[BRLTTY] My approach to getting Gnopernicus running in Debian Sarge

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

Maybe we should take this to private mail until there is 
a complete doc.  I need to research some things myself.

On Thu, Aug 11, 2005 at 09:06:51AM -0400, Christopher Moore wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 10:15:47AM -0500, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> > 
> > I'll try to recreate the file I started, but it will have parts specific
> > to Debian.  I origionally wrote it to try to document how to get
> > Gnopernicus up and running for Sarge.
> > 
> Kenny,
> I'd be willing to help with this documentation effort.  I installed sarge
> on a test machine. I added x-windows, brltty and festival packages.  What's
> next?  Below are a few initial questions I thought of.  Some of the answers
> are probably obvious to an exerienced debian user, but I'm somewhere toward
> the other end of the spectrum.
> 

First, is your X-windows setup working?  The same question applies for
your festival setup.  If they aren't, you should take the time
to get them working before continuing.

> Q: The brltty installed by sarge is outdated (3.4 I think).  How do I
> rebuild it with a newer version without confusing the apt packaging system?
> Do I first remove the debian package and build brltty from sources?  If so,
> debian won't know that I have brltty installed.  
> 

My solution was to remove the Debian BRLtty package and build from
source.  Debian won't know about BRLtty, but nothing depends on it so we
can get away with this for now.

> q: when I installed the brltty package, it didn't ask me whether I wanted
> brlapi support.  Is there a way to include brlapi support within the
> context of debian package management or am I better off not using the
> package approach and building from sources.

Until the Debian package is updated, I believe building BRLtty from
source is the best solution.  A bug has been filed, so there will be
an updated BRLtty package eventually, but It won't likely ever 
make it into Sarge.

> 
> Q: How do I install the required packages for gnome and gnopernicus?  Maybe
> we'll again be in a situation where we install the stock gnome packages and
> build some or all of the accessibility stuff from sources.
> 

Gnopernicus will need to be built from source.  You will need to replace
the ttybrl.c file in the Gnopernicus source tree before building to get
the best results with Gnopernicus BRLAPI support.  You will need to use
the ttybrl.c file from BRLtty's svn.
If you want to use a commercial synth, you will also need to build gnome-speech from source.
For the rest, I start out with Debian packages.  I need to do some
research for a complete answer to this.  Just using the command:

apt-get install gnome gnome-devel

didn't get everything needed.  I can't remember what packages were
missing.  That info was lost when I lost my doc attempt.  My biggest
problem in finding out the missing packages and answering other
questions is the lack of a functioning Braille display.  I can figure
out what additional packages will need to be installed, but I can't test
the result until I have a working display.

> Q: What about mozilla?  Does debian have packages or do we build from
> sources?
> 

Debian has Mozilla packages.  The Mozilla in Sarge isn't the latest
release.  My personal experience building Sun's Mozilla wasn't
favorable.  I'm sure my problem could have been user error, but until I
can build, install, and see a noticeable improvement with Sun's Mozilla,
I can't recomend trying it to a newby.
I found Sun's Mozilla to be unstable.  It crashed frequently.  I tested
the latest build available.  I could always get a crash when trying to
fill out any form, so simple tasks like google searches weren't 
possible using it.

I didn't have these problems with Debian's Mozilla packages.

> I believe that a clearly documented roadmap would go a long way towards
> demistifying the gnoem experience.
> 

I agree with you on this one.  I believe it will require effort from
users of several distros to get the best results.  That's why I've
replied to your questions on list.  If people feel this should be moved
to private mail, let me know and I'll post the final doc once we have
something.

          Kenny