Speechd-el: Word Echo, Smarter Navigation, Visual Performance?

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "VT" == Veli-Pekka T?til? <vtatila at gmail.com> writes:

    VT> SInce you took a rather nicely speech readable quoting style 

Whether you like it or not, it's one of the standard Emacs mail
quotation styles called "Supercite".  Visually, it helps to distinguish
what was written by whom in more complicated citations.

    VT> I'm not familiar with CVS so would you happen to know how early
    VT> I might have a Ubuntu binary of the latest version in synaptic?

Not anytime soon.

    VT> Alternatively, I could always try compiling from source.

This is probably easier, you can fetch the source from
http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd-el as Tomas told you.  Don't forget to
byte compile the source files using attached Makefile, otherwise you
experience really bad performance.

    VT> This is more like knit picking, but I imagine as a newbie that
    VT> Emacs has a format specific idea of a word. If it does
    VT> e.g. stopping on dots and slashes in URLS for easier navigation,
    VT> does the wordecho get triggered when you add a separator, such
    VT> as a dot? 

Yes.  It's exactly as you expect: Emacs assigns mode dependent syntax
classes to characters (although I think word constituent characters are
seldom redefined).

    VT> On a side note, how do you do C-e for end of line without
    VT> commanding speechd-el?

Press C-e twice.  You can also change the speechd-el command prefix key
by customizing speechd-speak-prefix variable if you like.

    VT> there's a layout for touch typists:

    VT> http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_keybinding_qwerty.el

I personally wouldn't suggest to change basic keybindings, in my
experience basic Emacs commands are reasonable and it may become
troublesome when you sit in front of other Emacs without your
customizations.  As for touch typing I'd recommend to put your control
key to CapsLock position on your system keyboard.  Other nice feature
for touch typists is Emacs ability to use Dvorak keyboard in selected
buffers, try `C-x RET C-\ english-dvorak RET'.

Regards,

Milan Zamazal