Here is where I plan to Blog Emacspeak tricks and introduce new features as I implement them.
Emacspeak: A Speech Odyssey 1. Dedication: To My Guiding Eyes Aster, Hubbell and Tilden (2/15/1987—12/05/1999) (12/21/1997—4/11/2011) (8/4/2009—9/3/2022) 2. Key Insights User interface is a means to an end . Open Source is essential for discovering new interaction paradigms. This is not mere idealism. Openness is a key enabler for creating user journeys that were not envisioned by a system’s…
1. For Immediate Release: San Jose, CA, (May 4, 2024) 1.1. Emacspeak 60.0 (DreamDog) Unleashed! 🦮 — Innate Intelligence (II)™ Makes Accessible Computing a dream! Advancing Accessibility In The Age Of User-Aware Interfaces — Zero cost of Ownership makes priceless software Universally affordable! Emacspeak Inc (NASDOG: ESPK) — http://github.com/tvraman/emacspeak — announces immediate…
Smart Media Selector For The Audio Desktop 1. Overview I have over 60GB of audio content on my laptop spread across 755 subdirecories in over 9100 files. I also have many Internet stream shortcuts that I listen to on a regular basis. This blog article outlines the media selector implementation in Emacspeak and shows how a small amount of Lisp code built atop Emacs' built-in affordances of…
Smart Media Selector For The Audio Desktop 1. Overview I have over 60MB of audio content on my laptop spread across 755 subdirecories in over 9100 files. I also have many Internet stream shortcuts that I listen to on a regular basis. This blog article outlines the media selector implementation in Emacspeak and shows how a small amount of Lisp code built atop Emacs' built-in affordances of…
Emacspeak HHG: Hidden Holiday Gems 1. Introduction This is an Emacspeak-specific follow-on to my article Emacs: Hidden Holiday Gems . This article extends its predecessor by: Adding Emacspeak-specific details for each gem; the earlier article purposely avoided anything Emacspeak-specific. Where appropriate, I'll point out the importance of choosing a solution that is appropriate to the user, e.g.,…
Emacs HHG: Hidden Holiday Gems 1. Overview The acronym HHG evokes Douglas Adams' Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy in the minds of most geeks. This article takes a quick semi-guided tour through some of the gems that are hidden in plain sight within Emacs. This article was prompted by some recent discussions on the emacs-devel@gnu.org list which revealed the somewhat obvious — not everyone…
Announcing Emacspeak 59.0—VirtualDog! To express oneself well is impactful, but only when one has something impactful to express! (TVR on Conversational Interfaces) 1. For Immediate Release: San Jose, CA, (November 22, 2023) 1.1. Emacspeak 59.0 (VirtualDog) Unleashed! 🦮 — Making Accessible Computing Effortless! Advancing Accessibility In The Age Of User-Aware Interfaces — Zero cost…
Together: The Old And New Are Much Better! 1. Executive Summary Emacs has had long-standing features like outline-mode and outline-minor-mode that often get forgotten in the face of newer affordances like org-mode . At the same time, Emacs continues to acquire new features — in this article, I am specifically alluding to repeat-mode . The combinatorial explosion that is the result of the…
Augmenting Emacs With ZOxide For Efficient File System Navigation 1. Background Emacs has no shortage of multiple built-in means of navigating the file system with smart, context-sensitive and fuzzy completion. That said, there is one tool outside Emacs I have discovered in the last six months that brings something extra — Zoxide , a smarter cd built in Rust. 2. Default Usage Once…
return to control-right using xmodmap and xcape 1. background see previous article on dont punish your finger tips that described how to minimize chording in emacs. that article alluded to possibly using return as an additional control right key; this article describes the implementation and things i discovered in setting it up. the design described here was discovered by this google search . 2.…
Emacs Ergonomics: Dont Punish Your Finger Tips 1. Summary A collection of keybinding changes I have arrived at over time to protect my fingers.Note that I have now used Emacs for more than 33 years, and some of these changes may well have helped me much earlier; on the other hand, I likely didn't notice these issues because my hands then were not the same as what they are now. See earlier articles…
An Ergonomic Buffer Select With Minimal Chording 1. Background Buffers are central to Emacs as is evinced by the various buffer-selection schemes that have been created over time. As someone who has lived for over 30 years in Emacs, my own set of buffer-selection tools have evolved and I've settled on a combination of ido and fuzzy matching over the last few years. This article describes a new…
Announcing Emacspeak 58.0—ErgoDog! To express oneself well is impactful, but only when one has something impactful to express! (TVR on Conversational Interfaces) 1. For Immediate Release: San Jose, CA, (May 4, 2023) 1.1. Emacspeak 58.0 (ErgoDog) Unleashed! 🦮 — Making Accessible Computing Effortless! Advancing Accessibility In The Age Of User-Aware Interfaces — Zero cost of Ownership…
Training Wheels For Better Ergonomics 1. Background In my previous article Ergonomics Using xcape I described my setup to minimize chording in Emacs. The setup is working whell, and in the few weeks of usage, I've reduce the xcape timeout setting from 250ms to 170ms, this is the timeout that controls the behavior of modifier keys in xcape. 2. Training Wheels In Emacs Next, I decided that getting…
Enhance Emacs Ergonomics Under X: Happy Hands! 1. Executive Summary Describes customizations under X that makes my hands happier. Leverages features and (mis-features) of modern-day laptops to break old habits and reduce chording in common cases. 2. Background I have been using Emacs for 33 years now and at this point, much of my Emacs usage is based on muscle memory. This has its good and bad…
AsTeR: Spoken Math On The Emacspeak Audio Desktop 1. Dedication To My Guiding Eyes In fond memory of Aster who first showed the way for 10 years; to Hubbell and Tilden who ably followed her lead over the next 22+ years! On The Internet No one knows you're not a dog! Nor if you're the same dog! Or even the same gender! (2/15/1987—12/05/1999) (12/21/1997—4/11/2011) (8/4/2009—9/3/2022) 2. Overview…
Toward Accessible Scientific Documents Via Arxiv.Org 1. Background I access research papers from arxiv.org multiple times a week. Having originally worked on access to STEM content for my PhD over 30 years ago, I find it both encouraging and challenging as I continue to acquire access to the research materials I need. As the Digital Library of the future, arxiv is committed to improving the state…
Announcing Emacspeak 57.0—Tilden! Easy things are often amusing and relaxing, but their value soon fades. Greater pleasure, deeper satisfaction, and higher wages are associated with genuine accomplishments, with the successful fulfillment of a challenging task. –Donald Knuth 1. For Immediate Release: San Jose, CA, (November 23, 2022) 1.1. Emacspeak 57.0 (Tilden) Unleashed! 🦮 — Making…
Learn Smarter By Taking Rich, Hypertext Notes 1. Background As a student, I learned to take notes in Braille while in class and while learning from audio books. When reviewing the material, reading the notes was far more efficient than re-listening to the original recordings; however at the time, I had no means to easily jump to the original content when perusing my notes. Fast-forward to the age…
Epitaph: Tilden Labrador Epitaph Tilden Labrador (TilTil) --- he loved the tinkling of bells --- was born August 4, 2009. I first met him on the morning of July 17, 2011 and he graduated from Guiding Eyes (at home) on Aug 5, 2011. His pet name was Til-Til (he loved the sound of bells and would jump up shoulder high if you rang a bell) --- and had a very gentle personality. He worked as a guide-dog…
Emacspeak: The Complete Audio Desktop Under Pulseaudio 1. Executive Summary Porting Emacspeak sound environment to Pulseaudio. Until now, emacspeak features that enhance the auditory display have relied exclusively on ALSA and avoided Pulseaudio all together. As Pulseaudio improves, and simultaneously gets harder to get rid of, I recently ported the required features to work under Pulseaudio, see…
Announcing Emacspeak 56.0—AgileDog! The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work. – Donald E. Knuth 1. For Immediate Release: San Jose, CA, (May 1, 2022) 1.1. Emacspeak 56.0 (AgileDog) Unleashed! 🦮 — Making Accessible Computing Effortless! Advancing Accessibility In The Age Of User-Aware Interfaces — Zero cost of Ownership makes priceless…
Advice On Emacs Advice 1. Introduction Love it or hate it, lisp advice is powerful and useful. This article covers some of the places where advice can provide a means of discovering useful behaviors that can then be later codified without resorting to advice. Advice can also prove to be a powerful means of experimentation; these experiments can become permanent, e.g., when the resulting…
Emacspeak In The Age Of Cloud Computing 1. Executive Summary Emacspeak has supported Cloud Computing since 1995, i.e., long before the term was invented. I have used Emacs with Emacspeak running on remote servers (called cloud-top in the rest of this article) since that time, with a local speech server on my client machine providing spoken feedback. The underlying ssh-based scripts have changed…