speechd-up

[Tomas Cerha]

Hi all,

I'll just try to formulate what I believe is important in this discussion.

There is no doubt that a console screen reader is important, that blind
users deserve equal access etc, so any discussions in this direction are
unnecessary and complicate coming to a resolution.

We also understand that some temporary solutions are necessary.  But we
want to clearly identify what is a temporary hack and what is the
desired final solution.  We can not afford following dead end roads.
Long term accessibility must rely on main stream development, not
obscure, specifically tailored hacks.

We really welcome if anyone wants to work on Speakup and speechd-up in
the direction which Hynek roughly described.  We may discuss the details
of it, but it approximately is the only way to go and keep up with the
current development, which we can hardly stop and there actually is not
a reason for doing that.  It brings some additional complexity, but it
addresses real issues.  We can not blindly insist on running all
services as root just because it is simple.

If we can agree on this approach, we'll be happy to host such project on
the Free(b)soft site.  If we can not agree on that, we somewhat
understand the motivation, but we simply don't want to be connected with
it, because we believe it is fundamentally wrong.  We also don't want
restrict the future development of Speech Dispatcher by the need to
comply with such design.

Hope this was said clearly and pragmatically enough and it doesn't
offend anyone.  We highly respect what was achieved by the Speakup
project, but the development goes on and we can not live in seclusion.

Best regards, Tomas