On 2019-02-24 17:58, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 03:56:33PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
>> I need to set up a machine for someone with Orca for speech output,
>> therefore
>> it needs to run the Gnome desktop.
>
> Uhhhm, no, it doesn't. Gnome works with xfce and mate, though mate
> provides a more accessible experience for orca users than xfce does.
>
>> I'd very much prefer to do this without
>> systemd if I can.
>
> No problem, just choose one of the two desktops mentioned above during
> the devuan install.
>
>>
>> Therefore I'm wondering what the current status of doing this on
>> Devuan
>> (preferably Ascii) is.
>
> I'm not yet running an Ascii box with a GUI. However, if the Ascii
> install is anything like Jessie, which I seem to recall it is, then
> you just need to press "s" and <enter> when the boot menu comes
> up. This will start a text install with speech. The beauty of doing it
> this way is that it will setup everything for use with orca if you
> choose a desktop during the install. You can do the install without
> speech like you would do for yourself, and install gnome-orca after,
> but there are some specific steps that need to be done for orca to
> come up after the install. I believe the steps are described on the
> debian wiki accessibility page.
>
>>
>> https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/migrate-to-ascii and
>> https://www.heise.de/select/ix/2018/8/1533453649894916 both tell me
>> that I
>> can't run Gnome at all, so I'm hoping that these are out of date.
>
> Correct, gnome is tangled with systemd, so you can't run gnome without
> systemd. If the person you're installing this for really needs gnome
> specifically, then I'd suggest you install debian for that individual.
>
>>
>> Doing a fresh installation of Ascii doesn't offer me Gnome as a
>> desktop
>> envoironment choice.
>
> Correct as mentioned above.
>
>>
>> However, installing without a graphical environment does then allow me
>> to
>> install "gnome" and "gnome-orca" as packages, which suggests to me
>> that it is
>> now supported.
>
> Yes, with xfce or mate as mentioned above.
>
>>
>> Rebooting just leaves me with the standard text terminal login prompt,
>> though.
>
> Right, as expected without a desktop environment installed.
>
>>
>> So, in summary:
>>
>> a) can I use the Gnome desktop on Devuan Ascii?
>
> No.
>
>>
>> b) if yes, how do I get the machine to present a graphical login
>> prompt on
>> startup?
>>
>> If anyone has any additional comments specifically related to using
>> the Orca
>> screenreader for speech (not Braille) output, by all means email me
>> offlist.
>>
>
> Slim isn't accessible, so install lightdm and lightdm-gtk-greeter as
> the login manager. some people have also had issues with orca and
> speech-dispatcher not playing nice, while others didn't have these
> issues. You'll know if you have them if orca and speech-dispatcher are
> running, but there is no speech after login. I think I described how
> to resolve this somewhere on this list. If you can't find that post,
> and seem to have the mentioned issue, I'll either dig up the link to
> it myself, or will provide a brief recap of what needs to be done.
>
> Also note that if you use the accessible install, the installed system
> will have both speakup for the text console installed, as well as orca
> for the GUI. This also includes pulseaudio, which doesn't play nice
> with speakup/espeakup. This is because espeakup expects to access the
> audio hardware through alsa, while by default, speech-dispatcher
> expects to access the hardware through pulseaudio. There are a few
> work arounds, but the simplest is to purge pulseaudio, or at least
> stop it from running at all, and configuring speech-dispatcher to use
> libao through spd-conf(1). You can also do this by configuring things
> in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf, and killing
> speech-dispatcher. If you can, it's best to reboot whatever
> configuration method you used, since there are sometimes problems with
> speech-dispatcher coming up and using the new configuration. I believe
> debian wiki's accessibility page mentions this too, but I could be
> wrong on that.
>
> Also, I see no need to take this off list. As I understand it,
> accessibility is one of the pillars of devuan. Feel free to ask if you
> can't hunt down answers to other questions on your own, and I'll do my
> best to help.
>
> Greg

Just for completeness, I'll mention the minimal-live isos -
https://files.roundr.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/minimal-live/ - which were
created specifically for those with accessibility issues with feedback
from the speakup community.

golinux