[BRLTTY] Running brltty under Windows (was: 3.8 has now been released.)

[Lee Maschmeyer]

Talksina asked how to run brltty under Windows.

As of now you have to compile brltty and this requires a Unix-like system 
that runs under Windows. There are two of these available that I know of: 
Cygwin (www.cygwin.com) and MinGW/Msys which I don't know much about.

To install Cygwin, go to cygwin.com, read the comments there and then 
download setup.exe. This installer looks horrible at first sight. If you use 
Jaws as your Windows screen reader it's difficult but usable. I didn't have 
luck with WindowEyes as my screen reader but I know next to nothing about 
WindowEyes and assume someone with more familiarity with it could make it 
work.

In either case, you want to start with the defaults anyway which is 
relatively easy. Just make the few choices and hit Enter everywhere until 
you get to the list of mirror sites. Select several of these, then hit Enter 
a couple more times and you end up with a basic, small Linux system that 
runs under Windows. You can use your screen reader's speech and braille to 
read it.

In order to compile brltty you'll need some additional components. If you 
have a spare 2 GB or so of disk space you can just install everything. This 
is covered in the Cygwin user's guide, or holler if you need more help. If 
you don't have that luxury you need to choose components. This is where the 
Cygwin installer gets - interesting. It can be done though so don't give up; 
ask here on or off list.

Once you've built and installed brltty under Cygwin you can use it for 
Cygwin and for the DOS box.

Hope this helps and hasn't included too many mistakes :-),

-- 
Lee Maschmeyer
<lee_maschmeyer at wayne.edu>

"Be kind to your fur-bearing friends,
For a skunk may be somebody's brother."
     --Fred Allen