Re: Making a BSD system more braille friendly

[Brian Buhrow <buhrow%nfbcal.org@localhost>]

	hello Enrico.  I am a blind computer programmer who has been working
with Unix for many years and NetBSD for over 20 years.  I have brltty 5.4
running with a Hims Smart Beetle over a USB connection under NetBSD-5.2.
I've not yet committed my patches to the ugen(4) -current code which make
this setup work quickly and reliably.  I also use a modified version of
Michael Gorse's Yasr screen reading program for speech output.  To emulate
windows, I use the window(1) program from the packages collection.  This
gives me multiple windows, plus the ability to cut and paste from one
window to another.  The tmux(1) program can do most of these things as
well, but I've not taken the time to learn how to use that yet.

	My laptop and desktop computers, have, so far, been equipped with
serial ports which I enable as serial consoles if I need to do some serious
kernel work.  In that case, I take the computer I'm working on and  plug
its serial port into the serial port of another computer and use the
Kermit program from the packages collection to run a terminal connection
over the serial link.  Once I have the kernel working the way I want, I'll
change the boot blocks using installboot to re-enable the standard keyboard
and screen.  Then, I log into the computer without speech, and enable
speech using brltty or yasr once I'm at my prompt.  Yes, this means there
are times when I'm not sure I've fully logged in, but these times are rare,
and if things really aren't working right, I can reeboot and that usually
fixes the problem.

	FreeBSD and OpenBSD can be used in the same manner, though the details
of how a specific setup vary depending on the OS and version you're using.

	If you're interested, I'm happy to share my mods for Yasr and to give
you  bootable images of the version of NetBSD-5 that I'm using.  Also, this
might be insentive enough for me to get my patches committed to the
official OS.
In short, welcome!

-Brian



	
On Dec 31,  3:03pm, Enrico Mioso wrote:
} Subject: Making a BSD system more braille friendly
} Hello to all of you reading this message.
} 
} Sorry for my possibly ugly message: english isn't my native language.
} My name is Enrico: and I am a blind computer user. I currently am using Linux, 
} with the help of a software called BRLTTY (of which NetBSD has a port): so I 
} can read what's on the screen via a device called Braille Display. There are 
} different vendors of such devices, and each one uses it's protocol in general. Different models may need different protocols, too.
} This is probably especially true for USB-based devices, but I own also a serial 
} (RS232) device which still uses it's own protocol. So BRLTTY works by reading the 
} content of the console somehow, and sending informations to the braille display 
} device, using the appropriate protocol. The braille display can request some actions to be performed to the 
} BRLTTY software itself, via keypresses or other means.
} I came to know BSD systems some time ago: and apreciated some of their qualities and overall stability. And 
} wanted to make it more feasible for a blind user to administer a system, or 
} try using an *BSD installation to perform it's daily tasks. The problem, as 
} you'll know, is that in a *BSD kernel, there is no such interface allowing an user-space process to inspect the content of the 
} console. On Linux systems, this is feabible via the /dev/vcs* 
} interface (VCS(4)), which is infact used by BRLTTY. On BSD, the used 
} approach was to patch an user-space application, namely GNU screen, to be able to access 
} it's memory. Still I wanted something more integrated on the system, allowing 
} me for example, to read the login prompt, and be able to control the system 
} more completely. For this  I tried to look around to understand how wscons 
} works, thinking that hooking up in wsdisplay would be interesting. Still, also 
} because I have no experience on *BSD kernel hacking, I wasn't able to grasp the 
} idea on how it works. So I was asking for your help and guidance on this effort. I can not 
} guarantee how things go, but i would like to try. I experienced with an OpenBSD instance 
} until now in QEMU/KVM. I was able to rebuild the kernel, so i think I will be able to prepare what's needed to experiment.
} Thank you all very much for the time you spent reading this message.
} Thank you for all, and have an happy new year.
} Enrico
>-- End of excerpt from Enrico Mioso