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Subject: Re: PDA to Jukebox

Re: PDA to Jukebox

From: Ray Lambert <listlizard_at_interthingy.net>
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 01:51:28 -0500

Glenn,

I think you printed the wrong URL there; it looks like it should be:
<http://www.linux-speakup.org> The one you gave redirects to some
grassroots political web site.

Anywho...

Yes, I do use a Zaurus C860. Great little machine (but no USB host). I
only wish it had a built-in 40GB HD so I could replace my Archos FMR
with it and only carry one device with me. Of course, I'm sure I would
miss Rockbox... :)

After a brief look at the speakup web site, I think it's unlikely that
this would work on a Zaurus. A quick search through a couple of Z
software indices found nothing.

First off, unless I misunderstood, it requires a hardware speech
synthesizer of some sort which I doubt could be connected to a Zaurus.
If it were possible to work with a software-only speech synthesizer,
then this might be possible. The Z does have full sound support (in
fact, I'm in the early stages of writing a guitar signal processing
program so I can practice when I'm on travel without having to lug an
amp around with me... :) I just did a quick search and I did find a
software-based speech synthesis program based on Festival:
<http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=377>. There's also
this one that gives some hope:
<http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=893> (note that it's
proprietary, though).

However, the bigger problem is that the Z doesn't run on X, but rather
Qtopia, which is a PDA desktop based on Qt using a frame buffer. It
might still be possible to get it to work on this platform but it would
likely require a large effort.

There is one glimmer of hope though. Some folks have put together an
alternate ROM for the Z which does run X11 and they've managed to port
many Linux desktop apps to it (<http://www.pdaxrom.org>). I haven't
tried this ROM myself, but I understand that it's a bit slow (not
surprisingly). If it is at all possible to get a screen reader working
on the Z, this ROM would probably be your best hope.

Nevertheless, I've posted a question on the forum to see if anyone knows
anything. Here's a link to the thread, so you can monitor it, if you
like: <http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11196>

~ray


>Ray,
>Do you use one of these PDA's?
>If so, could you ask that list if it can run, or rather, if Speakup could be
>made to run on it?
>Speakup is a screen reader for Linux.
>If so, that would be wonderful for many of us.
>Speakup can be found at:
>http://www.speakup.org
>Glenn
>
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Received on 2005-03-08

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