Mike,
I just wanted to say a belated but heart felt thanks for all your long,
continued work with the Pi's and continuing to share your discoveries with the
community.
Discouragement is hard to continue to put up with, and hard to overcome
sometimes, and doing things by yourself seemingly isn't all that rewarding.
But... There really are those that appreciate it.
You've done a lot of great work, and you are recognized for it with a lot more
silence sometimes than you deserve.
-----Original Message-----
From: raspberry-vi-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:raspberry-vi-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Ray
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2016 4:31 PM
To: raspberry-vi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [raspberry-vi] Raspbian Mate Article
*** This is an EXTERNAL email. Please exercise caution. DO NOT open attachments
or click links from unknown senders or unexpected email. - STS-Security***
Hello.
I have written a very fast markdown-formatted article on what I have done to
make a Raspbian Lite image into a full Raspbian Mate image with SPeakUP and
Orca.
I will put this on the Web site but in the meantime here is the text, with all
the usual text-wrapping problems associated with email clients:
# How to take a Raspbian Lite Image and Accessify it
This article explains exactly how to use a Raspbian Lite image and add
accessibility tools to it so that it will:
* Provide the SpeakUp console screen-reader
* Provide the Orca screen-reader in the Mate graphical desktop
## The Choice of Desktop
The desktop of choice from the Raspberry Pi Foundation images is `LXDE`.
I have so far had no luck
in making it speak with Orca, so we're going to use the `Mate` desktop.
## USB Audio
I have explained elsewhere what happened with the ALSA driver in 2013 and why
eSpeak stutters very, very badly in the console and regularly causes a kernel
oops. I have also explained elsewhere how to use my OpenMAX Integration Layer
code library to bypass the broken ALSA driver and render speech directly on the
Raspberry Pi GPU.
Because I have never written a `speech-dispatcher` sound module to use the
OpenMAX IL code, this image uses a different approach. It uses a USB sound
dongle to produce the audio.
The USB sound dongles cost about $10. Any dongle with the C-Media chip-set
will work, and probably others too.
## Get Raspbian Lite
Go to the Raspberry Pi Foundation download pages and grab the latest Raspbian
Lite image.
You will need a card bigger than 4GB to be confident it will fit on the card
and there will be space for all of the desktop components and other things you
will want to install.
## Configure USB Audio
You will need to configure the audio system so that the USB audio device is the
default.
To do this for all users on more recent versions of Raspbian, edit:
/lib/modprobe.d/aliases.conf
And change the line:
options snd-usb-audio index=-2
By commenting it out:
#options snd-usb-audio index=-2
This causes the USB sound dongle to be device number zero, the default.
The next step is optional and causes sound through both the analogue socket and
the HDMI socket to be disabled.
Edit /boot/config.txt
And comment out the line:
dtparam=audio=on
Note that no other program will use either HDMI or analogue audio unless
specifically directed to do so, since we have changed the default device to the
USB dongle.
## Enable the SpeakUp Console Screen-reader
Now edit /etc/modules, and add this line to the end of it:
speakup_soft
Also now run this command:
sudo modprobe speakup_soft
And now install espeak and espeakup like this:
sudo apt-get install espeak espeakup
Now reboot, and you will hear, assuming you have a speaker or phones plugged
into the USB sound dongle, the Pi shutting down. You will hear some pops and
then the boot messages.
You can avoid hearing the boot messages if you add ' quiet' to the end of
/boot/cmdline.txt.
So you now have console speech with `SpeakUp`.
## Install Mate
First do an update to ensure you have the latest of everything in your package
cache:
sudo apt-get update
This will be a minimal image which will have the minimum of stuff installed for
you to customize.
There will be no:
* Web browser, but iceweasel is easy to install
* Email client, but icedove is easy to install also
* Libre Office
When you install these they will appear in the menus.
There is a basic text editor, called `pluma`.
There is a terminal called mate-terminal.
### What is Mate?
Mate is a fork of the older Gnome 2 desktop, now defunct.
### Installation
To install Mate:
sudo apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment
This will take a long time. You might want to add the -yqq switch to stop it
asking for confirmation and to make it run quietly.
Now install the `lightdm` desktop-manager:
sudo apt-get install lightdm
And now install Orca:
sudo apt-get install gnome-orca
### Accessibility Switches
You will need to run this command to inspect the accessibility switch:
gsettings get org.mate.interface accessibility
It should report that it is currently set to `false`.
Set it to true like this:
dbus-launch gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true
Note that I am assuming you are doing this in a console or over an `SSH`
connection, which makes the `dbus-launch` prefix necessary.
Confirm it worked by running the first command again if you like.
I don't know whether you need to set it for root as well like this:
sudo dbus-launch gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true
But it does no harm.
### Speech-dispatcher Configuration
To change `speech-dispatcher` to use `ALSA` instead of `pulseaudio`:
Edit /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf, and change the line:
# AudioOutputMethod "pulse
To read like this, note it has been uncommented:
AudioOutputMethod "alsa"
You also need to edit /etc/pulse/client.conf, and change:
; autospawn = yes
To:
autospawn = no
You may also need to delete any files from:
/usr/share/alsa/
Which have `pulse` in the name, including files in:
/usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/
Also do this:
sudo chmod -x /usr/bin/start-pulse*
Which stops other unrelated stuff launching `pulseaudio`.
*Important*, we have all witnessed the console being silent while the GUI talks
and despite SpeakUp being configured.
This is because of the way `espeak` is compiled, it tries to use `pulseaudio`
if it sees it is running, or `ALSA` if it is not.
This has one bad consequence, if `pulseaudio` is running for another user,
`espeak` will fall silent.
And if `speech-dispatcher` is configured to use `pulseaudio`, then `lightdm`
will have started an instance of `speech-dispatcher` under the `lightdm` user,
which clobbers `espeak` in the console.
### `lightdm` Configuration
You must make a small change to the configuration file of the `lightdm`
desktop-manager if it is to speak before you log in to the `Mate` desktop.
Edit:
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Find the line which reads:
#greeter-wrapper=
And change it to read:
greeter-wrapper=/usr/bin/orca-dm-wrapper
## Finished
Now you have installed and configured everything you need. Reboot:
sudo reboot
If you have not added ' quiet' to `/boot/cmdline.txt` you will hear, after a
short while, the boot messages.
You should also hear, talking over the boot messages after a while, Orca saying
'screen reader on'.
To shut up the boot messages after a while, press `control+alt+F1` and then
mash the control key a few times.
You can log into a virtual console by pressing one of `control+alt+Fn` where n
is 1 to 6.
Get to the GUI console with `control+alt+F7`, and log in with username and
password.
## Very Basic Keyboard Commands for Mate
Press ALT+F1 to bring up the menu.
Press ALT+F2 to type in the name of a program to launch, for example:
mate-terminal
The terminal is also available in the menus.
--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
Eyes-free Linux:
http://eyesfreelinux.ninja/
Raspberry VI:
http://www.raspberryvi.org/
===========================================================
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Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
Foundation.
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views and
attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those of the
Foundation.
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
===========================================================
The raspberry-vi mailing list
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
Foundation.
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views and
attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those of the
Foundation.
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
