: emacspeak.texi 5712 2008-08-02 18:07:12Z tv.raman.tv $ ./emacspeak.info

Emacspeak

This manual documents Emacspeak, a speech interface to Emacs.

Indices:

1. Copyright

This manual documents Emacspeak, a speech extension to Emacs.

Copyright (C)1994 – 2008 T. V. Raman All Rights Reserved.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual without charge provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

2. Announcing Emacspeak Manual 2nd Edition As An Open Source Project

This is to announce the launch of a new open source project to create a user manual for Emacspeak –an Emacs speech extension that provides a complete audio desktop.

2.1 How To Contribute To This Manual

This manual is organized as a series of chapters, with each chapter in a separate file. If you feel capable of contributing to a specific section, send out a message to the Emacspeak mailing list emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu. You can then start adding content to a local copy of the chapter to which you are contributing. When you feel you have something to submit, mail out the file to the emacspeak mailing list– I’ll integrate new content as it comes in.

2.2 Authoring Guidelines

For this manual to hang together and make sense to the new user at whom it is targeted, contributors need to stick to a consistent style. If you plan to contribute content, you should take some time to read the existing sections –note that many of these are skeletal and the first contributions will be to flesh these sections out.

If you are familiar with texinfo, go ahead and mark up your content using texinfo. If you are not, simply author the documentation you create as plain formatted ASCII. If you do submit files as texinfo source, make sure to validate them at your end first by running the files through makeinfo –badly created or malformed texinfo source takes more time to fix than marking up straight text.

2.3 Credits

This initial version draws heavily from the original Emacspeak user manual, and includes contributions from Jim Van Zandt and Jason White. Authors who contribute complete sections will be acknowledged here as well as in the specific section they author.

3. Introduction

Emacspeak provides a complete audio desktop by speech-enabling all of Emacs.

In the past, screen reading programs have allowed visually impaired users to get feedback using synthesized speech. Such programs have been commercially available for well over a decade. Most of them run on PC’s under DOS, and these are now moving over to the Windows environment. However, screen-readers for the UNIX environment have been conspicuous in their absence. Note that this is now changing with the availability of console-level Linux screenreaders such as speakup. Such Linux screenreaders provide the same level of UNIX accessibility provided in the late 80’s by PC terminal emulators running a DOS screenreader. This means that most visually impaired computer users face the additional handicap of being DOS-impaired — a far more serious problem:-)

Emacspeak is an emacs subsystem that provides complete speech access. It is not a screen-reader —rather, it is a complete user environment with built-in speech feedback. Emacspeak has a significant advantage; since it runs inside Emacs, a structure-sensitive, fully customizable environment, Emacspeak has more context-specific information about what it is speaking than its screenreader counterparts. This is why Emacspeak is not a “screenreader”, it is a subsystem that produces speech output.

A Traditional screen-reader speaks the content of the screen, leaving it to the user to interpret the visual layout. Emacspeak, on the other hand, treats speech as a first-class output modality; it speaks the information in a manner that is easy to comprehend when listening.

The basic concepts used by Emacspeak are simple; all interactive Emacs commands have been adapted to provide speech feedback. Hence, you use Emacs as normal; Emacspeak works behind the scene to give audio feedback in addition to updating the screen.

Emacspeak consists of a core speech system that provides speech and audio services to the rest of the Emacspeak desktop; application-specific extensions provide context-specific spoken feedback using these services. Emacspeak currently comes with speech extensions for several popular Emacs subsystems and editing modes. I would like to thank their respective authors for their wonderful work which makes Emacs more than a text editor(1)..

4. Installation Instructions

This chapter gives brief and detailed installation instructions for configuring, installing and starting Emacspeak.

4.1 Obtaining Emacspeak

Emacspeak is available on the Internet at:

WWW

http://emacspeak.sf.net

WWW

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/emacspeak/

FTP

ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/raman/emacspeak

Mail List

emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu

List Request

emacspeak-request@cs.vassar.edu

The Emacspeak mailing list is maintained by Greg E. Priest-Dorman. If you are using Emacspeak, you can join the list by sending mail to the request address.

4.2 Quick Installation

Here are the quick installation instructions. See the next section for detailed installation instructions.

Prepackaged RPM files are available on the Emacspeak site. Packages for other Linux distributions such as Debian typically become available on the WWW a few days after a new version is released. The instructions below are for building and installing Emacspeak from the source distribution.

• Type ‘make config’ to configure the sources for your site.
• Type ‘make’ to compile the files.
• Install the system by typing ‘make install’
• Run it by doing one of:
  • ‘emacspeak’
  • Add the line

    (load-file "<emacspeak-dir>/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el")

    to the top of your .emacs file.

  In the above, <emacspeak-dir> refers to the directory where you unpacked the sources.

4.3 Configuring and Installing Emacspeak

Note: You need a current version of GNU Emacs for using newer versions of Emacspeak.

The speech server for the Dectalk is written in TclX. (For example, see the source file ‘dtk-exp’).

• Decide where you want the Emacspeak elisp files. Most Unix packages are unpacked and compiled in one directory, and then the executable, documentation, and data files are installed in the appropriate system directories.

  Once you have decided on the appropriate directory, make it if necessary and unpack the distribution .tar file there.

• Look through the introductory section of the Makefile to see if you need to edit it for your site.
• Check the directory prefix for installation. The default is ‘/usr/local’, so ‘.info’ files go to ‘/usr/local/info’ and the executable file goes to ‘/usr/local/bin’. To change this, edit the line defining PREFIX.

Configure the source files by typing ‘make config’. At this point you can check that the speech server is correctly configured by typing

tcl dtk-exp

(assuming you are using the Dectalk Express). You should hear the Dectalk speak and get a TCL prompt if everything is okay.

If you’re feeling paranoid, you can perform a couple of additional tests at this point. Execute the following commands in the running tcl session you just started above. (Most users will not need to do this; it is a sanity check and is useful in tracking problems, especially if you find emacspeak beginning to talk and then immediately fall silent.)

• q "this is a test." d

  You should hear the Dectalk speak the text.
• ‘s’ The above command stops speech. You should see a TCL prompt when you execute it. If things appear to hang when you execute ‘s’ i.e. you don’t see a TCL prompt
  1. The serial cable connecting your speech device is flaky
  2. Your serial port is flaky
  3. The stty settings on the port are incorrect for your system

  In the case of incorrect stty settings please report the problem. The following UNIX command can be used to report the stty settings:

  stty -a < serial_port

Quit this TCL session by typing C-D.

Next, compile the elisp files by typing

make emacspeak

Finally, install the documentation and executable files by typing

make PREFIX=<prefix> install 

The speech server program and/or output port can also be specified at run time by setting the shell environment variables DTK_PROGRAM and DTK_PORT. Examples: If using csh or tcsh

setenv DTK_PROGRAM "dtk-exp"

if using sh or bash

DTK_PROGRAM=dtk-exp
export DTK_PROGRAM

Similarly,

DTK_PORT=/dev/ttyS0

You can always set these variables from a running Emacs session by executing the Emacs setenv command.

5. Basic Usage.

This chapter gives an overview of how to use Emacspeak. Note: This documentation should be used in conjunction with the online Emacs info pages that extensively document Emacs itself. These sections briefly describe the speech-enabling extensions. However, they should not be considered a substitute for reading the Emacs manual. How successfully you use Emacspeak will depend on how well you learn your Emacs.

All Emacs navigation and editing commands have been speech enabled. Thus, moving to the next or previous word, line or paragraph results in the text around point being spoken. Exactly how much text is spoken is determined by the amount by which you moved.

In addition, Emacspeak provides basic reading functions that can be invoked to listen to chunks of text without moving.

5.1 Overview of Emacspeak

Emacspeak provides a small number of core services around which the remainder of the audio interface is constructed. These essential features of the software are briefly outlined in the following paragraphs; the commands by which they can be controlled will be described later in the manual.

Apart from providing a fluent spoken interface to all of Emacs’ basic editing functions, Emacspeak also includes software modules which add speech feedback to a range of applications that can be run from within Emacs. In this sense, Emacspeak amounts to much more than a talking text editor; indeed, it can more aptly be characterized as a true “audio desktop”, in which speech is treated as a first-class output modality.

Emacspeak implements a special minor mode, known as “voice lock mode” (see section Voice Lock Mode) which uses distinct speech characteristics to provide aural highlighting of specific textual constructs, such as comments in program code, quoted strings and reserved words See section Voice Lock. This facility is further extended when Emacspeak is used with the W3 World Wide Web browser, to enable the semantic and structural distinctions captured by the HTML markup to be communicated efficiently See section Web Browsing..

It is often desirable to exercise control over the pronunciation of a word (E.G. a technical term or a reserved word in a programming language) within specific contexts. Emacspeak maintains pronunciation dictionaries for this purpose, which may be customized by the user. Moreover, individual dictionaries can be activated selectively, depending for example on the current major mode or the name of the file which is being visited See section emacspeak-pronounce.

In addition to spoken feedback, Emacspeak can generate “auditory icons”—short sound cues which alert the user to significant events, for example the opening or deletion of a file, the completion of an action, the arrival of an electronic mail message or the creation of a completion buffer. Sound cues act as a supplement to the spoken interface, and are especially valuable to the experienced user in facilitating rapid interaction. Note that in order to support auditory icons, the computer must be equipped with sound hardware for which the operating system has been correctly configured See section emacspeak-sounds.

5.2 Working In Emacs Buffers.

While typing in an Emacs buffer, hitting space speaks the recently typed word. I use completion all the time; so Emacspeak will speak the completion just inserted as well as the next possible completion. In Emacs, use load-library ret completion ret for loading the completion package.

The standard Emacs prompting functions have also been speech-enabled. Emacs prompts with available lists of completions in response to partial input wherever appropriate —all forms of completion provide speech feedback.

In addition, Emacspeak provides a number of commands for reading portions of the current buffer, getting status information, and modifying Emacspeak’s state.

All of the commands are documented in the subsequent sections. They can be classified into types:

• Emacspeak commands for listening to chunks of information. The names of these commands all start with the common prefix emacspeak-speak-. All Emacspeak commands are bound to the keymap emacspeak-keymap and are accessed with the key Control e(2). Thus, the Emacspeak command emacspeak-speak-line is bound to l in keymap emacspeak-keymap and can be accessed with the keystroke Control-e l. If for some reason you wish to use some key other than control-e as the common keyboard prefix for all Emacspeak commands, set the variable emacspeak-prefix.
• The second category of commands provided by Emacspeak manipulate the state of the speech device. The names of these commands start with the common prefix dtk- and are bound in keymap emacspeak-dtk-submap. You can access these commands via the prefix Control-e d(3). Thus, the command dtk-set-rate is bound to r in keymap emacspeak-dtk-submap and can be executed by pressing Control e d r.

Emacs has extensive online help; so does emacspeak. Please use it.

This info manual is only to get you started. You can get a summary of Emacspeak’s features by pressing Control-h Control-e

5.3 Reading Without Moving The Cursor.

Emacspeak speaks information as you move around within a buffer. How much text is spoken depends on how you move, thus, when you move by words, you hear the current word; when you move by paragraphs, you hear the current paragraph spoken. In addition, the following commands allow you to listen to information without moving point (point is emacs terminology for the editing cursor).

Reading without moving point:

control e c

emacspeak-speak-char Speak character under point. Pronounces character phonetically unless called with a PREFIX arg.

control e w

emacspeak-speak-word Speak current word. With prefix ARG, speaks the rest of the word from point. Negative prefix arg speaks from start of word to point. If executed on the same buffer position a second time, the word is spelled instead of being spoken.

control e l

emacspeak-speak-line Speaks current line. With prefix ARG, speaks the rest of the line from point. Negative prefix optional arg speaks from start of line to point. Voicifies if option ‘voice-lock-mode’ is on. Indicates indentation with a tone if audio indentation is in use. Indicates position of point with an aural highlight if option ‘emacspeak-show-point’ is turned on –see command ‘emacspeak-show-point’ bound to M-x emacspeak-show-point. Lines that start hidden blocks of text, e.g. outline header lines, or header lines of blocks created by command ‘emacspeak-hide-or-expose-block’ are indicated with auditory icon ellipses.

control e up

emacspeak-read-previous-line Read previous line, specified by an offset, without moving. Default is to read the previous line.

control e down

emacspeak-read-next-line Read next line, specified by an offset, without moving. Default is to read the next line.

control e {

emacspeak-speak-paragraph Speak paragraph. With prefix arg, speaks rest of current paragraph. Negative prefix arg will read from start of current paragraph to point. If voice-lock-mode is on, then it will use any defined personality.

control e r

emacspeak-speak-region Speak current region delimited by point and mark. When called from a program, argument START and END specify region to speak.

control e cap R

emacspeak-speak-rectangle Speak a rectangle of text. Rectangle is delimited by point and mark. When call from a program, arguments specify the START and END of the rectangle.

control e b

emacspeak-speak-buffer Speak current buffer contents. With prefix ARG, speaks the rest of the buffer from point. Negative prefix arg speaks from start of buffer to point. If voice lock mode is on, the paragraphs in the buffer are voice annotated first, see command ‘emacspeak-speak-voice-annotate-paragraphs’.

control e n

emacspeak-speak-rest-of-buffer Speak remainder of the buffer starting at point

control e /

emacspeak-speak-this-buffer-other-window-display Speak this buffer as displayed in a different frame. Emacs allows you to display the same buffer in multiple windows or frames. These different windows can display different portions of the buffer. This is equivalent to leaving a book open at places at once. This command allows you to listen to the places where you have left the book open. The number used to invoke this command specifies which of the displays you wish to speak. Typically you will have two or at most three such displays open. The current display is 0, the next is 1, and so on. Optional argument ARG specifies the display to speak.

control e left

emacspeak-speak-this-buffer-previous-display Speak this buffer as displayed in a ‘previous’ window. See documentation for command ‘emacspeak-speak-this-buffer-other-window-display’ for the meaning of ‘previous’.

control e right

emacspeak-speak-this-buffer-next-display Speak this buffer as displayed in a ‘previous’ window. See documentation for command ‘emacspeak-speak-this-buffer-other-window-display’ for the meaning of ‘previous’.

control e [

emacspeak-speak-page Speak a page. With prefix ARG, speaks rest of current page. Negative prefix arg will read from start of current page to point. If option ‘voice-lock-mode’ is on, then it will use any defined personality.

control e 9 control e 8 control e 7 control e 6 control e 5 control e 4 control e 3 control e 2 control e 1 control e 0

emacspeak-speak-predefined-window Speak one of the first 10 windows on the screen. In general, you’ll never have Emacs split the screen into more than two or three. Argument ARG determines the ’other’ window to speak. Speaks entire window irrespective of point. Semantics of ‘other’ is the same as for the builtin Emacs command ‘other-window’.

control e control n

emacspeak-speak-next-window Speak the next window.

control e control p

emacspeak-speak-previous-window Speak the previous window.

control e control o

emacspeak-speak-other-window Speak contents of ‘other’ window. Speaks entire window irrespective of point. Semantics of ‘other’ is the same as for the builtin Emacs command ‘other-window’. Optional argument ARG specifies ‘other’ window to speak.

ESCAPE up

emacspeak-owindow-previous-line Move to the next line in the other window and speak it. Numeric prefix arg COUNT specifies number of lines to move.

ESCAPE down

emacspeak-owindow-next-line Move to the next line in the other window and speak it. Numeric prefix arg COUNT can specify number of lines to move.

ESCAPE next

emacspeak-owindow-scroll-up Scroll up the window that command ‘other-window’ would move to. Speak the window contents after scrolling.

ESCAPE prior

emacspeak-owindow-scroll-down Scroll down the window that command ‘other-window’ would move to. Speak the window contents after scrolling.

control e '

emacspeak-speak-sexp Speak current sexp. With prefix ARG, speaks the rest of the sexp from point. Negative prefix arg speaks from start of sexp to point. If option ‘voice-lock-mode’ is on, then uses the personality.

control e meta control @

emacspeak-speak-spaces-at-point Speak the white space at point.

5.4 Speech System Commands

This section documents Emacspeak’s various user commands for controlling the text to speech (TTS) system.

5.4.1 Character, Word And Line Echo.

By default, Emacspeak speaks characters as they are typed –this is called character echo; Words are spoken as they are completed –this is called word echo. Emacspeak can also optionally speak each line as it is typed –this is called line echo.

Character, word and line echo can be toggled –either in the current buffer– or for all buffers (globally). To toggle the specific echo functionality for all buffers, precede the specific command with C-u. Note that in the documentation below, this use of C-u is indicated using the common Emacs terminology of prefix arg or interactive prefix arg.

control e d k

emacspeak-toggle-character-echo Toggle state of Emacspeak character echo. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d w

emacspeak-toggle-word-echo Toggle state of Emacspeak word echo. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d l

emacspeak-toggle-line-echo Toggle state of Emacspeak line echo. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

5.4.2 Setting Various Characteristics Of Speech Output.

Emacspeak user commands can set different characteristics of the speech output such as speech rate and punctuations mode.

Emacspeak provides a number of settings that affect how attributes of the text such as capitalization are conveyed. These include settings that produce a short tone for each upper case letter, as well as a smart mode for speaking mixed case words which is especially useful when programming. These settings can be made locally in a given buffer or be applied to all buffers by preceding these commands with C-u.

control e d r

dtk-set-rate Set speaking RATE for the tts. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d f

dtk-set-character-scale Set scale FACTOR for speech rate. Speech rate is scaled by this factor when speaking characters. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

This function is advised.

Before-advice ‘emacspeak-auto’: Automatically defined advice to speak interactive prompts.

control e d 9 control e d 8 control e d 7 control e d 6 control e d 5 control e d 4 control e d 3 control e d 2 control e d 1 control e d 0

dtk-set-predefined-speech-rate Set speech rate to one of nine predefined levels. Interactive PREFIX arg says to set the rate globally.

control e d p

dtk-set-punctuations Set punctuation mode to MODE. Possible values are ‘some’, ‘all’, or ‘none’. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d m

dtk-set-pronunciation-mode Set pronunciation MODE. This command is valid only for newer Dectalks, e.g. the Dectalk Express. Possible values are ‘math, name, europe, spell’, all of which can be turned on or off. Argument STATE specifies new state.

control e d s

dtk-toggle-split-caps Toggle split caps mode. Split caps mode is useful when reading Hungarian notation in program source code. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d c

dtk-toggle-capitalization Toggle capitalization. when set, capitalization is indicated by a short beep. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

control e d cap C

dtk-toggle-allcaps-beep Toggle allcaps-beep. when set, allcaps words are indicated by a short beep. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result. Note that allcaps-beep is a very useful thing when programming. However it is irritating to have it on when reading documents.

In addition, Emacspeak can convey the indentation of lines as they are spoken– this is relevant when programming and is the default when working with program source.

control e d i

emacspeak-toggle-audio-indentation Toggle state of Emacspeak audio indentation. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result. Specifying the method of indentation as ‘tones’ results in the Dectalk producing a tone whose length is a function of the line’s indentation. Specifying ‘speak’ results in the number of initial spaces being spoken.

Indentation feedback style is set by option emacspeak-audio-indentation-method

The default value is "speak"

See variable ‘emacspeak-audio-indentation-methods’ for possible values. Automatically becomes local in any buffer where it is set.

5.4.3 Miscellaneous Speech Commands

Speech can be stopped using command dtk-stop –though in normal use, the action of moving the cursor will stop ongoing speech. Speech can also be paused and resumed. The speech server can be stopped and restarted for cases where the user wants to switch to a different server –or in the rare case to nuke a runaway speech server.

Control e s

dtk-stop Stop speech now.

control e p

dtk-pause Pause ongoing speech. The speech can be resumed with command ‘dtk-resume’ normally bound to C-e SPC. Pausing speech is useful when one needs to perform a few actions before continuing to read a large document. Emacspeak gives you speech feedback as usual once speech has been paused. ‘dtk-resume’ continues the interrupted speech irrespective of the buffer in which it is executed. Optional PREFIX arg flushes any previously paused speech.

control e SPACE

dtk-resume Resume paused speech. This command resumes speech that has been suspended by executing command ‘dtk-pause’ bound to C-e p. If speech has not been paused, and variable ‘dtk-resume-should-toggle’ is t then this command will pause ongoing speech.

control e d q

dtk-toggle-quiet Toggle state of the speech device between being quiet and talkative. Useful if you want to continue using an Emacs session that has emacspeak loaded but wish to make the speech shut up. Optional argument PREFIX specifies whether speech is turned off in the current buffer or in all buffers.

control e control s

dtk-emergency-restart Use this to nuke the currently running dtk server and restart it. Useful if you want to switch to another synthesizer while emacspeak is running. Also useful for emergency stopping of speech.

Finally, here are the remaining commands available via the TTS related keymap C-e d.

control e d a

dtk-add-cleanup-pattern Add this pattern to the list of repeating patterns that are cleaned up. Optional interactive prefix arg deletes this pattern if previously added. Cleaning up repeated patterns results in emacspeak speaking the pattern followed by a repeat count instead of speaking all the characters making up the pattern. Thus, by adding the repeating pattern ‘.’ (this is already added by default) emacspeak will say “aw fifteen dot” when speaking the string “...............” instead of “period period period period ”.

control e d d

dtk-select-server Select a speech server interactively. This will be the server that is used when you next call either M-x dtk-initialize or C-e C-s. Argument PROGRAM specifies the speech server program.

control e d SPACE

dtk-toggle-splitting-on-white-space Toggle splitting of speech on white space. This affects the internal state of emacspeak that decides if we split text purely by clause boundaries, or also include whitespace. By default, emacspeak sends a clause at a time to the speech device. This produces fluent speech for normal use. However in modes such as ‘shell-mode’ and some programming language modes, clause markers appear infrequently, and this can result in large amounts of text being sent to the speech device at once, making the system unresponsive when asked to stop talking. Splitting on white space makes emacspeak’s stop command responsive. However, when splitting on white space, the speech sounds choppy since the synthesizer is getting a word at a time.

control e d RETURN

dtk-set-chunk-separator-syntax Interactively set how text is split in chunks. See the Emacs documentation on syntax tables for details on how characters are classified into various syntactic classes. Argument S specifies the syntax class.

control e d t

emacspeak-dial-dtk Prompt for and dial a phone NUMBER with the Dectalk.

control e d cap V

emacspeak-dtk-speak-version Use this to find out which version of the TTS firmware you are running.

control e d z

emacspeak-zap-dtk Send this command to the TTS engine directly.

5.5 Voice Lock Mode

The status of voice lock mode can be toggled on and off by issuing the command C-e d v (M-x voice-lock-mode). With a prefix arg, this function applies globally; otherwise, it is local to the current buffer. To have voice lock mode activated automatically when Emacspeak starts, include the following code in your ‘.emacs’ file:

(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
'turn-on-voice-lock)

Alternatively, Emacspeak can be set to enable voice lock automatically in all of the major modes that support it. To do so, insert the following statement into your Emacs initialization file:

(global-voice-lock-mode t)

Note that the list of major modes in which global-voice-lock-mode will provide automatic activation is specified in the variable voice-lock-global-modes See section Voice Lock.

The characteristics of the different voice personalities deployed by voice lock mode vary according to the capabilities of the speech synthesizer. The definitions applicable to the Dectalk family of synthesizers are contained in ‘dtk-voices.el’, which is supplied as part of the Emacspeak distribution.

Using voice lock mode, Emacspeak also supports many of the aural style properties defined in level 2 of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Cascading Style Sheet specification (see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/. Thus, when Emacspeak is running in conjunction with a cooperating user agent, such as William Perry’s Emacspeak/W3 web browser, the rendering of HTML documents can be regulated by style sheets. Examples of style rules which employ the CSS audio properties can be found in the default style sheet which is supplied in the Emacs/W3 distribution.

5.6 Commands For Speaking Status Information.

The following commands provide miscellaneous information.

control e a

emacspeak-speak-message-again Speak the last message from Emacs once again.

control e m

emacspeak-speak-mode-line Speak the mode-line.

control e cap M

emacspeak-speak-minor-mode-line Speak the minor mode-information.

control e control w

emacspeak-speak-window-information Speaks information about current windows.

control e t

emacspeak-speak-time Speak the time.

control e cap V

emacspeak-speak-version Announce version information for running emacspeak.

control e f

emacspeak-speak-buffer-filename Speak name of file being visited in current buffer. Speak default directory if invoked in a dired buffer, or when the buffer is not visiting any file.

control e h

emacspeak-speak-help Speak help buffer if one present. With prefix arg, speaks the rest of the buffer from point. Negative prefix arg speaks from start of buffer to point.

control e k

emacspeak-speak-current-kill Speak the current kill entry. This is the text that will be yanked in by the next C-y. Prefix numeric arg, COUNT, specifies that the text that will be yanked as a result of a C-y followed by count-1 M-y be spoken. The kill number that is spoken says what numeric prefix arg to give to command yank.

control e v

emacspeak-view-register Display the contents of a register, and then speak it.

control e control @

emacspeak-speak-current-mark Speak the line containing the mark. With no argument, speaks the line containing the mark–this is where ‘exchange-point-and-mark’ C-x C-x would jump. Numeric prefix arg ’COUNT’ speaks line containing mark ’n’ where ’n’ is one less than the number of times one has to jump using ‘set-mark-command’ to get to this marked position. The location of the mark is indicated by an aural highlight achieved by a change in voice personality.

control e control l

emacspeak-speak-line-number Speak the line number of the current line.

control e =

emacspeak-speak-current-column Speak the current column.

control e %

emacspeak-speak-current-percentage Announce the percentage into the current buffer.

6. The Emacspeak Audio Desktop.

This chapter describes the Emacspeak audio desktop and gives tips and tricks for making use of many of Emacs’ powerful features.

The desktop is the work area where you organize the tools of your trade and the information objects relevant to your current activities. In the conventional world of visual GUI-based computing, these tools and information objects manifest themselves as a collection of icons organized in a two-dimensional work-area –this organization is designed to place frequently used objects within easy reach.

Notice that organizing one’s work area in terms of visual icons arranged in a two-dimensional area where such an organization is optimized for the available "conversational gestures" of pointing and clicking is an artifact of visual interaction.

In the spirit of a truly speech-enabled application, Emacspeak does not simply provide you spoken access to a particular presentation of your work environment that was initially designed with the "sign language" of visual interaction in mind. Instead, Emacspeak enables you to work with documents and other information objects in a manner that is optimized to aural, eyes-free interaction. A necessary consequence of this setup is that users accustomed to the purely visual manifestation of today’s electronic desktop do not immediately perceive the Emacspeak environment as an electronic desktop. This section of the manual hopes to introduce you to a work-style that encourages a different perspective on how one interacts with the computer in performing day-to-day computing tasks.

The end result in my case has been a marked increase in personal productivity.

6.1 Objects Making Up The Emacspeak Desktop

A "buffer" is the basic building block of the Emacs and hence the Emacspeak desktop. Any information presented by Emacs is placed in a "buffer". For example, when perusing this manual within Emacs, the "file" containing the documentation is presented in a "buffer". All information objects such as WWW pages, email messages, output from user interaction with command-line shells etc., are presented by Emacs in individual "buffers".

Buffers provide a base level of user interaction; Emacs derives its power by allowing applications to specialize buffers to enable specific types of user-interaction that is optimized for a specific class of information.

6.2 An Object-Oriented Desktop

The basic "buffer object" can be specialized by Emacs applications to provide optimal interaction. This kind of specialization makes the Emacs environment an object-oriented environment; thus, the basic conversational gesture of "move to the next statement" can be assigned behavior that is appropriate to the content that the user is currently navigating. As an example of such specialization, Emacs provides "specialized modes" for working with English text, programming languages, markup source e.g. HTML or LaTeX documents and so on.

6.3 Emacspeak Specializes Aural Interaction

The content-specific user interaction described above is a very powerful feature of Emacs, and this is where Emacspeak derives its power. Traditionally, the ability to create buffers specialized for working with specific content-types has been used by the Emacs community to develop versatile programming environments, messaging applications such as mail and news readers, and authoring environments. The clean design present in all of these Emacs extensions in terms of separating application functionality from the user-interface, combined with the availability of the entire source code making up these packages under the open-source model has laid the ground-work for developing Emacspeak as a versatile aural counterpart to the product of years of software engineering that has been invested by the Emacs community. In short, Emacspeak would not exist in its present shape or form without this prior effort.

6.3.1 Audio Formatted Output

Emacspeak takes advantage of the content-specific knowledge available within specialized buffers to produce "audio formatted" output designed to optimize user interaction. A basic consequence of the above is "voice locking" in specialized modes; a more interesting consequence is the implementation of Aural Cascading Style Sheets (ACSS) in conjunction with the Emacs W3 browser.

6.3.2 Structured Navigation:

Emacspeak also exploits content-specific knowledge to provide structured navigation of different types of electronic content. In many cases, such structured navigation is an extension of what Emacs provides by default; in other cases, Emacspeak implements the necessary extensions to provide the level of structural navigation needed to work efficiently in an eyes-free environment.

Notable among such structured navigation is Emacs’ powerful outline feature. Notice for example, that the Emacspeak FAQ (reached via command emacspeak-view-emacspeak-faq bound to C-e F) takes advantage of Emacs’ outline mode to allow you to easily move through the various sections. An example of content-sensitive navigation is provided by the imenu package which dynamically creates a "table of contents" based on the content that is being displayed in a given buffer.

6.3.3 Navigating The Desktop

In addition to navigating individual information objects, the Emacspeak environment provides speech-enabled navigation of the various buffers that are currently open on the Emacspeak desktop via Emacs’ built-in list-buffers feature. Emacs’ dired –directory editor– for browsing the file system, along with the new speedbar package that combines features from dired and imenu round off the suite of navigational tools.

6.3.4 Everything Is Searchable:

Emacs derives one final advantage from using buffers as the basic building block for the entire desktop. Every Emacs buffer is searchable via a uniform and powerful search interface. Emacs’ incremental search works efficiently and consistently to enable you locate "objects" of interest either within a given document or to locate a given object from among the various objects that are currently open on the Emacspeak desktop. This is very powerful –where a GUI user is typically limited to quickly locating an object from a relatively small collection –the size of the collection being a direct function of available display real-estate– the Emacspeak user can typically work with a far larger collection of objects. This is well-suited to the eyes-free environment, where display real-estate has no meaning; so bringing up a list of currently open buffers and performing an incremental search to locate a specific buffer is just as efficient independent of whether you have a few dozen or a few hundred buffers open.

To illustrate the above, my typical working Emacs session lasts between two and three weeks– over that time I typically accumulate several hundred open buffers holding a large variety of content ranging from program source code to email messages and WWW pages.

Ubiquitous search in the eyes-free environment is critical– as a comparison, when using a conventional, purely visual WWW browser, users have no means of easily "searching" for say the "submit" button on a WWW page. This inability is a minor annoyance in visual interaction, and the typical mouse-enabled user never uses the find dialog to find a submit button– it is simply more efficient to point at the submit button given the eye’s ability to quickly scan the two-dimensional display. This luxury is absent in an eyes-free environment; as a consequence, blind users confronted by the combination of a visual interface and screen-reader are typically limited to either tabbing through all the controls on a WWW page, or using the sub-optimal find dialog.

7. Voice Lock

1. Emacspeak defines a number of voice overlays such as ‘voice-bolden’, and ‘voice-lighten’ that can be applied to a given voice to change what it sounds like.
2. Voice overlays are defined in terms of Aural CSS (ACSS) to keep them independent of a specific TTS engine.
3. For each such overlay there is a corresponding ‘<overlay-name>-settings’ variable that can be customized via custom.
4. The numbers in ‘voice-bolden-settings as an example’:

Unset values (‘nil’) show up as “unspecified” in the customize interface.

1. Do not directly customize ‘voice-bolden’ and friends, instead customize the corresponding ‘voice-bolden-settings’, since that ensures that all voices that are defined in terms of ‘voice-bolden’ get correctly updated.
2. Discovering what to customize:

Command ‘emacspeak-show-personality-at-point’ (bound by default to C-e M-v) will show you the value of properties personality and face at point. A recent update I implemented last weekend makes this more useful, so make sure you do a CVS update; earlier this command used to display the ACSS setting — now it displays the abstract name. Describe-variable on these names should tell you what to customize; so as an example:

Put point on a comment line, and hit ‘C-e M-v’: you will hear

Personality emacspeak-voice-lock-comment-personality
Face font-lock-comment-delimiter-face

Describe-variable of ‘emacspeak-voice-lock-comment-personality’ gives:

emacspeak-voice-lock-comment-personality's value is acss-p0-s0-all

Documentation:
Personality used for font-lock-comment-face
This personality uses  voice-monotone whose  effect can be changed globally by customizing voice-monotone-settings.

7.1 How It All Works

Here is a brief explanation of the connection between ‘voice-bolden’ and its associated ‘voice-bolden-settings’.

1. Voice settings are initially in ‘voice-bolden-settings’ which is a list of numbers.
2. That list of numbers needs to be translated to appropriate device-specific codes to send to the TTS engine.
3. You do not want to do this translation each time you speak something.
4. So when ‘voice-bolden’ is defined, the definition happens in two steps:

• The list of settings is stored away in ‘voice-bolden-settings’,
• A corresponding voice-name is generated — ‘acss-a<n>-p<n>-r<n>-s<n>’ and the corresponding control codes to send to the device are stored away in a hash-table keyed by the above symbol.
• Finally, ‘voice-bolden’ is assigned the above symbol.

7.2 What this gives is

1. The ability to customize the voice via custom by editting the list of numbers in ‘voice-bolden-settings’
2. When that list is editted, ‘voice-bolden’ is arranged to be updated automatically.

The following additional commands from module See section emacspeak-wizards, are useful when designing aural styles.

1. emacspeak-wizards-generate-voice-sampler

   Generate a buffer containing text that demonstrates the effect of various aural settings.

2. emacspeak-wizards-voice-sampler

   Applied specified aural style to text in current region.

8. Using Online Help With Emacspeak.

Emacs provides an extensive online help system for helping you learn about various aspects of using Emacs. Emacspeak provides online help for its various extensions using this same help system. This chapter explains how to use the online help facilities in order to empower you in discovering powerful and versatile working techniques that will make you more and more productive in your day to day computing.

The online help options are accessed via the C-h prefix key, which must be followed by an additional letter or control character to designate the kind of help desired. For example, C-h t help-with-tutorial visits the Emacs tutorial in a new buffer; C-h i info enters the Info documentation system, from which you can read Texinfo manuals that have been installed on your system, including the Emacs and Emacspeak documentation; and C-h k describe-key provides a description of the Emacs function which is bound to the next key that you type. For learning about the various options that are available via the C-h mechanism described above, view the online help for command help-for-help bound to C-h C-h —using what has been described so far, you would achieve this by pressing C-h k followed by C-h C-h.

Emacspeak users should note that online help is typically displayed in a separate Emacs window. Where it makes sense to do so, Emacspeak will automatically speak the displayed help. Once you’ve asked for help, you can have the displayed documentation as many times as you wish using Emacspeak command emacspeak-speak-help bound to C-e h. If you want to move through the displayed help a line at a time, switch to the buffer where the help is displayed –the buffer is called *Help*.

Often, in adding an auditory interface to an Emacs extension, such as a web browser or mail reader, Emacspeak defines additional commands and key bindings which enhance the functionality of the spoken feedback provided by the application. This manual does not purport to document all such commands. It is important, therefore, when learning to use the various Emacs extensions which comprise the ‘audio desktop’ (see section The Emacspeak Audio Desktop.) that you take advantage of online help to obtain details of any context-specific features provided by Emacspeak. The following two commands are of particular importance in this regard:

• C-h m describe-mode explains which major and minor modes are currently in effect, and lists the commands and key bindings associated with them.
• C-h b describe-bindings lists all of the key bindings which are currently defined.

The importance of these help functions can be illustrated by the Emacs/W3 web browser. When point is positioned inside a table, certain key bindings are established with which you can access Emacspeak commands that make it possible to read the rows and columns of the table and explore its structure efficiently. To get a description of these key bindings, you can use W3 to visit the sample HTML file supplied as part of the Emacspeak distribution, and, after having moved point onto the first row of the table, issue the command C-h m describe-mode to create a help buffer containing an explanation of the features offered by W3 mode.

Emacspeak supplements the online help facilities available within Emacs by defining several commands of its own, as follows:

• C-h c-e describe-emacspeak presents a list of standard Emacspeak commands.
• C-e F emacspeak-view-emacspeak-faq opens a new buffer containing the Emacspeak FAQ, a list of frequently asked questions about Emacspeak together with their answers.
• C-e C-h emacspeak-learn-mode enters a mode in which the function of every key that you type is spoken; this mode can be terminated with the C-g keyboard-quit command.
• M-x emacspeak-generate-documentation prompts for the name of a file in which it saves an automatically generated summary of all Emacspeak commands.

9. Emacs Packages.

Emacs – The extensible, self-documenting editor, derives its functionality from its powerful extension mechanism. This extension mechanism is used to implement many user-level applications such as mail readers, WWW browsers, software development environments and so on. This chapter gives directions on how to locate the right Emacs package for addressing specific tasks. The chapter is organized into logical sections that each pertain to a specific class of tasks; in individual subsections within a section give a brief overview of particular Emacs packages that have been speech-enabled.

9.1 Document Authoring

The Emacspeak environment provides a rich collection of structured document authoring tools. These are well-suited for working in an eyes-free environment –you clearly do not want to use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) authoring tool if you cannot see what you’re getting. Structure-based authoring tools allow you to focus on the act of content creation, leaving the minutiae of visual layout to the computer.

9.1.1 Creating Well-formatted Documents

Before authoring a document, decide its primary audience if the document contains relatively simple content e.g., no mathematical equations etc. and is primarily targeted at the WWW, you are probably better off using HTML. You can create well-structured HTML documents with the help of package html-helper-mode available from ftp://ftp.reed.edu/pub/src/html-helper-mode.tar.gz — note this is now mostly obsoleted by James Clarke’s excellent nxml-mode for editting XML documents.

Package html-helper-mode is speech-enabled by Emacspeak to provide auditory icons, structured navigation and outlines, as well as voice locking for audio formatted feedback as you work.

If the document being authored is more complex, you are usually better off creating it in LaTeX. Note that LaTeX documents can be converted to HTML either via package package tex4ht – available on the WWW.

The TeX family of typesetting languages is suitable for producing well-formatted documents in an eyes-free environment. Unlike WYSIWYG environments, the author of a TeX or LaTeX document works with the content of the document, leaving it to the formatting system (TeX) to format the document for good visual presentation.

The auctex package is an Emacs extension that facilitates authoring and maintaining structured documents in TeX and LaTeX. Package bibtex facilitates maintenance and use of bibtex bibliography databases. The Texinfo package allows creation of software documentation that is suitable for both printing as well as online viewing as hypertext. Emacspeak speech-enables packages auctex, bibtex and texinfo to provide convenient spoken feedback as you create and compile documents. For details on using these packages, see their accompanying online info documentation.

The most recent version of package auctex is always available by ftp at ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/emacs-lisp/auctex.tar.gz. Packages bibtex and texinfo are part of the standard Emacs distribution.

As the document preparation system of choice, Emacspeak supports a fluent speech-enabled interface to editing and formatting LaTeX documents. This interface is provided by speech-enabling auctex mode.

Mode auctex provides efficient keyboard shortcuts for inserting and maintaining LaTeX markup as a document is being authored. All of these editing commands provide succinct auditory feedback when used with Emacspeak. The syntax coloring provided by this mode is extended to provide voice locking — consequently, Emacspeak uses different voices to speak the embedded markup to set it apart from the content.

Mode auctex can be used to create empty document templates and to insert document content at the appropriate places in the template. The mode also enables structured navigation of the document as it is being edited. Emacspeak speech-enables these template creation and structured navigation commands to produce auditory icons and succinct spoken feedback. For example, while editing, the user can quickly browse through the sections of the document and have each section title spoken. Document elements such as paragraphs and bulleted lists can be manipulated as logical units. These features are especially relevant in an eyes-free environment where the user needs to select logical parts of the document without having to point at portions of a visual display.

Finally, Emacs supports creating and maintaining SGML and XML documents. Emacs comes with a fairly simple sgml-mode –in addition, package psgml provides sophisticated parsing and validation facilities for working with SGML and XML documents. Package psgml can be downloaded from http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/COMP/info/psgml/psgml_toc.html.

9.1.2 Searching, Replacing, And Spell Checking

Incremental search, a process by which the system prompts the user for a search string and moves the selection to the next available match while allowing the user to add more characters to the search string, is the search technique of choice among most Emacs users. As the system successively finds each match and provides the user the option of continuing the search. Incremental search is a more complex instance of traditional search interaction because in addition to either stopping or continuing the search, the user can modify the current search in a number of ways including specifying a longer (or shorter) search string.

All of the user commands available during incremental search are documented in the online Emacs info manual. These are speech-enabled by Emacspeak to provide spoken prompts as the dialogue begins; auditory icons indicate a search hit or search miss as the search progresses. Along with auditory icons search-hit and search-miss the user also hears the current line spoken, and in the case of a search hit, the matching text is aurally highlighted by using the standard audio formatting technique of changing voice characteristic. This feedback proves extremely effective when the search pattern appears several times on a single line; the user is unambiguously cued to the current match.

Search and replace actions are an extension to the basic conversational gestures of a search dialogue. In addition to specifying a search string, the user also specifies a replacement string. On the Emacspeak desktop, this functionality is provided by command query-replace. The speech-enabled version of this interaction prompts the user for the search and replacement texts. The auditory feedback during the interactive search and replacement process parallels that described in the case of incremental search. Audio formatting to indicate the occurrence that is about to be replaced proves an effective means of avoiding erroneous modifications to the text being edited. As an example, consider using command query-replace to locate and replace the second occurrence of foo with bar in the text

‘Do not change this fool, but change this food.’

When the search matches the first occurrence of foo in word fool, the aural highlighting helps the user in answering “no” in response to question “should this occurrence be replaced”. In addition to allowing the user to supply a simple “yes or no” answer for each match, command query-replace also allows the user to specify a number of other valid answers as described in the online Emacs documentation.

Spell Checking

A more complex instance of conversational gesture “search and replace” is exhibited by standard spell checking dialogues. Spell checking differs from the search and replace dialogue described above in that the search and replacement text is guessed by the system based on an available dictionary. Words that are not found in the dictionary are flagged as potential spelling errors, and the system offers an interactive search and replace dialogue for each of these possible errors. During this dialogue, the system successively selects each occurrence of the possibly erroneous word and offers a set of possible replacements. Unlike in the case of simple search and replace, more than one possible replacement string is offered, since a potential spelling error can be corrected by more than one word appearing in the dictionary.

In the visual interface, such spell checking dialogues are realized by displaying the available choices in a pop-up window and allowing the user to pick a correction Once a correction is selected, the user is offered the choice of interactively replacing the erroneous word with the correction.

The spell checking interface on the Emacspeak desktop is speech-enabled to provide fluent auditory feedback. The visual interface parallels that described above and is provided by package ispell which is part of the standard Emacs distribution. Emacspeak provides a spoken prompt that is composed of the line containing the possibly erroneous word (which is aurally highlighted to set it apart from the rest of the text on that line) and the available corrections. Each correction is prefixed with a number that the user can use to select it. Once a correction is selected, the interaction continues with the query and replace interaction described earlier. The speech interface to the spell checker is as fluent as the visual interface. Notice that Emacspeak users do not need to concern themselves with the details of the visual display such as “the corrections are displayed in a window at the top of the screen”.

In addition to the standard spell checker described above, newer versions of Emacs include an “on-the-fly” spell checker that flags erroneous words as they are typed. Emacspeak speech-enables package flyspell so that such erroneous words are aurally highlighted.

9.2 Structured Editing And Templates

Editing documents based on the inherent structure present in the electronic encoding can be very efficient when using spoken interaction. We described mode auctex — a specialized interface to authoring LaTeX documents as a special instance of such structured editing in see section Document Authoring.

The Emacspeak desktop allows the user to efficiently author and maintain an electronic document based either on the structure present in the markup (as in the case of mode auctex) or on special outlining constructs that allow the user to impose a desired logical structure on the document. This section describes the effect of speech-enabling such editing tools and points out the advantages in using these in a speech oriented interface.

Template-based authoring — a technique that allows the user to create a document by inserting contents into appropriate positions in a predefined template— goes hand in hand with such structured editing. Finally, structured editing can vastly simplify the creation and maintenance of structured data, for example, the data present in a UNIX password file. Such data files are in fact nothing more than a collection of database records, where each record (or line) consists of a set of fields delimited by a special character. Maintaining such files without exploiting the underlying structure often tends to be error prone. We describe editing modes that can exploit such record structure to provide a fluent editing interface. Finally, we outline a speech-enabled interface to a spreadsheet application as a complex instance of such structured data editing.

9.2.1 Outline Editing

All of the various outline editing interfaces on the Emacs desktop allow the user to hide or show the contents at the different levels of a possibly nested tree structure. Components of this tree structure can be manipulated as a unit, e.g., entire subtrees can be deleted or copied. Outline editing thus provides an efficient means of obtaining quick overviews of a document.

The visual interface displays such hidden content as a series of ellipses following the visible outline heading. Emacspeak produces auditory icon ellipses when speaking such outline headings.

The basic outline mode allows the user to specify the syntax and level of outline header lines as a regular expression. This simple technique can be used to advantage in the structured navigation of large electronic texts such as those available on the Internet from online book projects such as project Gutenberg and the Internet Wiretap. For example, when this feature is activated while reading the electronic text of a Shakespearean play, the different acts can be recognized as separate nodes in the logical structure of the document. The user can then hide the document body with a single keystroke, navigate the outline headings to find a particular act, and have that portion rendered either visually or aurally. Hiding an outline level produces auditory icon close-object; exposing a hidden level produces auditory icon open-object. For details on using mode outline, see the relevant section of the online Emacs info manual.

The basic outline facility described above is applicable to all content being edited or browsed on the Emacspeak desktop. In addition, Emacspeak has other specialized outline editing modes such as folding mode that provide extended outlining facilities. In mode folding, the user can create (possibly nested) folds — logical containers of content that are delimited by a special fold mark. The fold mark is typically a text string that is chosen based on the type of content that is being manipulated. Thus, when folding a C~program source file, fold marks are created from C~comments. The user can open or close any or all folds in a document, and these actions are accompanied by auditory icons open-object and close-object. By entering a fold, all editing actions are restricted to the contents of that fold; this proves a simple yet convenient way of constraining editing actions such as search and replace to specific portions of large documents. Folds can be manipulated as a unit and can be deleted, copied or moved.

Mode folding proves especially effective in maintaining large software modules. The technique can be used to advantage by creating folds for different sections in a module and by further placing each function appearing in a particular % section in a fold of its own. Complex functions can themselves be folded into sections where each section reflects a different stage in the algorithm implemented by that function. Thus, the technique of folding can be used as an effective aid in literate programming. I typically write software modules by first creating an outline structure using folds that reflect the various components of that module. Next, I populate each fold with the function signatures and documentation for the functions in each section. When I am satisfied with the overall architecture of the module, I fill in the function skeletons with actual program code. This technique is used extensively in maintaining the Emacspeak code base.

9.2.2 Template-based Authoring

Emacspeak supports two powerful template-based authoring subsystems that enable the user to quickly create and fill in templates. Dmacro (short for “dynamic macros”) allows the user to define and invoke template-based macros that are specialized for creating different types of content. For example, when programming in C, the user can invoke dynamic macros that insert skeletons of standard C constructs with a few keystrokes. This form of editing has numerous advantages in creating consistently structured code when developing large software modules. Emacspeak speech-enables mode dmacro to provide succinct spoken feedback as templates are created and filled. The user invokes dmacro via command insert dmacro, which is typically bound to a single key. This results in a dialogue where the user is prompted to pick one of the dynamic macros available in the current context. If the users choice can be uniquely completed, that completion is spoken; otherwise, the list of possible completions based on the available partial input is spoken, accompanied by auditory icon help.

An alternative template-editing facility is provided by mode tempo This mode is designed to be used in creating template-based editing tools for specific markup languages; a good example is mode html-helper, a mode for creating and updating HTML documents for publishing on the WWW (see see section Document Authoring).

9.2.3 Maintaining Structured Data

Consider the following entry from file /etc/passwd on my laptop.

‘aster:KoUxwQ2:501:100:Aster Labrador:/home/aster:/bin/bash’

File /etc/passwd is a simple instance of a text file that stores structured data records as a series of fields delimited by a special character. Each item in the file acquires meaning from the position in which it occurs for example, the fifth field contains the user name, Aster Labrador. More generally, structured data where each field in a record has meaning is found throughout the desktop in applications ranging from entries in a rolodex to rows in a spreadsheet.

Typically, users do not directly edit the stored representation of the data. Instead, application front-ends provide a more human-centric (and hopefully less error prone) user interface for modifying and maintaining the data. Thus, spreadsheet applications present the data as a two dimensional table that is automatically updated to reflect changes in the underlying data. The two dimensional table is perhaps the most commonly found visual front-end to structured data tables with row and column headers prove a succinct way of implicitly displaying the meaning along with the value of the fields making up each data record.

9.3 Browsing Structured Information

This section describes packages that allow you to browse structured information –these are distinct from the tools described in Structured Editing And Templates, in that they are typically used for working with content that is read-only e.g., online documentation.

Related Packages

9.4 Web Browsing.

This document, “The State of Web Browsing in Emacspeak” describes the primary web browsers in use under emacspeak and ways they might be used more efficiently.

Version 1.0 – February, 2007.

Copyright © 2007 Robert D. Crawford rdc1x@comcast.net

9.4.1 Intro

Web browsing in emacspeak can be made as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it. On the one hand, all that need be done is to open a web browser and fetch a particular url. This works fine in many cases with exceptions being things like html tables. On the other hand, if you spend a little time learning a particular browser and its functionality, web browsing can be made more efficient and the web more navigable.

This document is intended to be an introduction to the 2 primary browsers that run under emacs: emacs/w3 and emacs-w3m. I also intend to introduce a couple of add-on packages intended to make life easier and to address specific shortcomings.

The primary reason for this documentation is the fact that a lot of the documentation of the various functions tells exactly what it does, but not why or in what circumstance one might use it. Hopefully I can remedy that here.

Who this document is intended for

While this document is geared toward emacspeak users, it might be helpful for other users as well. I have tried to note where functions are specific to emacspeak.

Assumptions

This document assumes emacs is installed. If reading the section on a particular browser and trying out the associated functions, it, of course, assumes that the browser is installed and working. For features specific to emacspeak, a working install of emacspeak is necessary. It is far beyond the scope of this document to help with the installation of these programs.

For help with installing any of the above bits of software, the following mailing lists and / or newsgroups are available:

• emacs - gnu.emacs.help
• emacs-w3m - see http://emacs-w3m.namazu.org
• emacs/w3 - the mailing list for w3 is pretty dead. Sorry. The documentation is, however, not terrible.
• emacspeak - see http://emacspeak.sf.net

It is highly suggested that the mailing list archives, google, and the relevant documentation be consulted before posting messages to any mailing list. Nothing is more irritating than answering the same questions over and over. Those of you with kids know what I am talking about.

It is also assumed that the reader is comfortable with using emacs itself. Understanding the convention for communicating keystrokes to run commands, navigating documents, and the like are not covered.

9.4.2 emacs-w3m

emacs-w3m is a front-end, written in emacs lisp, to the text-based web browser w3m. It supports tables, images, and all major web protocols. It is also fully supported in emacspeak.

emacs-w3m advantages

The main advantage of emacs-w3m is speed. The rendering of web pages is done with the external program w3m. which is written in c, so it is fast. It also seems not to choke on some web pages like the alternative, emacs/w3.

Another big advantage to emacs-w3m is that it is under active development. Problems seem to be fixed soon after they come to the attention of the developers and are available very quickly as long as you are willing to use the cvs version.

For those who have limited sight as opposed to no sight at all, emacs-w3m displays all graphics within its own buffer. This might be a misconfiguration on my part, but there are some images that open in an external window when opened from emacs/w3.

I can also say that I cannot remember a page that wouldn’t render in emacs-w3m. This is not something I can say about emacs/w3.

emacs-w3m disadvantages

Taken by itself, the disadvantages of using w3m are few. Long periods between releases can be seen by some to be a disadvantage although the alternative browser’s time between releases is now several years, I believe.

With hardware or software that support multiple voices, such as IBM’s Via Voice, one can allow differences in speech to indicate differences in document text. For example, headings can be spoken in a voice with a lower pitch, links in a higher voice. The voices in emacs-w3m are much more limited than those in emacs/w3 and not all textual attributes can be indicated. As of the writing of this document, pre tags and the like cannot be indicated. It has been within the last few months that italic text support has been added.

Another disadvantage is the fact that the rendering in emacs-w3m is done by the external process, w3m. Since w3m is written in C, it is not as easily customizable from within the community of emacs users. Code written in emacs lisp can be substituted for code in a running emacs instance, something that is not possible in C.

A further disadvantage is the lack of table navigation, i.e. the ability to move from cell to cell in a table to more easily understand the information presented. Linearizing the table is available but sometimes it is difficult to keep the meanings of the columns in your head to discern the meaning. Maybe it is just me.

A disadvantage shared between the browsers is the lack of support for javascript. Many sites use javascript for links to the next page, such as Reuters web site. This can sometimes be worked around using the google transcoder. See See below, for more information.

emacs-w3m native functions

This part of the document is not meant to replace the describe-mode information available via the C-h m keystroke or the emacs-w3m info manual. This is by no means an exhaustive list of available commands.

emacs-w3m has considerable functionality and many features that make browsing more efficient and convenient. Below are many of the functions that are native to emacs-w3m.

Cap S will query for a search term. By default, the search engine used is google. This can be changed with a prefix command. To see the available engines, after hitting C-u Cap S, when it asks for the engine hit <TAB> to get a list of available completions. Tab completion of partial words works here as well. For example, hitting “y” and then <TAB> will complete to the word “yahoo”.

Form navigation can be achieved with the right and left brackets. This is useful for times where you want to go to the input field on a web page without having to tab through the links. Google is a good example of where this would be useful. The right bracket moves point to the next form, and the left bracket moves to the previous, wrapping around at the ends of the buffer.

While in a form, using C-c C-c will submit the form with no need to tab around looking for the “Submit” button.

emacspeak specific functions for emacs-w3m

Many extensions have been written by the emacspeak community to expand emacs-w3m and make it more accessible. Below are those extensions.

While being a variable and not a function, the variable emacspeak-w3m-speak-titles-on-switch makes emacs-w3m more friendly. It tells emacspeak to speak the document title when switching between emacs-w3m buffers. The default, nil, will speak the mode line. This is the same behavior seen in all other buffers. This speaking of the document title is more descriptive than just hearing *w3m*<4>. This variable can be customized in the usual ways, either in your ‘.emacs’ file or via the Customize interface. If you do set this variable, reading the mode line can still be achieved with C-e m.

The j command will jump to the first occurance of the title in the document. Each time you use this command in succession, it will jump to the next occurance of the title. This is very convenient for web pages that have the title show up in multiple places in the document. The web site for The Register is a good example of this.

The l command uses the default media player to play the media stream at point. I believe this is set to emacspeak-m-player by default. While beyond the scope of this document to describe the installation of mplayer, I would highly advise using this media player. With the correct codecs installed, mplayer will play everything you will find, I believe, with one convenient player that does not require a GUI.

C-t will run the current page through the google transcoder. The transcoder is very useful to the users of screen readers as it takes care of formatting issues like tables. While not usually a problem, There is a function to linearize tables in emacs-w3m, but it is not always successful. You can reverse this command by giving a prefix argument.

M-t runs the url under point through the transcoder. This command can be reversed by giving a prefix argument.

Extensions have been written to take advantage of much of the google functionality. The following describes how to access many of these extensions.

C-c C-g will search the current web site with google.

C-c C-x will extract the current page from the google cache. A prefix argument will extract the url under point from the cache. This is useful if, for instance, a site is down for one reason or another and you absolutely must have the information.

C-c C-l will find pages similar to the current page. This is just like the “similar” link at the end of a google search result.

C-c C-r will browse the rss link under point. One reason this might be useful is to first try out the rss feed before you configure your rss reader to subscribe to the feed. For a easy to use rss reader, see the section below on See emacspeak-rss.

The letter x is the prefix key for the xsl transforms. xslt is some powerful ju-ju. It takes a web page and does all kinds of cool things with it. These things are listed below.

The command x a will apply an xsl transformation to the current page. one particularly useful transform is to linearize tables. This takes the tables and formats them linearly down the page as if they were paragraphs instead of table cells. This command can be more easily applied with the x l command.

If you want to always have tables linearized, use the x a command and type linearize <TAB> and then the x o to toggle xsl on. This will linearize the tables in every subsequently visited page for this session. While it seems possible to make this happen automatically in emacs/w3, I do not believe this is currently possible in emacs-w3m. A noticeable increase in speed can be seen in emacs/w3 by turning xslt on and using sort-tables or linearize-tables. This eliminates the need for the browser to render nested tables. Since speed is not such an issue with emacs-w3m, I don’t bother turning on xslt for the session.

The x b command will add a “submit” button to forms that do not have one such as the one on the emacswiki web site . Submitting forms can be more easily achieved with C-c C-c.

If on a google search page, the x h command will give you only the search hits. An easier way of getting the same results is to use the url-template “Google Hits” which returns the same results. Another advantage of using the url-template is that it can be done from anywhere, not just in an emacs-w3m buffer. See emacspeak-url-template, for more information.

The x t command sorts the tables. It takes the nested tables and unnests them. While sometimes useful, this is not nearly as useful as the same function in emacs/w3. While doing the same thing, emacs/w3 has the capability of allowing the user to navigate the tables cell by cell.

emacs-w3m tips and tricks

One issue that might need work is that, by default, when tabbing over links in emacs-w3m the url of the link is spoken. There are several ways to deal with this.

One solution, actually two but they accomplish the same result, is to include the following code in the ‘~/.emacs-w3m’ file:

(remove-hook 'w3m-after-cursor-move-hook
     #'w3m-print-this-url)

Or, this code in the .emacs file

(add-hook 'w3m-after-cursor-move-hook 
	  (lambda ()
	    (emacspeak-speak-messages nil)))

Both of these solutions, as far as the user can see, seem to be equivalent. They differ only in where they are placed.

The other solution is to leave things as they are. Some users mention that they find it helpful to have the url spoken and, if they want the text of the link spoken they use C-e l. As with everything else in emacs, it is completely up to you to decide what is best.

9.4.3 emacs/w3

emacs/w3 is a web browser written completely in emacs lisp. It has some really nice features applicable to the emacspeak community such as the ability to navigate tables and support for the w3c’s aural cascading stylesheets.

emacs/w3 advantages

As mentioned above, the ability to navigate tables is a super help. emacs/w3 also has support for cascading stylesheets. This allows incredible control of voices used for what would normally be visual attributes of the text such as bold, italics, preformatted text and the like.

Another advantage of emacs/w3 is that it is written completely in emacs lisp. With some effort, emacs/w3 is very customizable and quite extendable.

emacs/w3 disadvantages

Rendering can be slow. Sometimes it can be painfully, excruciatingly slow. That might be a slight exaggeration, but slow it is. This is because it is written in lisp... something I mentioned just above as a strength. It is a trade-off, but one that some see as worth it. There are, however, some things that can be done to speed up the browsing process. See See emacspeak-w3-xsl-transform, for more information.

Another disadvantage is that emacs/w3 chokes on some pages. Sometimes it gives error messages and doesn’t display anything. Sometimes it does this to some people and doesn’t do it to others as we saw on the emacspeak mailing list a short time ago. Sometimes it gives error messages and renders the page anyway.

As mentioned in the emacs-w3m section, this browser does not support javascript, which is a problem, usually for links on some sites. One way this problem can be sometimes worked around is to transcode the link under point via google. See See w3 transcode, for more information.

One other major annoyance of emacs/w3 is that sometimes it simply stops doing anything while rendering a page. There is a way I have found to get around this. I hit C-g. I usually wait five to ten seconds and then simply quit, using C-g. Not always, but usually, the page has already completed downloading and is being rendered and it therefore is not a problem.

emacs/w3 also has no bookmark functionality. This can be remedied in several ways. One simple way, mentioned below, is to use the emacs package bmk-mgr. Another way is to use org mode with remember which is the method used by Dr. Raman, the author of emacspeak. See See bmk-mgr, later in this manual, for more information.

History back and next in the browser also seem to be broken but this is not generally a problem for me as I never look back.

emacs/w3 native functions

Many functions for efficient navigation of the internet are native to emacs/w3. Some of the most useful functions are listed below

Unlike emacs-w3m, the information presented by describe-mode is very complete, but a little terse. All the function names are listed and asking for help on particular functions works well. That being said, use this list to augment, not replace, the built-in help that is available in emacs.

C-f will open a new buffer containing the cell point is in. In most instances, this works very well. Imagine you are looking at a page that is divided into 4 distinct areas: a cell at the top of the page that contains a banner and some navigation, and a “body” area that is divided into three sections consisting of more navigation, an article, and advertisement. If point is in the main article cell, using C-f will open another buffer that contains only the text of that cell, the article you are interested in.

One caveat is that this does not always work as advertised. Sometimes the leftmost character of each line is missing. At least it makes for interesting reading. Usually when I have this problem I simply exit that buffer and linearize the tables in the original page.

The m key executes a very useful command. It will complete a link on the page. Imagine that you are reading through a document and you hear a link that you need to visit. You could tab through all the links until you hear the one you want or you could hit the m key and enter the link text at the prompt. Completion is available and it is not case-sensitive. Efficient, no?

The period in a cell will speak the contents of that particular cell. This command is, in my opinion, most useful when navigating tables with cells that have only one paragraph or less. I tend to not read whole articles in this manner because, inevitably, someone will interrupt me and I will lose my place.

The equals key, while in a table cell will give you the cell information. It tells you the row and column position, the size of the table, and at what nesting level the table is.

The pipe key, is used to read the table column. As this command seems to read the rectangle the column is in, this command is most useful when used in a table where there is no column spanning, i.e. all rows and columns are uniform.

Here is a list of table navigation commands:

• C-e + moves to the beginning of the next table row.
• C-e - moves to the beginning of the previous table row.
• C-e < moves to the beginning of the table.
• C-e > moves to the end of the table.
• C-e = moves to the top of the table column.
• C-e <DOWN> moves to the next cell down in the same column.
• C-e <UP> moves to the previous cell in the same column.
• C-e <LEFT> moves to the previous cell in the same row.
• C-e <RIGHT> moves to the next cell in the same row.

As you can see, table navigation in w3 can be easy and fun.

emacspeak specific functions for emacs/w3

An incredible amount of work has been done by the emacspeak community to make emacs/w3 accessible to those with visual impairments. Here is an explanation of some of those functions.

The command C-t will toggle the visibility of table borders. This command might be useful where you want to hear all punctuation symbols on a page but the table characters get in the way.

The quote key will execute a command that allows you to skim the contents of the buffer. it will read the page, paragraph-by-paragraph, pausing between paragraphs to prompt you to move on by pressing <SPACE>. If you hit <SPACE> in the middle of a paragraph, it skips to the next paragraph.

Another skimming command is bound to the z key. This will allow you to zip through web pages by logical blocks such as div, paragraph, and table tags.

Using the imenu facilities is another way of skimming the document and getting to the information you desire. imenu works especially well for well-structured documents. The first thing that need be done is to copy the ‘w3-imenu.el’ file from the ‘contrib’ directory of the ‘w3’ directory to somewhere in your load path. I am using the cvs version of w3 and my w3 directory is under ‘/home/rdc/sourceforge’. The easiest thing to do is probably to do an M-x locate and search for ‘w3-imenu.el’ to see where it is. After locating the file, move it into your load path. In my case I have it under ‘/home/rdc/share/emacs/site-lisp/’.

There are two ways to use the imenu facilities: automatically and manually. Since I do not use imenu on every site, I prefer to invoke it manually to save the time required to build the index.

Once things are in place, invoke imenu with the j key. This will ask you for an index position. Hitting <TAB> will give you a list of the possible index positions. Another way of navigating the document would now be to use the keys M-n and M-p to go to the next and previous index positions. Note that you have to build an index for a page before you can use these commands.

Cap A and cap R serve the same function. Cap A browses the Atom feed at point and cap R browses the rss feed at point. This is useful to sample the feed, so to speak, before going through the trouble of configuring your feed reader to fetch the feed. It might also be useful to grab the headlines from a page and present them in a more concise, readable format. If using the sort-tables xsl transform, there will be a link at the top of the page if there is an rss feed available. See See emacspeak atom and emacspeak rss, for more information.

Google provides many useful tools for web surfers. The following commands are useful to access much google goodness.

Cap C extracts the current page from the google cache. With a prefix argument it will extract the link under point. This is useful for those times when a particular site is down... maybe it is in the cache... maybe it is not. It can also be used for when particular pages are removed from a site like in the case of a government conspiracy. Are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?

The slash key will search google for pages similar to the current page.

The command g will do a google search restricted to the site of the document.

The l command googles for who links to this page.

The command t runs the url under point through the google transcoder. This is useful for sites that are heavy on the use of tables and the xsl transforms are not helpful. It also works on some sites that use javascript to go to the next page in the story, such as Reuters. Using a prefix argument with this command will untranscode the url under point for pages that are currently transcoded.

Cap T will jump to the first occurance of the title in the document. Multiple consecutive executions of this command will jump to further occurances. This command is probably one of the most useful timesavers while web browsing.

M-s jumps to the “submit” button for the form you are editing.

M-r plays the media stream at point with the default media player.

The y command will rewrite the url of the url under point. This is useful for those sites you frequent. Often, sites that have printer friendly content have a specific way in which the url is written. For example, the O’Reilly web site uses “pub” for the regular html version of a page and “lpt” for the printer friendly version. Examine these urls:

http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/wireless/2001/03/02/802.11b_facts.html

http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/wireless/2001/03/02/802.11b_facts.html

The first link goes to the regular version of the page and the second to the printer friendly version. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out the formula, so this is only useful if this is a site that you are visiting rather often, as the time to figure out the formula on a site that you rarely visit is far greater than the time you save.

The first time you run this command in a particular buffer you are prompted for a pattern to use. The pattern is in the form of

‘("from string" "to string")’

The opening paren is supplied. Remember to quote the strings or you will get an error. From this point on, until you kill the buffer in which you wrote the rule, hitting y on a link will use this rewrite rule to visit the page. If you mistyped the rule, providing a numeric argument will allow you to rewrite the rewrite rule. I love alliteration.

Saving the best for last, e is the xsl map prefix. As I mentioned in the section on emacs-w3m, xsl transforms are some powerful magic that takes a web page and transforms it in some way. Linearizing tables is a good example, and the one I use most often.

The keystroke e a prompts for an xsl transform to apply to the current page. If you know the name of the particular transform you want you can use tab completion to select it. Otherwise, you can hit <TAB> to get a buffer that contains the list of choices.

If you know that you want a particular transform done automatically you can use the command e s to select a transform and then e o to turn xslt on (the same command will turn xslt off). Then, every page opened from that point on will have the transform applied.

There is the variable emacspeak-w3-xsl-transform that can be set via the usual methods. This variable specifies a transform to use before displaying a web page. There is an advantage to turning on xsl transforms all the time. If you use the ‘identity.xsl’, the ‘linearize-tables.xsl’ or the ‘sort-tables.xsl’ it can actually speed up rendering of the page. This is because the transforms provide clean and balanced html to the renderer. Additionally, using ‘sort-tables.xsl’ or ‘linearize-tables.xsl’ will provide a little more boost as rendering nested tables is particularly difficult for a web browser.

Sometimes it is just easier to read the printer friendly version of a story instead of having to linearize the tables and search for the content. Also, some sites, like the New York Times, I believe, make you navigate several pages to read the whole story, but if you select a “Print this story” link you can read the entire story on one page formatted without a lot of the cruft on the normal page. This is where the e Cap P command comes in. It will extract all the print streams from the current document.

Closely associated commands are e r and e Cap R which extract the media streams from the current page and from the link under point, respectively.

The command e y is another command that is useful for frequented sites. It does the same as the y command above in that it rewrites the url at point and follows it. In addition, it filters the output by a particular CSS class.

The command e e does more magic to the url at point. It processes the url using a specific function. For example, it can be used in retrieving radio content from the BBC. If you execute C-e u and type in BBC Channel On Demand or use tab completion to get the same, and then type in radio4 you will be presented with a page containing a plethora of links to other pages containing information about particular shows. On these pages there is, somewhere, a link that will play the program. If you hit enter on one of the links on the first page, you will be taken to one of these description pages. By using the e e command on a link you cut out this middle step and proceed directly to playing the program you are interested in.

If there is no executor defined for a current buffer, hitting <TAB> after e e will give you a list of possibilities to choose from. One nice feature of this function is that it can be used for any function. If you cannot remember the keystroke that will play the url under point in emacspeak-m-player, but you know what it is called, you can hit e e and then enter the name of the function. Nice.

The e f command will run the current page through an XPath filter and return the results. For more information on XPath, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath. If you wanted to see only the links on a page, when prompted enter //a and you will be returned every link on the page. If you wanted to see only the contents of “p” tags, you would enter //p. This can be useful for many things, form elements included. Giving this command a prefix argument will reverse the filter, giving you everything but the content of the specified tag.

A related command can be invoked with the e p keystroke. This command does the same as the filter above but works on the url under point.

emacs/w3 tips and tricks

As I mentioned above, using C-g when it seems the browser is not responding will often display the page with no ill effects. Your mileage may vary. Taxes, tags and title are extra.

Also mentioned above is the use of sort-tables or identity as an xsl transform to speed up the rendering of pages. Every little bit helps.

Another useful tip is the use of the k key. This key will place the current url in the kill-ring for later yanking. If a page will not render correctly, using k will get the url and allow me to pass it to emacs-w3m. The counterpart to this command, cap K puts the url under point in the kill-ring.

9.4.4 Add-ons

Some of these are emacspeak specific, some are not. You can usually tell by the name.

emacspeak url template

I love this package. Since changing my primary browser to emacs/w3 I have really been giving the url-template package a workout. The url-template package contains templates that prompt you for information to supply to various sites to retrieve information without all the fuss of having to go to the site and navigate it. One really nice thing about url-templates is the fact that they need not be web pages. Media streams can also be made into url-templates.

The way to get to the templates is with the command C-e u. A <TAB> at the prompt will give you a list of the available templates. You should go now and have a look at the info manual section on See section URL Templates, and read it. I’ll wait here.

By the way, the ones I find most useful are the “Google Hits”, “emacswiki search” “NPR On Demand” and “Weather forecast from Weather Underground”.

emacspeak atom and emacspeak rss

These are fairly simple rss and atom browsers for the emacspeak desktop. Using the Customize interface you add feeds in the form of titles and urls. Then you call the readers with C-e C-u for rss feeds and use M-x emacspeak-atom-browse for atom feeds. There is also emacspeak support for newsticker, an rss / atom reader that is a part of emacs 22, but I have never used it.

I personally use See gnus: (gnus)Top, for rss feeds but setting gnus up for only that purpose is like hunting rabbits with a bazooka.

emacspeak websearch

emacspeak-websearch provides more search options than you can shake a stick at. emacspeak-websearch provides search for dictionaries, news sites, software sites, google tools, weather, currency converter and much more. It can be accessed with the keystroke C-e ?. At the prompt, you can enter another question mark to get a list of the available search options. You will then be prompted for the necessary information. One of the nice things about this package is that, when using w3 it attempts to jump to and read the most relevant information on the result page.

See section emacspeak-websearch, for more information.

bmk-mgr

This is a newcomer to the emacspeak world. In the interest of full disclosure, I am the one that wrote the emacspeak module that makes this package accessible. It is a bookmarks manager that works with both emacs/w3 and emacs-w3m. As of the writing of this document there are still some issues, especially when using it on emacs version 22, but those are being worked on. I think this is a good solution to the problem of emacs/w3 not having bookmarks functionality and providing one central bookmark location for those who regularly use both browsers. See http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsBmkMgr, for more information.

9.4.5 Conclusion

emacspeak makes the internet not only accessible to those with visual impairments, but it makes browsing and information retrieval quick and efficient. If a user will spend a little time up front to learn the tools available to access the web, the increase in efficiency and ability will more than make up for the time spent. The nice thing about these tools is that you can integrate them in your day-to-day as you have the time. While it is not necessary to use everything mentioned in the above document, if you add some of these tools to your repertoire you will not be sorry.

In the end, no one makes you use a hammer to drive nails but it sure beats using a banana.

9.5 Electronic Messaging Applications

Working with messaging applications involves both authoring and browsing content. Emacspeak provides a rich set of speech-enabled messaging tools. Further, all of the tools described in the previous sections integrate smoothly with the messaging applications described here; this means that you do not need to re-learn a new set of work habits when dealing with content in your messaging application.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-bbdb:: emacspeak-bbdb
  * emacspeak-gnus:: emacspeak-gnus
  * emacspeak-message:: emacspeak-message
  * emacspeak-rmail:: emacspeak-rmail
  * emacspeak-vm:: emacspeak-vm
  * emacspeak-supercite:: emacspeak-supercite
  * emacspeak-mspools:: emacspeak-mspools

9.6 Editting Program Source Code

Files containing program source code form a very specific class of structured documents. Unlike documents meant for human consumption that are often only loosely structured, program source (as a concession to the computer’s intolerance of lack of structure) are per force well-structured and adhere to a fairly stringent syntax.

The Emacs environment provides editting modes that are specific to creating and maintaining software written in most popular programming languages. Many of these editting modes are speech-enabled by Emacspeak. Speech-enabling these modes includes providing a rich set of navigational commands that allow you to move through the source efficiently. In addition, Emacspeak’s core voice-lock facilities are used to produce audio formatted output –this helps you spot errors quickly.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-c:: emacspeak-c
  * emacspeak-perl:: emacspeak-perl
  * emacspeak-tcl:: emacspeak-tcl
  * emacspeak-python:: emacspeak-python
  * emacspeak-jde:: emacspeak-jde
  * emacspeak-make-mode:: emacspeak-make-mode
  * emacspeak-sql:: emacspeak-sql

9.7 Software Development Environment

In addition to providing specialized editting modes for creating and maintaining program source, Emacs provides a rich set of software development tools that can be combined to create powerful Integrated Development Environments (IDE). These IDEs are speech-enabled by Emacspeak to provide a versatile and powerful environment for eyes-free software development.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-compile:: emacspeak-compile
  * emacspeak-ediff:: emacspeak-ediff
  * emacspeak-gud:: emacspeak-gud
  * emacspeak-jde:: emacspeak-jde
  * emacspeak-speedbar:: emacspeak-speedbar
  * emacspeak-imenu:: emacspeak-imenu

9.8 Desktop Management

Emacs provides an integrated environment for performing all of ones day-to-day computing tasks ranging from electronic messaging to software development. The environment derives its power from the fact that this integration allows for content to be handled across different tasks in a seamless manner. In order to work effectively with large Emacs sessions with many documents and applications open at the same time, the Emacspeak desktop provides a powerful collection of desktop management tools designed to help the user easily locate objects that pertain to a given task.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-buff-menu.el:: emacspeak-buff-menu.el
  * emacspeak-dired.el:: emacspeak-dired.el
  * emacspeak-view-process.el:: emacspeak-view-process.el
  * emacspeak-tar.el:: emacspeak-tar.el
  * emacspeak-arc.el:: emacspeak-arc.el
  * emacspeak-bookmark.el:: emacspeak-bookmark.el
  * emacspeak-custom.el:: emacspeak-custom.el
  * emacspeak-winring.el:: emacspeak-winring.el
   * emacspeak-finder.el:: emacspeak-finder.el

9.9 Personal Information Management

This section describes speech-enabled tools designed to aid in personal information management such as maintaining a daily calendar.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-calendar:: emacspeak-calendar
  * emacspeak-bbdb:: emacspeak-bbdb
  * emacspeak-bookmark:: emacspeak-bookmark

9.10 Desktop Applications

9.10.1 Spread Sheets

Spreadsheet applications present a two dimensional view of structured data where the field values are (possibly) mutually dependent. On the Emacspeak desktop, a speech-enabled spreadsheet application can be used to manipulate such data-driven documents% ranging from simple cheque books and expense reports to complex investment portfolios. Where the traditional visual interface to spreadsheets is typically independent of the semantics of the data stored in the spreadsheet, the speech-enabled interface is derived from the meaning of the various fields making up the data. When presenting such information on a visual display, implicit visual layout can be used to cue the user to the meaning of different data fields. On the other hand, in the case of an actively scrolling auditory display, the spoken output needs to explicitly convey both the value and interpretation of the different data items. In addition, the interface needs to enable an active dialogue between user and application where the user is able to query the system about the possible meaning of a particular item of data. Finally, the aural interface needs to enable multiple views of the display. In the visual interface, such multiple views are automatically enabled by the two dimensional layout combined with the eye’s ability to move rapidly around the layout structure. Thus, while viewing any particular row of a portfolio, one can immediately see the current total value as well as the net gain or loss. The Emacs spread-sheet package dismal can be retrieved from ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/local/fox/dismal.

9.10.2 Forms Mode

Forms mode an Emacs mode designed to edit structured data records like the line shown from file /etc/passwd presents a user-friendly visual interface that displays the field name along with the field value. The user can edit the field value and save the file, at which point the data is written out using the underlying : delimited representation. Mode forms provides a flexible interface to associating meaning to the fields of such structured data files. For details on it use, see the forms-mode section of the online Emacs info documentation.

9.10.3 OCR –Reading Print Documents

Module emacspeak-ocr implements an OCR front-end for the Emacspeak desktop.

Page image is acquired using tools from package SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy). The acquired image is run through the OCR engine if one is available, and the results placed in a buffer that is suitable for browsing the results. This buffer is placed in mode emacspeak-ocr-mode a specialized mode for reading and scanning documents.

9.10.3.1 Emacspeak OCR Mode

Emacspeak OCR mode is a special major mode for document scanning and OCR.

Pre-requisites:

• A working scanner back-end like SANE on Linux.
• An OCR engine.

Make sure your scanner back-end works, and that you have the utilities to scan a document and acquire an image as a tiff file. Then set variable emacspeak-ocr-scan-image-program to point at this utility. By default, this is set to ‘scanimage’ which is the image scanning utility provided by SANE.

By default, this front-end attempts to compress the acquired tiff image; make sure you have a utility like tiffcp. Variable emacspeak-ocr-compress-image is set to ‘tiffcp’ by default; if you use something else, you should customize this variable.

Next, make sure you have an OCR engine installed and working. By default this front-end assumes that OCR is available as /usr/bin/ocr.

Once you have ensured that acquiring an image and applying OCR to it work independently of Emacs, you can use this Emacspeak front-end to enable easy OCR access from within Emacspeak.

The Emacspeak OCR front-end is launched by command emacspeak-ocr bound to C-e C-o.

This command switches to a special buffer that has OCR commands bounds to single keystrokes– see the key-binding list at the end of this description. Use Emacs online help facility to look up help on these commands.

Mode emacspeak-ocr-mode provides the necessary functionality to scan, OCR, read and save documents. By default, scanned images and the resulting text are saved under directory ~/ocr; see variable emacspeak-ocr-working-directory. Invoking command emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory bound to d will open this directory.

By default, the document being scanned is named ‘untitled’. You can name the document by using command emacspeak-ocr-name-document bound to n. The document name is used in constructing the name of the image and text files.

Here is a list of all emacspeak OCR commands along with their key-bindings and a brief description:

digit

emacspeak-ocr-page Jumps to specified page in the OCR output.

c

emacspeak-ocr-set-compress-image-options

Interactively update image compression options. Prompts with current setting in the minibuffer. Setting persists for current Emacs session.

i

emacspeak-ocr-set-scan-image-options Interactively update scan image options. Prompts with current setting in the minibuffer. Setting persists for current Emacs session.

spc

emacspeak-ocr-read-current-page Speaks current page.

s

emacspeak-ocr-save-current-page Saves current page as a text file.

p

emacspeak-ocr-page Prompts for a page number and moves to the specified page.

]

emacspeak-ocr-forward-page Move forward to the next page.

[

emacspeak-ocr-backward-page Move back to the previous page.

d

emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory Open directory containing the results of OCR.

n

emacspeak-ocr-name-document Name current document.

o

emacspeak-ocr-recognize-image Launch OCR engine on a scanned image.

i

emacspeak-ocr-scan-image Acquire an image using scanimage.

RET

emacspeak-ocr-scan-and-recognize Scan and recognize a page.

w

emacspeak-ocr-write-document Write all pages of current document to a text file.

q

bury-buffer Bury the OCR buffer.

c

emacspeak-ocr-customize Customize Emacspeak OCR settings.

?

describe-mode Describe OCR mode.

Related Packages

  * emacspeak-calc:: emacspeak-calc
  * emacspeak-dismal:: emacspeak-dismal
  * emacspeak-remote:: emacspeak-remote
  * emacspeak-entertain:: emacspeak-entertain

10. Running Terminal Based Applications.

You can use the terminal emulator mode to run arbitrary terminal-based programs from within Emacs. You open a terminal emulator buffer using M-x term, with an extra carriage return to accept the default shell (such as bash). (Incidentally, don’t confuse this command with M-x terminal-emulator, which starts an older terminal emulator mode not supported by Emacspeak.)

Three kinds of commands are used within the terminal emulator. Normal term commands use a prefix of C-c. The emacspeak commands for eterm mode use a prefix of C-t. Anything else is a normal shell command.

There are two sub-modes of term mode: char sub-mode and line sub-mode. In char sub-mode, emacspeak will only speak the final chunk of output –typically the last line displayed. Each character typed (except ‘term-escape-char‘) is sent immediately. Use char sub-mode for screen oriented programs like vi or pine.

In line sub-mode, program output is spoken if user option eterm-autospeak is turned on. When you type a return at the end of the buffer, that line is sent as input, while return not at end copies the rest of the line to the end and sends it. When using terminal line mode with option eterm-autospeak turned on, speech feedback is similar to that obtained in regular shell-mode buffers.

The default is char sub-mode. You can switch to line sub-mode with C-c C-j (recall that control J is a linefeed), and back to char sub-mode with C-c C-k (think of character spelled with a K).

Note: Use char-mode with the terminal emulator for running screen-oriented programs like Lynx or Pine. For regular shell interaction just use M-x shell instead of using the terminal emulator.

10.1 Char Sub-mode of Term Mode

In char sub-mode of term, each character you type is sent directly to the inferior process without intervention from emacs, except for the escape character (usually C-c).

Here are some of the useful commands for the char sub-mode. Note that the usual commands for killing a buffer or switching buffers do not work in this mode, so new key bindings are supplied. The first five commands are different ways of leaving this mode.

‘C-c C-j’

‘M-x term-line-mode’

Switch to line sub-mode of term mode.

‘C-c o’

‘M-x other-window’

Select the next window on this frame. All windows on current frame are arranged in a cyclic order. This command selects the next window in that order. If there are no other windows, this command does nothing.

‘C-c C-f’

‘M-x find-file’

Switch to a buffer visiting a file, creating one if none already exists.

‘C-c 0’

‘M-x delete-window’

Remove current window from the display.

‘C-c k’

‘M-x kill-buffer’

Kill the current buffer.

‘C-c C-x C-c’

‘M-x save-buffers-kill-emacs’

Offer to save each buffer, then kill this Emacs process.

‘C-c C-d’

‘M-x list-directory’

Display a list of files in or matching DIRNAME, a la ‘ls’. DIRNAME is globbed by the shell if necessary. Prefix arg (C-u) means supply -l switch to ‘ls’. The list appears in a second window.

‘C-c 1’

‘M-x delete-other-windows’

Delete all other windows in the frame, making the current window fill its frame.

‘C-c C-c’

‘M-x term-send-raw’

Send the last character typed through the terminal-emulator without any interpretation.

‘C-c (’

‘M-x start-kbd-macro’

Record subsequent keyboard input, defining a keyboard macro. The commands are recorded even as they are executed. Use C-c ) to finish recording and make the macro available. Use M-x name-last-kbd-macro to give it a permanent name. Prefix arg (C-u) means append to last macro defined; This begins by re-executing that macro as if you had typed it again.

‘C-c )’

‘M-x end-kbd-macro’

Finish defining a keyboard macro. The definition was started by C-c (. The macro is now available for use via C-c e, or it can be given a name with M-x name-last-kbd-macro and then invoked under that name.

‘C-c e’

‘M-x call-last-kbd-macro’

Call the last keyboard macro that you defined with C-c (. A prefix argument serves as a repeat count. Zero means repeat until error.

You can get a list of all the key sequences with a C-c prefix by typing C-c C-h while in this sub-mode. Some of those commands are only available in the char sub-mode, while others are generally available.

10.2 Line Sub-mode of Term Mode

In line sub-mode of term mode, emacs editing commands work normally, until you type RET which sends the current line to the inferior process.

Here are some of the useful commands for the line sub-mode of the term mode. In addition, the usual commands for handling a buffer work in this mode (C-x o to switch windows, C-x k to kill a buffer, C-x f to find a file, and so forth).

‘C-c C-k’

‘M-x term-char-mode’

Switch to char sub-mode of term mode.

‘C-c C-z’

‘M-x term-stop-subjob’

Stop the current subjob. Resume the subjob in the foreground with the ordinary command fg, or run it in the background with bg. WARNING: if there is no current subjob, you can end up suspending the top-level process running in the buffer. If you accidentally do this, use M-x term-continue-subjob to resume the process. (This is not a problem with with most shells, including bash, since they ignore this signal.)

‘C-c C-\’

‘M-x term-quit-subjob’

Send quit signal to the current subjob.

‘C-c C-c’

‘M-x term-interrupt-subjob’

Interrupt the current subjob.

‘C-c C-w’

‘M-x backward-kill-word’

Kill characters backward until encountering the end of a word.

‘C-c C-u’

‘M-x term-kill-input’

Kill all text from last stuff output by interpreter to point.

‘C-c C-a’

‘M-x term-bol’

Goes to the beginning of line, then skips past the prompt, if any. If a prefix argument is given (C-u), then no prompt skip – go straight to column 0.

‘C-c C-d’

‘M-x term-send-eof’

Send an end of file character (EOF) to the current buffer’s process.

You can get a list of all the key sequences with a C-c prefix by typing C-c C-h while in this sub-mode. Some of those commands are only available in the line sub-mode, while others are generally available.

10.3 Eterm Mode Commands

The eterm mode maintains a pointer, which is not necessarily the same as the terminal’s cursor. It is intended to be used in eterm’s char submode. In char submode, C-t , (that’s control-t followed by comma) will tell you where the eterm pointer is. C-t C-i will tell you where the terminal’s cursor is. The top left corner of the window is "row 0 column 0".

The eterm pointer can be moved with C-t < (to the top of the screen), C-t > (to the bottom of the screen), C-t n (to the next line), C-t p (to the previous line), and C-t . (to the cursor). Each of these also speaks the line the pointer moves to. You can also search forward with C-t s.

These commands speak without moving the pointer: C-t l (current line), C-t w (current word), C-t c (current character), and C-t [space] (from eterm pointer to cursor).

You may enter review mode with C-t q. In review mode, you can search the buffer and speak its contents, without disturbing the terminal. Commands for moving the pointer are similar to normal editing commands, but without a control key: n and p for next and previous line, f and b for forward and back by characters, < and > for the beginning or end of the buffer. c, w, and l speak the current character, word, and line. s searches forward (not incrementally). A comma speaks the pointer location. A period moves the pointer to the terminal cursor. Return to normal term mode by typing q.

11. Emacspeak Commands

This chapter is generated automatically from the source-level documentation. Any errors or corrections should be made to the source-level documentation. This chapter documents a total of 763 commands.

11.1 cd-tool

Commentary: Provide an emacs front-end to cdtool. cdtool can be obtained as an rpm check using rpmfind or from its home site at sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/sound/cdrom/cli This module also provides the ability to play or save clips from a CD if you have cdda2wav installed. cdda2wav is a cd to wav convertor.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module cd-tool.

Interactive Command: cd-tool ()

control e DEL

Front-end to CDTool. Bind this function to a convenient key- Emacspeak users automatically have this bound to <DEL> in the emacspeak keymap.

Key Action — ——

+ Next Track - Previous Track SPC Pause or Resume e Eject = Shuffle i CD Info p Play s Stop t track c clip cap C Save clip to disk

11.2 dtk-speak

Commentary: Defines the TTS interface.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module dtk-speak.

Interactive Command: dtk-add-cleanup-pattern (&optional DELETE)

control e d a

Add this pattern to the list of repeating patterns that are cleaned up. Optional interactive prefix arg deletes this pattern if previously added. Cleaning up repeated patterns results in emacspeak speaking the pattern followed by a repeat count instead of speaking all the characters making up the pattern. Thus, by adding the repeating pattern ‘.’ (this is already added by default) emacspeak will say “aw fifteen dot” when speaking the string “...............” instead of “period period period period ”

Interactive Command: dtk-pause (&optional PREFIX)

control e p

Pause ongoing speech. The speech can be resumed with command ‘dtk-resume’ normally bound to C-e SPC. Pausing speech is useful when one needs to perform a few actions before continuing to read a large document. Emacspeak gives you speech feedback as usual once speech has been paused. ‘dtk-resume’ continues the interrupted speech irrespective of the buffer in which it is executed. Optional PREFIX arg flushes any previously paused speech.

Interactive Command: dtk-reset-state ()

control e d cap R

Restore sanity to the Dectalk. Typically used after the Dectalk has been power cycled.

Interactive Command: dtk-resume ()

control e SPACE

Resume paused speech. This command resumes speech that has been suspended by executing command ‘dtk-pause’ bound to C-e p. If speech has not been paused, and option ‘dtk-resume-should-toggle’ is set, then this command will pause ongoing speech.

Interactive Command: dtk-select-server (PROGRAM)

control e d d

Select a speech server interactively. Argument PROGRAM specifies the speech server program. When called interactively, The selected server is started immediately.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-character-scale (FACTOR &optional PREFIX)

control e d f

Set scale FACTOR for speech rate. Speech rate is scaled by this factor when speaking characters. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-chunk-separator-syntax (S)

control e d RETURN

Interactively set how text is split in chunks. See the Emacs documentation on syntax tables for details on how characters are classified into various syntactic classes. Argument S specifies the syntax class.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-language (LANG)

Set language according to the argument lang.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-next-language ()

Switch to the next available language

Interactive Command: dtk-set-predefined-speech-rate (&optional PREFIX)

control e d 0 control e d 1 control e d 2 control e d 3 control e d 4 control e d 5 control e d 6 control e d 7 control e d 8 control e d 9

Set speech rate to one of nine predefined levels. Interactive PREFIX arg says to set the rate globally. Formula used is: rate = dtk-speech-rate-base + dtk-speech-rate-step * level.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-preferred-language (ALIAS LANG)

Set the alias of the preferred language: For example if alias="en" lang="en_GB", then the following call: dtk-set-language("en") will set "en_GB".

Interactive Command: dtk-set-previous-language ()

Switch to the previous available language

Interactive Command: dtk-set-punctuations (MODE &optional PREFIX)

control e d p

Set punctuation mode to MODE. Possible values are ‘some’, ‘all’, or ‘none’. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-punctuations-to-all (&optional PREFIX)

Set punctuation mode to all. Interactive PREFIX arg sets punctuation mode globally.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-punctuations-to-some (&optional PREFIX)

Set punctuation mode to some. Interactive PREFIX arg sets punctuation mode globally.

Interactive Command: dtk-set-rate (RATE &optional PREFIX)

control e d r

Set speaking RATE for the tts. Interactive PREFIX arg means set the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-stop ()

<pause> control e s

Stop speech now.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-allcaps-beep (&optional PREFIX)

control e d cap C

Toggle allcaps-beep. when set, allcaps words are indicated by a short beep. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result. Note that allcaps-beep is a very useful thing when programming. However it is irritating to have it on when reading documents.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-capitalization (&optional PREFIX)

control e d c

Toggle capitalization. when set, capitalization is indicated by a short beep. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-debug (&optional PREFIX)

control e d b

Toggle state of the debug FLAG. When debugging is on, you can switch to the buffer *speaker* to examine the output from the process that talks to the speech device by using command C-e d C-M-b. Note: *speaker* is a hidden buffer, ie it has a leading space in its name.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-punctuation-mode (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle punctuation mode between "some" and "all". Interactive PREFIX arg makes the new setting global.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-quiet (&optional PREFIX)

control e d q

Toggles state of dtk-quiet. Turning on this switch silences speech. Optional interactive prefix arg causes this setting to become global.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-speak-nonprinting-chars (&optional PREFIX)

control e d n

Toggle speak-nonprinting-chars. Switches behavior of how characters with the high bit set are handled. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-split-caps (&optional PREFIX)

control e d s

Toggle split caps mode. Split caps mode is useful when reading Hungarian notation in program source code. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-splitting-on-white-space ()

control e d SPACE

Toggle splitting of speech on white space. This affects the internal state of emacspeak that decides if we split text purely by clause boundaries, or also include whitespace. By default, emacspeak sends a clause at a time to the speech device. This produces fluent speech for normal use. However in modes such as ‘shell-mode’ and some programming language modes, clause markers appear infrequently, and this can result in large amounts of text being sent to the speech device at once, making the system unresponsive when asked to stop talking. Splitting on white space makes emacspeak’s stop command responsive. However, when splitting on white space, the speech sounds choppy since the synthesizer is getting a word at a time.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-stop-immediately-while-typing (&optional PREFIX)

control e d cap I

Toggle state of variable ‘dtk-stop-immediately-while-typing’. As the name implies, if T then speech flushes immediately as you type. Optional argument PREFIX specifies if the setting applies to all buffers.

Interactive Command: dtk-toggle-strip-octals (&optional PREFIX)

control e d o

Toggle stripping of octals. Interactive prefix arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

11.3 emacspeak-alsaplayer

Commentary: Defines a simple derived mode for interacting with alsaplayer. alsaplayer navigation commands work via single keystrokes.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-alsaplayer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-add-to-queue (RESOURCE)

Add specified resource to queue.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-10-seconds ()

Skip backward by 10 seconds.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-minute (MINUTES)

Skip backwards by minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-ten-minutes (MINUTES)

Skip backwards by chunks of minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-clear ()

Clear or resume alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-clip (PATH START END)

Invoke mp3splt to clip selected range.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-10-seconds ()

Skip forward by seconds.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-minute (MINUTES)

Skip forward by minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-ten-minutes (MINUTES)

Skip forward by chunks of ten minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-info ()

Speak current path and copy it to kill ring.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-jump (TRACK)

Jump to specified track.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-launch ()

Launch Alsaplayer. user is placed in a buffer associated with the newly created Alsaplayer session.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-mark-position ()

Mark currently displayed position.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-mode ()

Major mode for alsaplayer interaction.

key binding — ——-

SPC emacspeak-alsaplayer-pause , emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-10-seconds . emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-10-seconds / emacspeak-alsaplayer-speed < emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-minute > emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-minute ? emacspeak-alsaplayer-status A emacspeak-alsaplayer-replace-queue S emacspeak-alsaplayer-stop [ emacspeak-alsaplayer-backward-ten-minutes ] emacspeak-alsaplayer-forward-ten-minutes a emacspeak-alsaplayer-add-to-queue c emacspeak-alsaplayer-clear g emacspeak-alsaplayer-seek i emacspeak-alsaplayer-info j emacspeak-alsaplayer-jump l emacspeak-alsaplayer-launch m emacspeak-alsaplayer-mark-position n emacspeak-alsaplayer-next p emacspeak-alsaplayer-previous q emacspeak-alsaplayer-quit r emacspeak-alsaplayer-relative s emacspeak-alsaplayer-start v emacspeak-alsaplayer-volume w emacspeak-alsaplayer-where x emacspeak-alsaplayer-clip

This mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-alsaplayer-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-next ()

Next alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-pause ()

Pause or resume alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-previous ()

Previous alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-quit ()

Quit or resume alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-relative (OFFSET)

Relative seek alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-replace-queue (RESOURCE)

Replace currently playing music.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-seek (OFFSET)

Absolute seek alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-speed (SETTING)

Set speed in alsaplayer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-start ()

Start alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-status ()

Show alsaplayer status

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-stop ()

Stop alsaplayer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-volume (SETTING)

Set volume.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-alsaplayer-where ()

Speak current position and copy it to kill ring.

11.4 emacspeak-amphetadesk

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-amphetadesk.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-amphetadesk (&optional USE-OPML)

Open amphetadesk. Interactive prefix-arg use-opml opens the myChannels.opml file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-amphetadesk-quick-add (URL)

Quick add URL to Amphetadesk by prompting for URL.

11.5 emacspeak-arc

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-arc.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-arc-speak-file-modification-time ()

Speak modification time of the file on current line

Interactive Command: emacspeak-arc-speak-file-name ()

Speak the name of the file on current line

Interactive Command: emacspeak-arc-speak-file-permissions ()

Speak permissions of file current entry

Interactive Command: emacspeak-arc-speak-file-size ()

Speak the size of the file on current line

11.6 emacspeak-aumix

Commentary: Provides an AUI to setting up the auditory display via AUMIX This module is presently Linux specific

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-aumix.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix ()

control e (

Setup output parameters of the auditory display. Launch this tool while you have auditory output on multiple channels playing so you can adjust the settings to your preference. Hit q to quit when you are done.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-edit ()

Edit aumix settings interactively. Run command M-x emacspeak-aumix-reset after saving the settings to have them take effect.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-reset ()

Reset to default audio settings.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-volume-decrease (&optional GAIN)

Decrease overall volume.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-volume-increase (&optional GAIN)

Increase overall volume.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-wave-decrease (&optional GAIN)

Decrease volume of wave output.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-aumix-wave-increase (&optional GAIN)

Increase volume of wave output.

11.7 emacspeak-bs

Commentary: speech-enable bs.el this is an alternative to list-buffers

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-bs.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-bs-speak-buffer-line ()

Speak information about this buffer

11.8 emacspeak-buff-menu

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-buff-menu.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-list-buffers-next-line (COUNT)

Speech enabled buffer menu navigation

Interactive Command: emacspeak-list-buffers-previous-line (COUNT)

Speech enabled buffer menu navigation

Interactive Command: emacspeak-list-buffers-speak-buffer-line ()

Speak information about this buffer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-list-buffers-speak-buffer-name ()

Speak the name of the buffer on this line

11.9 emacspeak-c

Commentary: Make some of C and C++ mode more emacspeak friendly Works with both boring c-mode and the excellent cc-mode

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-c.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-c-speak-semantics ()

Speak the C semantics of this line.

11.10 emacspeak-calendar

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-calendar.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-appt-repeat-announcement ()

control e cap A

Speaks the most recently displayed appointment message if any.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-calendar-speak-date ()

Speak the date under point when called in Calendar Mode.

11.11 emacspeak-compile

Commentary: This module makes compiling code from inside Emacs speech friendly. It is an example of how a little amount of code can make Emacspeak even better.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-compile.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-compilation-speak-error ()

Speech feedback about the compilation error.

11.12 emacspeak-custom

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-custom.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-custom-goto-group ()

Jump to custom group when in a customization buffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-custom-goto-toolbar ()

Jump to custom toolbar when in a customization buffer.

11.13 emacspeak-daisy

Commentary: Daisy Digital Talking Book Reader

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-daisy.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-define-outline-pattern (REGEXP)

Define persistent outline regexp for this book.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-mark-position-in-content-under-point ()

Mark current position in displayed content. No-op if content under point is not currently displayed.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-mode ()

A DAISY front-end for the Emacspeak desktop.

Pre-requisites:

0) mpg123 for playing mp3 files 1) libxml and libxslt packages 2) xml-parse.el for parsing XML in Emacs Lisp.

The Emacspeak DAISY front-end is launched by command emacspeak-daisy-open-book bound to C-e C-b.

This command switches to a special buffer that has DAISY commands bounds to single keystrokes– see the ke-binding list at the end of this description. Use Emacs online help facility to look up help on these commands.

emacspeak-daisy-mode provides the necessary functionality to navigate and listen to Daisy talking books.

Here is a list of all emacspeak DAISY commands along with their key-bindings:

key binding — ——-

RET emacspeak-daisy-play-content-under-point SPC emacspeak-daisy-play-audio-under-point ? describe-mode P emacspeak-daisy-play-page-range S emacspeak-daisy-save-bookmarks m emacspeak-daisy-mark-position-in-content-under-point n emacspeak-daisy-next-line o emacspeak-daisy-define-outline-pattern p emacspeak-daisy-previous-line q bury-buffer s emacspeak-daisy-stop-audio

In addition to any hooks its parent mode ‘text-mode’ might have run, this mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-daisy-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-next-line ()

Move to next line.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-open-book (FILENAME)

control e control b

Open Digital Talking Book specified by navigation file filename.

This is the main entry point to the Emacspeak Daisy reader. Opening a Daisy navigation file (.ncx file) results in a navigation buffer that can be used to browse and read the book.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-play-audio-under-point ()

Play audio clip under point.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-play-content-under-point ()

Play SMIL content under point.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-play-page-range (START END)

Play pages in specified page range.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-previous-line ()

Move to previous line.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-save-bookmarks ()

Save bookmarks for current book.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-daisy-stop-audio ()

Stop audio.

11.14 emacspeak-dired

Commentary: This module speech enables dired. It reduces the amount of speech you hear: Typically you hear the file names as you move through the dired buffer Voicification is used to indicate directories, marked files etc.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-dired.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-label-fields ()

Labels the fields of the listing in the dired buffer. Currently is a no-op unless unless ‘dired-listing-switches’ contains -al

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-show-file-type (&optional FILE DEREF-SYMLINKS)

Displays type of current file by running command file. Like Emacs’ built-in dired-show-file-type but allows user to customize options passed to command ‘file’.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-file-access-time ()

Speak access time of the current file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-file-modification-time ()

Speak modification time of the current file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-file-permissions ()

Speak the permissions of the current file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-file-size ()

Speak the size of the current file. On a directory line, run du -s on the directory to speak its size.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-header-line ()

Speak the header line of the dired buffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dired-speak-symlink-target ()

Speaks the target of the symlink on the current line.

11.15 emacspeak-dismal

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-dismal.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-backward-col-and-summarize (COLS)

Move backward by arg columns (the previous column by default)and summarize it.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-backward-row-and-summarize (ROWS)

Move backward by arg rows (the previous row by default)and summarize it.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-col-summarize ()

Summarizes a col using the specification in list emacspeak-dismal-col-summarizer-list

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-display-cell-expression ()

Display the expression in the message area

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-display-cell-value ()

Display the cell value in the message area

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-display-cell-with-col-header ()

Display current cell along with its column header. The ‘column header’ is the entry in row 0.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-display-cell-with-row-header ()

Displays current cell along with its row header. The ‘row header’ is the entry in column 0.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-forward-col-and-summarize (COLS)

Move forward by arg columns (the next column by default)and summarize it.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-forward-row-and-summarize (ROWS)

Move forward by arg rows (the next row by default)and summarize it.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-row-summarize ()

Summarizes a row using the specification in list emacspeak-dismal-row-summarizer-list

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-set-col-summarizer-list ()

Specify or reset col summarizer list.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-set-row-summarizer-list ()

Specify or reset row summarizer list.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-set-sheet-summarizer-list ()

Specify or reset sheet summarizer list.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-dismal-sheet-summarize ()

Summarizes a sheet using the specification in list emacspeak-dismal-sheet-summarizer-list

11.16 emacspeak-ecb

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-ecb.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-speak-window-directories ()

Speak contents of directories window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-speak-window-history ()

Speak contents of history window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-speak-window-methods ()

Speak contents of methods window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-speak-window-sources ()

Speak contents of sources window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-tree-backspace ()

Back up during incremental search in tree buffers.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-tree-clear ()

Clear search pattern during incremental search in tree buffers.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-tree-expand-common-prefix ()

Expand to longest common prefix in tree buffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ecb-tree-shift-return ()

Do shift return in ECB tree browser.

11.17 emacspeak-ediff

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-ediff.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ediff-speak-current-difference ()

Speak the current difference

11.18 emacspeak-enriched

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-enriched.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-enriched-voiceify-faces (START END)

Map base fonts to voices. Useful in voicifying rich text.

11.19 emacspeak-entertain

Commentary: Auditory interface to misc games

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-entertain.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-hangman-speak-guess ()

Speak current guessed string.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-hangman-speak-statistics ()

Speak statistics.

11.20 emacspeak-eperiodic

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-eperiodic.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eperiodic-goto-property-section ()

Mark position and jump to properties section.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eperiodic-next-line ()

Move to next row and speak element.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eperiodic-play-description ()

Play audio description from WebElements.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eperiodic-previous-line ()

Move to next row and speak element.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eperiodic-speak-current-element ()

Speak element at point.

11.21 emacspeak-erc

Commentary: erc.el is a modern Emacs client for IRC including color and font locking support. erc.el - an Emacs IRC client (by Alexander L. Belikoff) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~berez/irc/erc.el

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-erc.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-add-name-to-monitor (NAME &optional QUITEN-PRONUNCIATION)

Add people to moniter in this room. Optional interactive prefix arg defines a pronunciation that silences speaking of this perso’s name.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-delete-name-from-monitor (NAME)

Remove name to monitor in this room.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-setup-cricket-rules ()

Set up #cricket channels.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-toggle-my-monitor (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle state of ERC monitor of my messages. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-toggle-room-monitor (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle state of ERC room monitor. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-erc-toggle-speak-all-participants (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle state of ERC speak all participants.. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

11.22 emacspeak-eterm

Commentary: This module makes eterm talk. Eterm is the new terminal emulator for Emacs. Use of emacspeak with eterm really needs an info page. At present, the only documentation is the source level documentation. This module uses Control-t as an additional prefix key to allow the user To move around the terminal and have different parts spoken.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-eterm.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-copy-region-to-register (REGISTER)

Copy text from terminal to an Emacs REGISTER. This copies region delimited by the emacspeak eterm marker set by command M-x emacspeak-eterm-set-marker and the emacspeak eterm pointer to a register.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-define-window (ID)

Prompt for a window ID. The window is then define to be the rectangle delimited by point and eterm mark. This is to be used when emacspeak is set to review mode inside an eterm.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-describe-window (ID)

Describe an eterm window. Description indicates eterm window coordinates and whether it is stretchable

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-goto-line (LINE)

Move emacspeak eterm pointer to a specified LINE.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-kill-ring-save-region ()

Copy text from terminal to kill ring. This copies region delimited by the emacspeak eterm marker set by command M-x emacspeak-eterm-set-marker and the emacspeak eterm pointer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-maybe-send-raw ()

Send a raw character through if in the terminal buffer. Execute end of line if in a non eterm buffer if executed via C-e C-e

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-paste-register (REGISTER)

Paste contents of REGISTER at current location. If the specified register contains text, then that text is sent to the terminal as if it were typed by the user.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-backward-word (COUNT)

Move the pointer backward by words. Interactive numeric prefix arg specifies number of words to move. Argument COUNT specifies number of words by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-down (COUNT)

Move the pointer down a line. Argument COUNT specifies number of lines by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-forward-word (COUNT)

Move the pointer forward by words. Interactive numeric prefix arg specifies number of words to move. Argument COUNT specifies number of words by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-left (COUNT)

Move the pointer left. Argument COUNT specifies number of columns by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-right (COUNT)

Move the pointer right. Argument COUNT specifies number of columns by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-bottom ()

Move the pointer to the bottom of the screen.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-cursor ()

Move the pointer to the cursor.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-left-edge ()

Move the pointer to the right edge.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-next-color-change (&optional COUNT)

Move the eterm pointer to the next color change. This allows you to move between highlighted regions of the screen. Optional argument COUNT specifies how many changes to skip.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-previous-color-change (&optional COUNT)

Move the eterm pointer to the next color change. This allows you to move between highlighted regions of the screen. Optional argument COUNT specifies how many changes to skip.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-right-edge ()

Move the pointer to the right edge.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-to-top ()

Move the pointer to the top of the screen.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-pointer-up (COUNT)

Move the pointer up a line. Argument COUNT .specifies number of lines by which to move.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-remote-term (HOST)

control e CONTROL meta r

Start a terminal-emulator in a new buffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-search-backward ()

Search backward on the terminal.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-search-forward ()

Search forward on the terminal.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-set-filter-window (FLAG)

Prompt for the id of a predefined window, and set the ‘filter’ window to it. Non-nil interactive prefix arg ‘unsets’ the filter window; this is equivalent to having the entire terminal as the filter window (this is what eterm starts up with). Setting the filter window results in emacspeak only monitoring screen activity within the filter window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-set-focus-window (FLAG)

Prompt for the id of a predefined window, and set the ‘focus’ window to it. Non-nil interactive prefix arg ‘unsets’ the focus window; this is equivalent to having the entire terminal as the focus window (this is what eterm starts up with). Setting the focus window results in emacspeak monitoring screen and speaking that window upon seeing screen activity.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-set-marker ()

Set Emacspeak eterm marker. This sets the emacspeak eterm marker to the position pointed to by the emacspeak eterm pointer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-cursor ()

Speak cursor position.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-pointer ()

Speak current pointer position.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-pointer-char (&optional PREFIX)

Speak char under eterm pointer. Pronounces character phonetically unless called with a PREFIX arg.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-pointer-line ()

Speak the line the pointer is on.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-pointer-word ()

Speak the word the pointer is on.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-predefined-window ()

Speak a predefined eterm window between 1 and 10.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-screen (&optional FLAG)

Speak the screen. Default is to speak from the emacspeak pointer to point. Optional prefix arg FLAG causes region above the Emacspeak pointer to be spoken.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-speak-window (ID)

Speak an eterm window. Argument ID specifies the window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-toggle-filter-window ()

Toggle active state of filter window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-toggle-focus-window ()

Toggle active state of focus window.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-toggle-pointer-mode (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle emacspeak eterm pointer mode. With optional interactive prefix arg, turn it on. When emacspeak eterm is in pointer mode, the eterm read pointer stays where it is rather than automatically moving to the terminal cursor when there is terminal activity.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-toggle-review ()

Toggle state of eterm review. In review mode, you can move around the terminal and listen to the contnets without sending input to the terminal itself.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-eterm-yank-window (ID)

Yank contents of an eterm window at point.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-toggle-eterm-autospeak (&optional PREFIX)

Toggle state of eterm autospeak. When eterm autospeak is turned on and the terminal is in line mode, all output to the terminal is automatically spoken. Interactive prefix arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

11.23 emacspeak-filtertext

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-filtertext.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-filtertext (START END)

control e ^

Copy over text in region to special filtertext buffer in preparation for interactively filtering text.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-filtertext-mode ()

Major mode for FilterText interaction.

key binding — ——-

= keep-lines ^ flush-lines r emacspeak-filtertext-revert

In addition to any hooks its parent mode ‘text-mode’ might have run, this mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-filtertext-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-filtertext-revert ()

Revert to original text.

11.24 emacspeak-fix-interactive

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-fix-interactive.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-fix-all-recent-commands ()

Fix recently loaded interactive commands. This command looks through ‘load-history’ and fixes commands if necessary. Memoizes call in emacspeak-load-history-pointer to memoize this call.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-fix-commands-loaded-from (MODULE)

Fix all commands loaded from a specified module.

11.25 emacspeak-forms

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-forms.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-find-file (FILENAME)

Visit a forms file

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-flush-unwanted-records ()

Prompt for pattern and flush matching lines

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-rerun-filter ()

Rerun filter –allows us to nuke more matching records

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-speak-field ()

Speak current form field name and value. Assumes that point is at the front of a field value.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-summarize-current-position ()

Summarize current position in list of records

Interactive Command: emacspeak-forms-summarize-current-record ()

Summarize current record

11.26 emacspeak-gnus

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-gnus.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gnus-summary-catchup-quietly-and-exit ()

Catch up on all articles in current group.

11.27 emacspeak-gomoku

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-gomoku.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-display-statistics ()

Display statistics from previous games

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-goto-x-y (X Y)

Prompt for and go to that square.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-show-current-column ()

Aurally display current column

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-show-current-negative-diagonal ()

Aurally display current negative sloped diagonal

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-show-current-positive-diagonal ()

Aurally display current positively sloped diagonal

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-show-current-row ()

Aurally display current row

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-speak-emacs-previous-move ()

Speak emacs’ previous move

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-speak-humans-previous-move ()

Speak human’ previous move

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-speak-number-of-moves ()

Speak number of moves so far

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gomoku-speak-square ()

Speak coordinates and state of square at point

11.28 emacspeak-gridtext

Commentary: Emacspeak’s table browsing mode allows one to efficiently access content that is tabular in nature. That module also provides functions for infering table structure where possible. Often, such structure is hard to infer automatically –but might be known to the user e.g. treat columns 1 through 30 as one column of a table and so on. This module allows the user to specify a conceptual grid that is "overlaid" on the region of text to turn it into a table for tabular browsing. For now, elements of the grid are "one line" high –but that may change in the future if necessary. This module is useful for browsing structured text files and the output from programs that tabulate their output. It’s also useful for handling multicolumn text.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-gridtext.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gridtext-apply (START END GRID)

control e # a

Apply grid to region.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gridtext-load (FILE)

control e # l

Load saved grid settings.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-gridtext-save (FILE)

control e # s

Save out grid settings.

11.29 emacspeak-hide

Commentary: Flexible hide and show for emacspeak. This module allows one to easily hide or expose blocks of lines starting with a common prefix. It is motivated by the need to flexibly hide quoted text in email but is designed to be more general. the prefix parsing is inspired by filladapt.el

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-hide.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-hide-or-expose-all-blocks ()

Hide or expose all blocks in buffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-hide-or-expose-block (&optional PREFIX)

control e j

Hide or expose a block of text. This command either hides or exposes a block of text starting on the current line. A block of text is defined as a portion of the buffer in which all lines start with a common PREFIX. Optional interactive prefix arg causes all blocks in current buffer to be hidden or exposed.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-hide-speak-block-sans-prefix ()

control e control j

Speaks current block after stripping its prefix. If the current block is not hidden, it first hides it. This is useful because as you locate blocks, you can invoke this command to listen to the block, and when you have heard enough navigate easily to move past the block.

11.30 emacspeak-ibuffer

Commentary: speech-enable ibuffer.el this is an alternative to buffer-menu

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-ibuffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ibuffer-speak-buffer-line ()

Speak information about this buffer

11.31 emacspeak-imenu

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-imenu.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-imenu-goto-next-index-position ()

Goto the next index position in current buffer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-imenu-goto-previous-index-position ()

Goto the previous index position in current buffer

Interactive Command: emacspeak-imenu-speak-this-section ()

Speak upto start of next index entry

11.32 emacspeak-info

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-info.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-info-speak-header ()

Speak info header line.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-info-wizard (NODE-SPEC)

control h TAB <f1> TAB <help> TAB

Read a node spec from the minibuffer and launch Info-goto-node. See documentation for command ‘Info-goto-node’ for details on node-spec.

11.33 emacspeak-jabber

Commentary: emacs-jabber.el implements a jabber client for emacs emacs-jabber is hosted at sourceforge. I use emacs-jabber with my gmail.com account

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-jabber.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-jabber-popup-roster ()

Pop to Jabber roster.

11.34 emacspeak-keymap

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-keymap.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-keymap-choose-new-emacspeak-prefix (PREFIX-KEY)

Interactively select a new prefix key to use for all emacspeak commands. The default is to use ‘C-e’ This command lets you switch the prefix to something else. This is a useful thing to do if you run emacspeak on a remote machine from inside a terminal that is running inside a local emacspeak session. You can have the remote emacspeak use a different control key to give your fingers some relief.

11.35 emacspeak-loaddefs

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-loaddefs.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-mark-forward-mark ()

<control down>

Jump to mark, and pop a new position for mark off the ring (does not affect global mark ring).

This function is advised.

After-advice ‘emacspeak’: Produce an auditory icon if possible.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-toggle-comint-output-monitor (&optional PREFIX)

control e o

Toggle state of Emacspeak comint monitor. When turned on, comint output is automatically spoken. Turn this on if you want your shell to speak its results. Interactive PREFIX arg means toggle the global default value, and then set the current local value to the result.

11.36 emacspeak-m-player

Commentary: Defines a simple derived mode for interacting with mplayer. mplayer is a versatile media player capable of playing many streaming formats and is especially useful for playing windows media (WMA) and streaming windows media (ASF) files. mplayer is available on the WWW: RPM package http://mirrors.sctpc.com/dominik/linux/pkgs/mplayer/i586/mplayer-0.90pre5-2.i586.rpm You may need the win32 codecs which can be downloaded from http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/MPlayer/releases/w32codec-0.60.tar.bz2 Mplayer FAQ at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/faq.html Mplayer docs at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-m-player.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-add-equalizer ()

Add equalizer for next MPlayer invocation.

Use arrow keys, page-up, page-down, home and end keys to manipulate the values. Hit enter to finish setting the equalizer values.

The Mplayer equalizer provides 10 bands, G0 – G9, see the MPlayer man page for details.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-add-filter ()

Adds specified filter to use for the next invocation of MPlayer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-alt-src-step (STEP)

Move within an ASF playlist.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-backward-10min ()

Move backward by ten minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-backward-10s ()

Move back by 10 seconds.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-backward-1min ()

Move back by 1 minute.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-beginning-of-track ()

Move to beginning of track.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-command (COMMAND-CHAR)

Invoke MPlayer commands.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-customize-options ()

Use Customize to manipulate MPlayer options.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-display-position ()

Display current position in track and its length.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-double-speed ()

Scale speed by 2.0

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-end-of-track ()

Move to beginning of track.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-equalizer-control (V)

Manipulate values in specified vector using minibuffer.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-faster ()

Speed up playback.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-forward-10min ()

Move forward by ten minutes.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-forward-10s ()

Move forward by 10 seconds.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-forward-1min ()

Move forward by 1 minute.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-half-speed ()

Scale speed by 0.5.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-load-file (F)

Load specified file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-load-playlist (F)

Load specified playlist file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-mode ()

Major mode for m-player interaction.

key binding — ——-

RET emacspeak-m-player SPC emacspeak-m-player-pause + emacspeak-m-player-volume-up , emacspeak-m-player-backward-10s - emacspeak-m-player-volume-down . emacspeak-m-player-forward-10s : emacspeak-m-player < emacspeak-m-player-backward-1min = emacspeak-m-player-volume-up > emacspeak-m-player-forward-1min ? emacspeak-m-player-display-position L emacspeak-m-player-load-playlist O emacspeak-m-player-reset-options [ emacspeak-m-player-slower ] emacspeak-m-player-faster b bury-buffer e emacspeak-m-player-add-equalizer f emacspeak-m-player-add-filter g emacspeak-m-player-seek-absolute l emacspeak-m-player-load-file n emacspeak-m-player-next-track o emacspeak-m-player-customize-options p emacspeak-m-player-previous-track q emacspeak-m-player-quit r emacspeak-m-player-seek-relative s emacspeak-m-player-scale-speed t emacspeak-m-player-play-tree-step { emacspeak-m-player-half-speed } emacspeak-m-player-double-speed DEL emacspeak-m-player-reset-speed <down> emacspeak-m-player-forward-1min <end> emacspeak-m-player-end-of-track <home> emacspeak-m-player-beginning-of-track <left> emacspeak-m-player-backward-10s <next> emacspeak-m-player-forward-10min <prior> emacspeak-m-player-backward-10min <right> emacspeak-m-player-forward-10s <up> emacspeak-m-player-backward-1min

In addition to any hooks its parent mode ‘comint-mode’ might have run, this mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-m-player-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-next-track ()

Move to next track.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-pause ()

Pause or unpause media player.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-play-tree-step (STEP)

Move within the play tree.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-play-tree-up (STEP)

Move within the play tree.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-previous-track ()

Move to previous track.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-quit ()

Quit media player.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-reset-options ()

Reset MPlayer options to initial defaults.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-reset-speed ()

Reset playing speed to normal.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-scale-speed (FACTOR)

Scale speed by specified factor.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-seek-absolute (POSITION)

Seek to absolute specified position.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-seek-relative (OFFSET)

Seek by offset into stream from current position.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-slower ()

Slow down playback.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-volume-down ()

Decrease volume.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-m-player-volume-up ()

Increase volume.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-multimedia ()

control e ;

Start or control Emacspeak multimedia player.

11.37 emacspeak-madplay

Commentary: Defines a simple derived mode for interacting with madplay. madplay navigation commands work via single keystrokes.

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-madplay.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-madplay (RESOURCE)

Play specified resource using madplay. Resource is an MP3 file or directory containing mp3 files. The player is placed in a buffer in emacspeak-madplay-mode.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command ()

Call appropriate madplay command.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-madplay-madplay-command (CHAR)

Execute Madplay command.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-madplay-mode ()

Major mode for madplay interaction.

key binding — ——-

+ emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command - emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command b emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command f emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command o emacspeak-madplay p .. q emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command s .. t emacspeak-madplay-madplay-call-command <left> emacspeak-aumix-wave-decrease <right> emacspeak-aumix-wave-increase

This mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-madplay-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

11.38 emacspeak-man

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-man.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-man-browse-man-page ()

Browse the man page –read it a paragraph at a time

Interactive Command: emacspeak-man-speak-this-section ()

Speak current section

11.39 emacspeak-ocr

Commentary: This module defines Emacspeak front-end to OCR. This module assumes that sane is installed and working for image acquisition, and that there is an OCR engine that can take acquired images and produce text. Prerequisites: Sane installed and working. scanimage to generate tiff files from scanner. tiffcp to compress the tiff file. working ocr executable by default this module assumes that the OCR executable is named "ocr"

Automatically generated documentation for commands defined in module emacspeak-ocr.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr ()

control e control o

An OCR front-end for the Emacspeak desktop.

Page image is acquired using tools from the SANE package. The acquired image is run through the OCR engine if one is available, and the results placed in a buffer that is suitable for browsing the results.

For detailed help, invoke command emacspeak-ocr bound to C-e C-o to launch emacspeak-ocr-mode, and press ‘?’ to display mode-specific help for emacspeak-ocr-mode.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-backward-page (&optional COUNT-IGNORED)

Like backward page, but tracks page number of current document.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-customize ()

Customize OCR settings.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-forward-page (&optional COUNT-IGNORED)

Like forward page, but tracks page number of current document.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-mode ()

An OCR front-end for the Emacspeak desktop.

Pre-requisites:

1) A working scanner back-end like SANE on Linux.

2) An OCR engine.

1: Make sure your scanner back-end works, and that you have the utilities to scan a document and acquire an image as a tiff file. Then set variable emacspeak-ocr-scan-image-program to point at this utility. By default, this is set to ‘scanimage’ which is the image scanning utility provided by SANE.

By default, this front-end attempts to compress the acquired tiff image; make sure you have a utility like tiffcp. Variable emacspeak-ocr-compress-image is set to ‘tiffcp’ by default; if you use something else, you should customize this variable.

2: Next, make sure you have an OCR engine installed and working. By default this front-end assumes that OCR is available as /usr/bin/ocr.

Once you have ensured that acquiring an image and applying OCR to it work independently of Emacs, you can use this Emacspeak front-end to enable easy OCR access from within Emacspeak.

The Emacspeak OCR front-end is launched by command emacspeak-ocr bound to C-e C-o.

This command switches to a special buffer that has OCR commands bounds to single keystrokes– see the ke-binding list at the end of this description. Use Emacs online help facility to look up help on these commands.

emacspeak-ocr-mode provides the necessary functionality to scan, OCR, read and save documents. By default, scanned images and the resulting text are saved under directory ~/ocr; see variable emacspeak-ocr-working-directory. Invoking command emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory bound to M-x emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory will open this directory.

By default, the document being scanned is named ‘untitled’. You can name the document by using command emacspeak-ocr-name-document bound to M-x emacspeak-ocr-name-document. The document name is used in constructing the name of the image and text files.

Key Bindings:

See key binding — ——-

RET emacspeak-ocr-scan-and-recognize SPC emacspeak-ocr-read-current-page 1 .. 9 emacspeak-ocr-page ? describe-mode C emacspeak-ocr-set-compress-image-options I emacspeak-ocr-set-scan-image-options [ emacspeak-ocr-backward-page ] emacspeak-ocr-forward-page c emacspeak-ocr-customize d emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory i emacspeak-ocr-scan-image j emacspeak-ocr-scan-photo n emacspeak-ocr-name-document o emacspeak-ocr-recognize-image p emacspeak-ocr-page q bury-buffer s emacspeak-ocr-save-current-page w emacspeak-ocr-write-document

.

In addition to any hooks its parent mode ‘text-mode’ might have run, this mode runs the hook ‘emacspeak-ocr-mode-hook’, as the final step during initialization.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-name-document (NAME)

Name document being scanned in the current OCR buffer. Pick a short but meaningful name.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-open-working-directory ()

Launch dired on OCR working directory.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-page ()

Move to specified page.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-read-current-page ()

Speaks current page.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-recognize-image ()

Run OCR engine on current image. Prompts for image file if file corresponding to the expected ‘current page’ is not found.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-save-current-page ()

Writes out recognized text from current page to an appropriately named file.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-scan-and-recognize ()

Scan in a page and run OCR engine on it. Use this command once you’ve verified that the separate steps of acquiring an image and running the OCR engine work correctly by themselves.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-scan-image ()

Acquire page image.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-scan-photo (&optional METADATA)

Scan in a photograph. The scanned image is converted to JPEG.

Interactive Command: emacspeak-ocr-set-compress-image-options (SETTING)

Interactively update image compression options. Prompts with current setting in the minibuffer. Setting persists for current Emacs session.