[BRLTTY] brltty "keyboard braille device" support (and a few more things)

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Klaus Knopper on 2007/01/24 at 18:15 +0100]

>- Possibility to use the screenreader WITHOUT a braille display, by
>  using hotkeys on the normal keyboard for navigating and speaking he
>  screen content. This is he most imporant feature.

I aassume you mean the ability to use brltty for speech only. This could be
fairly easily done. I've even thought of doing it before, but just haven't
gotten around to it yet. What keys would you use on the keyboard? It'd be nice
to use a scheme which wouldn't interfere with Speakup's bindings.

>- Disconnect/reconnect of bluetooth-connected braille devices without
>  restarting the screenreader.

That's easy to do. Right now brltty waits for the braille display to come back
because the display's controls are it's only source of input. Restructuring
this isn't difficult.

>- Profiles for different programs/environments that are automatically
>  activated.

This one is much more complicated. I doubt that sbl even gets it right. It's
easy to know what the foreground program is when running in text mode right on
the console. If accessing a remote system via telnet/ssh, however, or if using
a GUI, determining which program is running in the current foreground is
essentially impossble to determine passively.

>- Keyboard-operated cut&paste support between programs and consoles.

That's easy to do.

>- Multiple language/pitch/speed/volume support for the sofware speech
>  synthesizer (festival) to be activated by keyboard shortcuts.

I think that's easy, although I'm not sure exactly what is needed here. If you
mean dynamically changing settings depending on the current text then that's
more difficult. If you just mean establishing settings then it's easy. Volume
and speed are already handled. A default (startup) setting can be saved, and
the current setting can be changed either via the preferences menu or via keys.

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