan Zamazal <pdm@zamazal.org>