First I must say that I am very proud and happy to see that a Braillespeak-Devel List have been opened. In fact I had never imagined that this -for me a little- project should meet so much attention from so many persons, worldwide. Many thanX!

But it's now time for me to explain something so that my intesions should be clear enough and that you all understand the background of this BrlSpeak adventure:

in December 1999, I went to a local Linux club (here in Brussels, Belgium, Europe), they were organizing a Linux Install Party: they helped me to install a Debian (who is since then my standard and prefered distribution).

But the frustration of not having been able to install a distrib without external help turned me into thinking about finding any solution a) to resolve this problem of autonomy, b) to have a distrib-project for newbies/not Linux users who generally prefer first to try, before switching definitely to another system...

Of course for them my project should be an "easy to setup thing", or it should not be started!!!

I saw that Matthew Campbell had built a mini distrib, based on ZipSlack, -integrating speech support (SpeakUp)-, but no braille support was provided.

I decided to experiment with some mini distribs; I tried Trinux, DragonLinux, the original ZipSlack ....... and finally ZipSpeak.

You also need to know that I was able to do such experiments due to the fact that I was using a hardware braille display: these types of "old" displays doesn't require BrlTty.

One of the problems Sebastien (our CVS and List Maintainer) encountered, concerning the UMSDOS format, doesn't sound so new to me: I tried to edit files of "BrlSpeak" from outside, in fact from within my Debian platform; the result was that each time I runned "BrlSpeak" I discovered that filenames such as rc_keyma.{_b were renamed to rc_keyma.$00 ... .$01, .$02, etcetera, you see what I mean...

When I decided to import and edit all new material from within a running "BrlSpeak", I observed that the correct names (8+3) were keeped unchanged.

I also discovered that the famous --linux-.--- file is automatically generated when you make a mkdir from inside Brlspeak.

This was my startpoint. I had the right distrib, and if I was now able to add things without a stupid filename problem as consequence, then I should be able to work on a "braille interface" (My Major Objective).

My next step was to drop the BrlTty pack on BrlSpeak's /root and to try to compile a driver; it worked!

Now the last, biggest problem, was to find a good method to invert the problem of the chicken and the egg, understand: "to be able to create a method so that blind users should be able to preconfigure the brltty Makefile under DOS, while they see what they are doing on that moment": I simply created a cfg.bat preconfiger (batch), it interacts with a CR-LF corrector and drops files into the appropraite \linux\ directory/subdirectory, from within the DOS prompt.

The final touch for me was to implement it so that the compilation of brltty should start only if necessary: I used the rc.local that comes with a Slackware distrib to execute the autocompile-script, and so provide immediately braille output at boot time.

What now with BrlSpeak? If BrlSpeak can be used as inspiration for an UMSDOS Debian, this sould be great; why? well, a) under DOS the braille display is active so it is then very easy to pre-edit a Makefile before running the distrib; b) if you turn that UMSDOS Debian to an ext2 partition, then you're ready for the future! then you just need an Internet connection and to know the command apt-get install package_name.

Else, BrlSpeak can be considered as a) a good portable mini distrib with enough applications on board, b) a good distrib for education of non-free users, c) btw it can be used as a rescue Linux when you destroyed yourself your official/standard system and you want to reach some friends or the WWW.

I'm sure, the fact that this is FREE software will inspire many devels to use this work as a base for their new own creations. I encourage you to do so!

Last but not least: it is for me very important that you know that I'm not considering myself as a developper; I just have used my knowledge of DOS (that was the system I had used for long years) + some knowledge of Linux, + some tricks and advices from Linux and non-Linux friends.

With all this background I built BrlSpeak. I hope this can help new blind users to find a way to reach the wonderful world of GNU and Open Source! It seems from e-mails people sended me that BrlSpeak is useful in many other situations. Well, enjoy then!

Bye bye!

Osvaldo La Rosa