4.4. Using Emacspeak with Fedora

Emacspeak is a speech interface that allows visually impaired users to interact independently and efficiently with the computer. Emacspeak has dramatically changed how hundreds of blind and visually impaired users around the world interact with the personal computer and the Internet. A rich suite of task-oriented speech-enabled tools provides efficient speech-enabled access to the evolving semantic world wide web. When combined with Linux running on low-cost PC hardware, Emacspeak provides a reliable, stable speech-friendly solution that opens up the Internet to visually impaired users around the world.

Before using Emacspeak, you should familiarize yourself with some documentation. Start with A Gentle Introduction to Emacspeak by Gary Lawrence Murphy, which is available online at http://tldp.org/LDP/espk-ug/html/index.html

The Emacspeak HOWTO written by Jim Van Zandt is also a very good resource, although the document is limited to the Slackware distribution. The Emascspeak HOWTO is available online at: http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-3.3/docs/Emacspeak-HOWTO

The following sections describe how to perform various tasks using Emacspeak and Fedora.

The Meta key

At various points, the following sections refer to the Meta key. This key is fundamental to Emacs (and therefore Emacspeak) commands, but is very seldom found on modern keyboards. Most keyboard layouts map the Alt key to take the place of Meta.

4.4.1. Reading news using Fedora and Emacspeak

Gnus is the news reader included with Emacspeak. Gnus gets the appropriate data from the .newsrc file in the user's home directory. To post and read news through Emacspeak, refer to http://www.gnus.org/ for manuals, tutorials, HOWTOs, and more. To start Gnus, press Meta+X, then type gnus and press Enter.

This command displays all the newsgroups you are subscribed to. To select a newsgroup, highlight your selection and press the space bar. Next, specify how many articles you would like to open: type a number and press Enter. This splits the screen into two buffers. The top section is the summary buffer, the bottom section is the article buffer. You should now be able to read your news.